الفهرس 
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Abstract
In late antique Alexandria, two famous schools were established: the Neoplatonic and the Catechetical schools. Both schools had the civic virtue (διάγω ’ενάρετο βίον) and the divinity (Θέωσις) of people through education as their main aim. The Neoplatonic School began in Alexandria during the third century AD. Its founder was Ammonius Saccas who synthesized with Platonism the thought of Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Pythagoreans, and also assimilated much popular religion and myth. Neoplatonists believed that human perfection and happiness were attainable in this world, without awaiting an afterlife. The Catechetical school sought to prepare new Christians for the life of faith and to establish more mature believers, leading some to go on to ordination. Its curriculum was sound, seemingly unstructured, and among its teachers and directors were some of the finest in the Eastern Mediterranean world. The Christian Church was opposed to the Neoplatonic Movement from its beginning. The Christians taught a personal God, the Neoplatonists taught an impersonal Principle. The Christians regarded the universe as a creation of God, the Neoplatonists declared it to be an emanation of the Supreme Essence. Christianity claimed to be a unique religion; the Neoplatonists pointed to the source of all religions. Several prominent Church Fathers -- Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Athenagoras and Augustine -- were drawn into the Neoplatonic Movement, but their efforts to reconcile Neoplatonism with Christianity met with little success. The destruction of the Mysteries and the Neoplatonic Movement left the Christian Church in full control. Neoplatonism was a major influence on early Christian writers and on later medieval and Renaissance thought and on Islamic philosophy.