Hortatory Address to the Greeks

And Plato, too, when he says that form is the third original principle next to God and matter, clearly got this idea from no other source than Moses. He learned the name of form from Moses' words but was not instructed by the initiated that without mystic insight, it is impossible to have any distinct understanding of Moses' writings. For Moses wrote that God had spoken to him about the tabernacle in these words: “And you shall make for me according to all that I show you on the mount, the pattern of the tabernacle.” And again: “And you shall erect the tabernacle according to the pattern of all its instruments, so you shall make it.” And again, a little later: “Thus then you shall make it according to the pattern shown to you on the mount.” Plato, then, reading these passages without the proper insight, thought that form had some kind of separate existence before what the senses perceive, and he often calls it the pattern of the things that are made, since Moses’ writing spoke of the tabernacle: “According to the form shown to you on the mount, so you shall make it.”