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Sa\'adiah ben Yosef Gaon (882 or 892–942),The traditional birth year of 892 was exclusively cited before 1921 and is still occasionally cited. It rests on a statement by the twelfth-century historian Abraham ibn Daud that Saadia was "about fifty" years old when he died. The modern birth year of 882 rests on an 1113 CE Genizah fragment containing a list of Saadia\'s writings compiled by his sons eleven years after his death, which stated that he was "sixty years less forty … days" at death. Henry Malter, "Postscript", Saadia Gaon: His life and works (1921) 421–428. Jacob [Jocob] Mann, "A fihrist of Sa\'adya\'s works", The Jewish Quarterly Review new series 11 (1921) 423-428. Malter rejected 882 because it was in conflict with other known events in Saadia\'s life. He suspected an error by a copyist. 882 is now generally accepted because its source is closer in both time and space to his death. (Hebrew: סעדיה בן יוסף גאון, Arabic: سعيد بن يوسف الفيومي Sa`īd bin Yūsuf al-Fayyūmi); was a prominent rabbi, Jewish philosopher, and exegete of the geonic period. Saadia is known for his works on Hebrew linguistics, Halakha, and Jewish philosophy. He is one of the more sophisticated practitioners of the philosophical school known as the "Jewish Kalam" (Stroumsa 2003). In this capacity, his philosophical work Emunoth ve-Deoth represents the first systematic attempt to integrate Jewish theology with components of Greek philosophy. Saadia was also very active in opposition to Karaism, in defense of rabbinic Judaism.
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Saadia, in "Sefer ha-Galui", stresses his Jewish lineage, claiming to belong to the noble family of Shelah, son of Judah (see Chronicles 1 4:21), 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 later served as Gaon of Sura from 1013-1017). 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 lengthy residence in the Holy Land. The usual epithet of "Al-Fayyumi" refers to Saadia\'s native place, the Fayum 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 he left his home to study under the Torah scholars of Tiberias. At age 20 Saadia completed his first great work, the Hebrew dictionary which he entitled Agron. 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 settled permanently in Palestine.
In 922 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\' CodeLaws of the Sanctification of the Moon, chs. 6-10, written c. 1170.) rather than on observation of the moon\'s 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 Meir, the Gaon of the leading Talmudic academy in Israel (then located in Ramle), claimed a tradition according to which the cutoff point was 642/1080 of an hour (approximately 35 minutes) after noon.Various suggestions have been made as to where Ben Meir got this figure. A contemporary author, Remy Landau, suggests that he wanted to optimize the rule and thereby reduce the frequency of this postponement (The Meir-Saadia Calendar Controversy). 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 Meir\'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 Diaspora (922). In Babylonia he wrote his "Sefer ha-Mo\'adim," or "Book of Festivals," in which he refuted the assertions of Ben Meir 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.Yuchasin, section 3, account by Nathan the Babylonian.)
Under his leadership, the ancient academy, founded by Rav, entered upon a new period of brilliancy.Letter of Sherira Gaon. 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 b. 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.
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 seven years which Saadia spent in Baghdad 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.
Saadia translated into Arabic most, if not all, of the Bible, adding an Arabic commentary, although there is no citation from the books of Chronicles.
Saadia Gaon was a pioneer in the fields in which he toiled. The foremost object of his work was the Bible; his importance is due primarily to his establishment of a new school of Biblical exegesis characterized by a rational investigation of the contents of the Bible and a scientific knowledge of the language of the holy text.
Saadia\'s Arabic translation of the Bible is of importance for the history of civilization; itself a product of the Arabization of a large portion of Judaism, it served for centuries as a potent factor in the impregnation of the Jewish spirit with Arabic culture, so that, in this respect, it may take its place beside the Greek Bible-translation of antiquity and the German translation of the Pentateuch by Moses Mendelssohn. As a means of popular religious enlightenment, Saadia\'s translation presented the Scriptures even to the unlearned in a rational form which aimed at the greatest possible degree of clearness and consistency.
His system of hermeneutics was not limited to the exegesis of individual passages, but treated also each book of the Bible as a whole, and showed the connection of its various portions with one another.
The commentary contained, as is stated in the author\'s own introduction to his translation of the Pentateuch, not only an exact interpretation of the text, but also a refutation of the cavils which the heretics raised against it. Further, it set forth the bases of the commandments of reason and the characterization of the commandments of revelation; in the case of the former the author appealed to philosophical speculation; of the latter, naturally, to tradition.
The position assigned to Saadia in the oldest list of Hebrew grammarians, which is contained in the introduction to Ibn Ezra\'s "Moznayim," has not been challenged even by the latest historical investigations. Here, too, he was the first; his grammatical work, now lost, gave an inspiration to further studies, which attained their most brilliant and lasting results in Spain, and he created in part the categories and rules along whose lines was developed the grammatical study of the Hebrew language. His dictionary, primitive and merely practical as it was, became the foundation of Hebrew lexicography; and the name "Agron" (literally, "collection"), which he chose and doubtless created, was long used as a designation for Hebrew lexicons, especially by the Karaites. The very categories of rhetoric, as they were found among the Arabs, were first applied by Saadia to the style of the Bible. He was likewise one of the founders of comparative philology, not only through his brief "Book of Seventy Words," already mentioned, but especially through his explanation of the Hebrew vocabulary by the Arabic, particularly in the case of the favorite translation of Biblical words by Arabic terms having the same sound.
Saadia\'s works were the inspiration and basis for later Jewish writers, such as Berachyah in his encyclopedic philisophical work Sefer Hahibbur (The Book of Compilation).
In his commentary on the "Sefer Yetzirah" Saadia sought to render lucid and intelligible the content of this esoteric work by the light of philosophy and other knowledge, especially by a system of Hebrew phonology which he himself had founded. He did not permit himself in this commentary to be influenced by the theological speculations of the Kalam, which are so important in his main works; and in his presentation of the theory of creation he made a distinction between the Bible and the book on which he commented, even omitting the theory of the "Sefer Yetzirah" regarding the creation of the world when he discussed the various views on this subject in the first section of his "Kitab al-Amanat wal-I\'tiḳadat." From this it may be concluded that he did not regard the "Sefer Yetzirah"—which he traces ultimately to the patriarch Abraham—as a real source for a knowledge of the theory of Judaism, although he evidently considered the work worthy of deep study.
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