Plato's influence on Christianity: limited and often overstated due to caricatures of ancient thought

Winger acknowledges this is not his area of deep expertise. He argues the claim of Platonic influence is often based on shallow caricatures of Jewish and Greek thought. Even if Greek philosophy helped define some terms or ideas that NT authors used, that does not mean those ideas are originally or essentially Platonic. He offers Philo of Alexandria as a key example: Philo was a Jewish thinker contemporary with Jesus who developed the concept of the Logos. John 1 uses Logos language that has some overlap with Philo, but John has his own distinct meaning — he is not simply copying Philo. The lesson: let NT authors stand alone and read them on their own terms rather than reducing them to philosophical borrowing.