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Updated: April 30, 2025
Indeed the main interest of this newly-discovered connection, if it can be seriously so regarded, is that it suggests the possibility of Saadia's acquaintance with Philo by means of a translation.
As little as the Poles resembled the Arabs of the "golden age," did the Polish Jews resemble their brethren in faith in the Orient at Saadia's time or in the Spain of Gabirol and Maimonides. Isolation and clannishness were inevitable in view of the character of the Christian environment and the almost insuperable barriers raised between the classes of Polish society.
As Saadia's emphasis on tradition, apart from its intrinsic importance for Judaism, has its additional motive in refuting Karaism, so the following discussion against the possibility of the Law being abrogated is directed no doubt against the claims of the two sister religions, Christianity and Mohammedanism. Abrogation of the law, Saadia says, is impossible.
Having made the promise, his justice prompts him to fulfil it, and those who suffer have themselves to blame. We have now completed in outline Saadia's system of Judaism.
Between 933 and 937, driven from power, he retired to his library at Bagdad, just as Cincinnatus withdrew to his farm when Rome no longer needed him. During his retirement Saadia's best books were written. Why? Graetz tells us that "Saadia was still under the ban of excommunication. He had, therefore, no other sphere of action than that of an author."
We are thus justified in saying, that Saadia's sources are Jewish literature and tradition, the works of the Mutakallimun, particularly the Muʿtazilites, and Aristotle, whose book on the "Categories" he knew at first hand. Saadia tells us he was induced to write his book because he found that the beliefs and opinions of men were in an unsatisfactory state.
Saadia found himself in the midst of all this and proved equal to the occasion. We are not here concerned with the vicissitudes of Saadia's personal life or of his literary career as opponent of the Karaite sect. Nor can we afford more than merely to state that Jewish science in the larger sense begins with Saadia. Hebrew grammar and lexicography did not exist before him.
Saadia's whole career was that of active authorship, when in power and out of power, as a boy, in middle life, in age: his constant thought was the service of truth, in so far as literature can serve it, and one may well think that he felt that the Crown of the Law was better worth wearing in prosperity, when he chose it out of other crowns, than in adversity, when it was the only crown within his reach.
The section on Justice centres about the doctrine of free will. Hence psychology and ethics are treated in this part of the work. To this may be added problems of a more dogmatic nature, eschatological and otherwise. We shall see in the sequel that Saadia's masterpiece is modeled on the same plan.
This solution did not seem thoroughgoing enough to Saadia's successors, and every one of the Jewish philosophers tried his hand at the problem. All agreed that the attributes cannot apply to God in the same signification as they have when we use them in our own experience.
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