Saadiah Gaon (882–942), Jewish exegete, philosopher, liturgist, grammarian, and lexicographer. Born in the Fayyum in Egypt, Saadiah wrote his first Hebrew dictionary by age twenty. He removed to Tiberias, probably fleeing the backlash of his polemic against the Karaite (biblicist, anti-Talmudic) sect. There he mastered the inductive techniques of semantic analysis pioneered by Muslim MuÅtazilites in defending their rationalistic monotheism and voluntaristic theodicy. He learned philologically from the Masoretes and liturgical poets, and philosophically from the MuÅtazilite-influenced Jewish metaphysician Daud al-Muqammif of Raqqa in Iraq, and Isaac Israeli of Qayrawan in Tunisia, a Neoplatonizing physician, with whom the young philosopher attempted a correspondence. But his sense of system, evidenced in his pioneering chronology, prayerbook, and scheme of tropes, and nurtured by Arabic versions of Plato (but seemingly not much Aristotle), allowed him to outgrow and outshine his mentors. He came to prominence by successfully defending the traditional Hebrew calendar, using astronomical, mathematical, and rabbinic arguments. Called to Baghdad, he became Gaon (Hebrew, ‘Eminence’) or head of the ancient Talmudic academy of Pumpedita, then nearly defunct. His commentaries on rabbinic property law and his letters to Jewish communities as far away as Spain refurbished the authority of the academy, but a controversy with the Exilarch, secular head of Mesopotamian Jewry, led to his deposition and six years in limbo, deprived of his judicial authority. He delved into scientific cosmology, translated many biblical books into Arabic with philosophic commentaries and thematic introductions, and around 933 completed The Book of Critically Chosen Beliefs and Convictions, the first Jewish philosophical summa. Unusual among medieval works for a lengthy epistemological introduction, its ten Arabic treatises defend and define creation, monotheism, human obligation and virtue, theodicy, natural retribution, resurrection, immortality and recompense, Israel’s redemption, and the good life.
Saadiah argues that no single good suffices for human happiness; each in isolation is destructive. The Torah prepares the optimal blend of the appetitive and erotic, procreative, civilizational, ascetic, political, intellectual, pious, and tranquil. Following al-Rhazi (d. 925 or 932), Saadiah argues that since destruction always overcomes organization in this world, sufferings will always outweigh pleasures; therefore (as in rabbinic and MuÅtazilite theodicy) God must be assumed to right the balances in the hereafter. Indeed, justice is the object of creation – not simply that the righteous be rewarded but that all should earn their deserved requital: the very light that is sown for the righteous is the fire that torments the wicked. But if requital and even recompense must be earned, this life is much more than an anteroom. Authenticity becomes a value in itself: the innocent are not told directly that their sufferings are a trial, or their testing would be invalid. Only by enduring their sufferings without interference can they demonstrate the qualities that make them worthy of the highest reward. Movingly reconciled with the Exilarch, Saadiah ended his life as Gaon. His voluntarism, naturalism, and rationalism laid philosophical foundations for Maimonides, and his inductive exegesis became a cornerstone of critical hermeneutics. See also JEWISH PHILOSOPHY. L.E.G.
