Saadia Gaon

Saadia was born in Dilâẓ, in the district of Fayyum, Middle Egypt, in 892 CE. He immigrated to Palestine in 915, at the age of 23, where he studied in Tiberias under the scholar Abu Kathir Yaḥya al-Katib, a Jewish theologian (mutakallim) mentioned also by ibn Ḥazm. In 926, Saadia settled permanently in Babylonia, where he became a member of the Academy of Sura.

Saadia, in Sefer ha-Galui, stresses his Jewish lineage, claiming to belong to the noble family of Shelah, son of Judah,[7] and counting among his ancestors Hanina ben Dosa, the famous ascetic of the first century. Expression was given to this claim by Saadia in calling his son Dosa (this son, Dosa ben Saadia, later served as Gaon of Sura from 1012–1018). Regarding Joseph, Saadia's father, a statement of Aaron ben Meir has been preserved saying that he was compelled to leave Egypt and died in Jaffa, probably during Saadia's prolonged residence in the Holy Land. The usual epithet of "al-Fayyumi" refers to Saadia's native place, the Fayyum in Upper Egypt; in Hebrew it is often given as "Pitomi," derived from a contemporary identification of Fayum with the Biblical Pithom (an identification found in Saadia's own works).

At a young age of 20 Saadia began composing his first great work, the Hebrew dictionary which he entitled Agron.[8] At 23 he composed a polemic against the followers of Anan ben David, particularly Solomon ben Yeruham, thus beginning the activity which was to prove important in opposition to Karaism, in defense of rabbinic Judaism. In the same year he left Egypt, and moved to the Land of Israel. Later, one of Saadia's chief disputants was the Karaite by the name of Abu al-Surri ben Zuṭa, who is referred to by Abraham ibn Ezra, in his commentary on the Pentateuch (Exo. 21:24, and Lev. 23:15 [Ibn Ezra's second edition]).[9] In the year 928, at the age of thirty-six (variant: forty-six), David ben Zakkai, the Exilarch of Babylonian Jewry, petitioned Saadia to assume the honorary title of Gaon, where he was appointed that same year the Gaon of the Academy of Sura at Mata Mechasya, a position which he held for 14 years, until his death.[10] After only two years of teaching, R. Saadia recused himself from teaching, because of a dispute that had fallen out between him and the Exilarch. During Saadia's absence, his post was occupied by R. Yosef, the son of R. Yaakov, the son of R. Natronai. At length, R. Saadia was reconciled with the Exilarch and returned to serve in his former position, although R. Yosef b. Yaakov also remained serving in his capacity as Gaon.

In 922, six years before Saadia was appointed Gaon of Babylonia, a controversy arose concerning the Hebrew calendar, that threatened the entire Jewish community. Since Hillel II (around 359 CE), the calendar had been based on a series of rules (described more fully in Maimonides' Code[11]) rather than on observation of the lunar phases. One of these rules required the date of Rosh Hashanah to be postponed if the calculated lunar conjunction occurred at noon or later. Rabbi Aaron ben Meïr, head of the Palestinian Gaonate (then located in Ramla), claimed a tradition according to which the cutoff point was 642/1080 of an hour (approximately 35 minutes) after noon.[12] In that particular year, this change would result in a two-day schism with the major Jewish communities in Babylonia: according to Ben Meir the first day of Passover would be on a Sunday, while according to the generally accepted rule it would be on Tuesday.

Saadia was in Aleppo, on his way from the East, when he learned of Ben Meïr's regulation of the Jewish calendar. Saadia addressed a warning to him, and in Babylon he placed his knowledge and pen at the disposal of the exilarch David ben Zakkai and the scholars of the academy, adding his own letters to those sent by them to the communities of the Jewish diaspora (922). In Babylonia he wrote his Sefer haMo'adim, or "Book of Festivals," in which he refuted the assertions of Ben Meïr regarding the calendar, and helped to avert from the Jewish community the perils of schism.

His dispute with Ben Meir was an important factor in the call to Sura which he received in 928. The exilarch David ben Zakkai insisted on appointing him as Gaon (head of the academy), despite the weight of precedent (no foreigner had ever served as Gaon before), and against the advice of the aged Nissim Nahrwani, a Resh Kallah at Sura, who feared a confrontation between the two strong-willed personalities, David and Saadia. (Nissim declared, however, that if David was determined to see Saadia in the position, then he would be ready to become the first of Saadia's followers.[13])

Under his leadership, the ancient academy, founded by Rav, entered upon a new period of brilliancy.[14] This renaissance was cut short, though, by a clash between Saadia and David, much as Nissim had predicted.

In a probate case Saadia refused to sign a verdict of the exilarch which he thought unjust, although the Gaon of Pumbedita had subscribed to it. When the son of the exilarch threatened Saadia with violence to secure his compliance, and was roughly handled by Saadia's servant, open war broke out between the exilarch and the gaon. Each excommunicated the other, declaring that he deposed his opponent from office; and David b. Zakkai appointed Joseph ben Jacob as gaon of Sura, while Saadia conferred the exilarchate on David's brother Hassan (Josiah; 930). Hassan was forced to flee, and died in exile in Khorasan; but the strife which divided Babylonian Judaism continued. Saadia was attacked by the exilarch and by his chief adherent, the young but learned Aaron ibn Sargado (later Gaon of Pumbedita, 943-960), in Hebrew pamphlets, fragments of which show a hatred on the part of the exilarch and his partisans that did not shrink from scandal. Saadia did not fail to reply.

Saadia's influence upon the Jews of Yemen has been exceptionally great, as many of Saadia's extant works were preserved by the community and used extensively by them. The basis for the Yemenite Siddur (Tiklāl) is founded upon the prayer format edited originally by Saadia.[15] The Yemenite Jewish community also adopted thirteen penitential verse written by Saadia for Yom Kippur, as well as the Hosh'anah liturgical poems composed by him for the seventh day of Sukkot.[15] Saadia's Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch (Tafsir) was copied by them in nearly all their handwritten codices, and they originally studied Saadia's major work of philosophy, Beliefs and Opinions, in its original Judeo-Arabic,[15] although by the early 20th-century, only fragments had survived.[16]

As much as Saadia's Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch (Tafsīr) has brought relief and succor to Jews living in Arabic-speaking countries, his identification of places, fauna and flora, and the stones of the breastplate, has found him at variance with some scholars. Abraham ibn Ezra, in his own commentary of the Pentateuch, wrote scathing remarks on Saadia's commentary,[17] saying: "He doesn't have an oral tradition […] perhaps he has a vision in a dream, while he has already erred with respect to certain places […]; therefore, we will not rely on his dreams." However, Saadia assures his readers elsewhere that when he rendered translations for the twenty odd unclean fowl that are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Leviticus 11:13–19; Deuteronomy 14:12–18), his translation was based on an oral tradition received by him.[18] In fact, Saadia's method of conveying names for the fowls based on what he had received by way of an oral tradition, prompted him to add in his defense: "Every detail about them, had one of them merely come unto us [for identification], we would not have been able to identify it for certain, much less recognize their related kinds."[19] The question often asked by scholars now is whether Saadia applied this principle in his other translations. Re'em (Heb. ראם‎), as in Deut. 33:17, improperly translated as "unicorn" in some English translations, is a word that is now used in Modern Hebrew to represent the "oryx," although Saadia understood the same word to mean "rhinoceros", and writes there the Judeo-Arabic word אלכרכדאן for the creature. He interprets the zamer (Heb. זמר‎) in Deuteronomy 14:5 as meaning the giraffe.

In Saadia's translation and commentary on the Book of Psalms (Kitāb al-Tasābiḥ), he has done what no other medieval writer has done before him, bringing down a biblical exegesis and noting where the verse is to be read as a rhetorical question, and where the verse itself derides the question with good humor:

הַר אֱלהִים הַר בָּשָׁן. הַר גַּבְנֻנִּים הַר בָּשָׁן
לָמָּה תְּרַצְדוּן הָרִים גַּבְנֻנִּים
הָהָר חָמַד אֱלהִים לְשִׁבְתּוֹ. אַף יי' יִשְׁכּן לָנֶצַח
‎
Is the hill of God the hill of Bashan? A hunchback mountain is the hill of Bashan! (Meaning, it is unfit for God's Divine Presence).
Why leap ye, ye hunchback mountains?
That mountain wherein God desires to dwell (i.e. Mount Moriah in Jerusalem), even the Lord shall dwell [therein] forever more.

— Saadia Gaon's Commentary[31]

Saadia's approach to rabbinic exegesis and midrashic literature was ambivalent. Although he adopted them in his liturgies, he did not recoil from denouncing them in his commentary on the Bible whenever he thought that they broke-away from the plain and ordinary meaning of the text.[32] Saadia adopts in principle the method of the Sages that even the episodic-like parts of the Bible (e.g. story of Abraham and Sarah, the selling of Joseph, etc.) that do not contain commandments have a moral lesson to tell.[33]

In some instances, Saadia's biblical translations reflect his own rationale of difficult Hebrew words based on their lexical root, and he will, at times, reject the earlier Aramaic Targum for his own understanding. For example, in Psalm 16:4, Saadia retracts from the Aramaic Targum (translated): "They will multiply their goddesses[34] (Hebrew: עַצְּבוֹתָם); they have hastened after some other thing; I shall not pour out their libations of blood, neither shall I take-up their names upon my lips," writing instead: "They will multiply their revenues (Judeo-Arabic:אכסאבהם); they have hastened after some other thing," etc.[35] Even where a certain explanation is given in the Babylonian Talmud, such as the Hebrew words בד בבד‎ in Exo. 30:34 (explained in Taanit 7a as meaning "each spice pounded separately"), Saadia deviates from the rabbinic tradition in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch, in this case explaining its sense as "having them made of equal portions."[36]

In another apparent deviation from Talmudic tradition, where the Talmud (Hullin 63a) names a biblical species of fowl (Leviticus 11:18) known as raḥam (Hebrew: רחם) and says that it is the colorful bee-eating bird called sheraqraq (Merops apiaster), Saadia in his Judeo-Arabic translation of the Pentateuch writes that raḥam is the carrion vulture (Neophron percnopterus), based on the phonetic similarity of its Arabic name with the Hebrew.[37] The sheraqraq (same as the Arabic شقراق), is a bird that harbingers rain in the Levant (around October), for which reason the Talmud says: "When raḥam arrives, mercy (raḥamīm) comes into the world."[37]

He wrote both in Hebrew and in Arabic a work, now known only from a few fragments, entitled "Sefer ha-Galui" (Arabic title, "Kitab al-Ṭarid"), in which he emphasized with great but justifiable pride the services which he had rendered, especially in his opposition to heresy.

The fourteen years which Saadia spent in Babylonia did not interrupt his literary activity. His principal philosophical work was completed in 933; and four years later, through Ibn Sargado's father-in-law, Bishr ben Aaron, the two enemies were reconciled. Saadia was reinstated in his office; but he held it for only five more years. David b. Zakkai died before him (c. 940), being followed a few months later by the exilarch's son Judah, while David's young grandson was nobly protected by Saadia as by a father. According to a statement made by Abraham ibn Daud and doubtless derived from Saadia's son Dosa, Saadia himself died in Babylonia at Sura in 942, at the age of sixty, of "black gall" (melancholia), repeated illnesses having undermined his health.

An anecdote is reported in Sefer Hasidim about Saadia ben Yosef "the sage," in which he ends a dispute between a servant who claims to be the heir of his deceased master and the man's true son and heir by having them both draw blood into separate vessels. He then took a bone from the deceased man and placed it into each of the cups. The bone in the cup of the true heir absorbed the blood, while the servant's blood was not absorbed in the bone. Using this as genetic proof of the son's true inheritance, Saadia had the servant return the man's property to his son.[38]

Saadia translated the Torah and some of the other books of the Hebrew Bible into Judeo-Arabic, adding a Judeo-Arabic commentary.

• Torah
• Isaiah[39]
• Megillot[40]
• Tehillim (Judeo-Arabic translation and commentary, which he called Kitāb al-tasbiḥ [= "the Book of Praise"])[41]
• Iyyov (Book of Job)[42] (translated to English by Dr. Goodman),[43] and Mishlei[44]
• Daniel[45]

Saadia translated Megillat Antiochus into Judeo-Arabic and wrote an introduction.[46]

1. Agron
2. Kutub al-Lughah, also known as Kitāb faṣīḥ lughat al-‘ibrāniyyīn, “The Book of Eloquent Language of the Hebrews”[47]
3. "Tafsir al-Sab'ina Lafẓah," a list of seventy (properly ninety) Hebrew (and Aramaic) words which occur in the Hebrew Bible only once or very rarely, and which may be explained from traditional literature, especially from the Neo-Hebraisms of the Mishnah. This small work has been frequently reprinted.

1. Short monographs in which problems of Jewish law are systematically presented. Of these Arabic treatises, little but the titles and extracts is known, and it is only in the "Kitab al-Mawarith" that fragments of any length have survived.
2. A commentary on the thirteen rules of Rabbi Ishmael, preserved only in a Hebrew translation by Nahum Ma'arabi. An Arabic methodology of the Talmud is also mentioned, by Azulai, as a work of Saadia under the title "Kelale ha-Talmud".
3. Responsa. With few exceptions these exist only in Hebrew, some of them having been probably written in that language.
4. The Siddur of Saadia Gaon (Kitāb jāmiʿ al-ṣalawāt wal-tasābīḥ), containing the texts of the prayers, commentary in Arabic and original synagogal poetry. Of this synagogal poetry the most noteworthy portions are the "Azharot" on the 613 commandments, which give the author's name as "Sa'id b. Joseph", followed by the title "Alluf," thus showing that the poems were written before he became gaon.

1. Emunoth ve-Deoth (Kitāb al-amānāt wa-al-iʿatiqādāt), the Book of Beliefs and Opinions:[48] This work, first compiled in 933 CE, of which several revisions were made until its final redaction,[49] is considered to be the first systematic attempt to synthesize the Jewish tradition with philosophical teachings. Prior to Saadia, the only other Jew to attempt any such fusion was Philo (Ivry 1989). Saadia's objective here was to show the parallelism between the truths delivered to the people of Israel by Divine revelation, on the one side, and the necessary conclusions that can also be reached by way of rational observation, on the other. The effect of these ideas expressed in his philosophical books are clearly reflected in Saadia's story of creation, especially when he comes to deal with the theological problems, such as in the verse of Deuteronomy 4:24: “For the LORD your God is a devouring fire,” which constitutes an example of a verse that cannot be understood in its plain context, but should rather be understood in such a way as not to contradict one's definite knowledge that God does not change, nor can anything corporeal be associated with him.[50]
2. Tafsīr Kitāb al-Mabādī,[51] an Arabic translation of and commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah, written while its author was still residing in Egypt (or Israel), and intended to explain in a scientific manner how the universe came into existence.[52] On the linguistic aspect, Saadia combines a debate on the letters and on their attributes (e.g. phonemes), as well as a debate on related linguistic matters.

1. Refutations of Karaite authors, always designated by the name "Kitab al-Radd," or "Book of Refutation." These three works are known only from scanty references to them in other works; that the third was written after 933 is proved by one of the citations.
2. "Kitab al-Tamyiz" (in Hebrew, "Sefer ha-Hakkarah"), or "Book of Distinction," composed in 926, and Saadia's most extensive polemical work. It was still cited in the twelfth century; and a number of passages from it are given in a Biblical commentary of Japheth ha-Levi.
3. There was perhaps a special polemic of Saadia against Ben Zuta, though the data regarding this controversy between is known only from the gaon's gloss on the Torah.
4. A refutation directed against the rationalistic Biblical critic Hiwi al-Balkhi, whose views were rejected by the Karaites themselves;
5. "Kitab al-Shara'i'," or "Book of the Commandments of Religion."
6. "Kitab al-'Ibbur," or "Book of the Calendar," likewise apparently containing polemics against Karaite Jews;
7. "Sefer ha-Mo'adim," or "Book of Festivals," the Hebrew polemic against Ben Meir which has been mentioned above.
8. "Sefer ha-Galui," also composed in Hebrew and in the same flowery biblical style as the "Sefer ha-Mo'adim," being an autobiographical and apologetic work directed against the Exilarch (rosh galuth), David b. Zakkai, and his chief patron, Aharon ibn Sargado, in which he proved his own uprightness and equity in the matter of controversy between them.