Plato(who received instruction from Socrates) was alive about the same era that Bhuddha received “his enlightenment” and when Confucious also began his teachings.
The Talmud and Mishna writing began to be seriously developed.
In fact the period from about the end of the 6th century BC until the 250 bc was a period in which many teachers and ethicists ‘seemingly’ sprout up spontaneously in parts of the inhabited world but not necessarily in communication with each other. Often many of these teachings and religious traditions were similar in scope and ethics.
Remember what Paul said,
<< Acts 17 >>
American King James Version
We are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like to gold, or silver, or stone, graven by are and man’s device. 30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men every where to repent: 31 Because he has appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained; whereof he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.”
I think there was a move of God affoot in the 400 “silent” years before Christ or so to quicken men’s hearts and to prep history for the coming of the messiah...to whisper into the hearts of spiritually thirsty men and women, to stir the hearts of kings....
The rise of these great gentile philosophers all at once in history and in disparate places suggests that God was not so silent after all.
“The rise of these great gentile philosophers all at once in history and in disparate places suggests that God was not so silent after all.”
Spirited: I agree. The great scholar Peter Kreeft calls this the Axial Period. A period when a question had occurred to many philosophers throughout the world’s widely separated civilizations. In essence, that question was: “Do the gods really exist?”