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Updated: May 31, 2025
On the other hand, one may feel profoundly moved with the spirit of true piety, love of God and loyalty to his commandments in the performance of a so-called "traditional commandment," like the fastening of a "mezuzah" to the door-post. Bahya finds room for Saadia's classification but it is with him of subordinate importance, and is applicable only to the "duties of the limbs."
But the difference of masters does not obscure the likeness of aim, and, albeit unconsciously, Saadia renews the task of the Hellenic-Jewish school. Saadia's work was carried on and expanded in a great outburst of the Jewish genius, which showed itself most brilliantly in the Moorish-Spanish kingdom.
Hence Saadia's insistence that inadequacy of language is alone responsible for our expressing God's essential attributes in the three words, Living, Omnipotent, Omniscient; that in reality they are no more than interpretations of the expression Maker. We have now shown that God is one in the two important senses of the word.
Saadia also discusses this view as the ninth of the twelve theories of creation treated by him, and refutes it more elaborately than Bahya, whose one argument is the last of Saadia's eight. In the treatment of creation Saadia is decidedly richer and more comprehensive in discussion, review and argumentation.
Saadia's opposition to the belief in the pre-existence of the soul at once does away with the Neo-Platonic view that the soul was placed in the body as a punishment for wrongdoing. The soul was created at the same time with the body, and the two form a natural unit. Hence complete life involves both body and soul. We have seen that God's creation of the world is due to his goodness.
The reader will recognize in this two-fold classification Saadia's division of the laws into rational and traditional, and Bahya's classification of duties of the heart and duties of the limbs. This second class includes Ibn Ezra's second and third classes, tongue and action. The problem of evil Ibn Ezra solves by saying that from God comes good only.
The Bible had been translated into several languages before Saadia's day, but he was the first to translate it into Arabic, and the first to write a commentary on it.
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