So far as we are here concerned, the great importance of the Greek Old Testament lies in the fact that it has given us the books of the Apocrypha. These will be dealt with separately in Part II, so that it will not be necessary to say anything about them now further than that the general purpose for which they were written was to expand some of the already existing books of the Hebrew Scriptures, or to add to their number. Some, such as the books of the Maccabees, continue the record of the nation’s history; others are expansions of canonical books, such as the Prayer of Manasses, the Additions to Daniel, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremy, and the Rest of Esther; while Ecclesiasticus and the Book of Wisdom are additions to the Wisdom Literature of the Jews. As regards the importance and far-reaching influence of the Septuagint, we cannot do better than quote the words in which Deissmann has so succinctly, and yet so adequately, expressed this: “Take the Septuagint in your hand, and you have before you the book that was the Bible of the Jews of the Dispersion and of the proselytes from the heathen; the Bible of Philo the philosopher, Paul the Apostle, and the earliest Christian missions; the Bible of the whole Greek-speaking Christian world; the mother of influential daughter-versions; the mother of the Greek New Testament.”[83] IV. PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA [LITERATURE.—Siegfried, _Philo von Alexandria als Ausleger des Alten Testamentes_ (1875); O. Holtzmann in Stade’s _Geschichte des Volkes Israel_, II, pp. 521-551 (1888); Schürer, II, iii. pp. 321-381, German ed., III, pp. 633-716; Krüger, _Philo und Josephus als Apologeten des Judentums_ (1906); Windisch, _Die Frömmigkeit Philo’s_ ..., pp. 4-95 (1909). See also J. H. A. Hart’s series of articles entitled “Philo of Alexandria” in the _Jewish Quarterly Review_, vols. xvii. xviii. xix., these deal with the writings of Philo; Lauterbach’s article on Philo in the _Jewish Encycl._, X, pp. 6-18.] As the Septuagint is, from our present point of view, the most important product of the Hellenistic Movement, so among Græco-Jewish writers is Philo the most remarkable whom this Movement brought forth. No Jew was so immersed in the spirit of Greek wisdom, nor did more to try and harmonize Greek and Hebrew thought. The large number of his works which have come down to us owe their preservation to the popularity they enjoyed among the early Church Fathers, for by the Jewish leaders Philo was not regarded as orthodox, his works were therefore unacceptable to them; some of the Church writers even went so far as to speak of him as a Christian.