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R. Saadia Gaon – Intellectual Profile

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R. Saadia Gaon

Name	R. Saadia Gaon, Rasag, Saadia ben Joseph Al-Fayyumi ר' סעדיה גאון, רס"ג, סעדיה בן יוסף הפיומי
Dates	882-942
Location	Egypt / Baghdad
Works	Targum and Commentary on Tanakh, Emunot VeDeiot, Siddur, Halakhic, Sefer HaMitzvot, Sefer HaAgron
Exegetical Characteristics
Influenced by
Impacted on	Ibn Ezra, R. Avraham Ben HaRambam

Background

The term "Gaon" (plural: "Geonim"), in its narrowest meaning, refers to the official head of one of the central yeshivot of Babylonia which were active primarily between the 6th and 11th centuries. In addition to overseeing the Torah study occurring in their yeshiva, Geonim were responsible for writing responsa, answering questions posed to them in letters usually concerning matters of Jewish law. This was the exclusive literary output of the Geonim until the tenure of R. Saadia, who transformed the role of the Gaon by authoring numerous works in many genres.¹

Life

• Name – Saadia (or Saadiah, Saadya) ben Yosef “al-Fiyumi” (from the Fayyūm district)
  • Hebrew name – סעדיה בן יוסף פיומי
  • Arabic name – Saˁīd b. Yūsuf al-Fayyūmī
• Dates – 882 - 942
• Location – Born in Dilāṣ, in the Fayyūm district of Upper Egypt. Later moved to Tiberias, Israel and then Baghdad.
• Education – 
• Occupation – For the last sixteen years of his life, R. Saadia served as the Gaon (head) of the Yeshiva of Sura.
• Family – 
• Teachers – 
• Contemporaries – R. Aaron Sarjado Gaon, Isaac Israeli
• Students – 
• Time period – 
  • –
• World outlook – 

Works

• Biblical commentaries – Saadia composed an Arabic translation of the entire Tanakh, which he titled "Tafsīr,"² as well as a longer commentary on approximately half of the Torah and a few other books of Tanakh, including Yeshayah, Mishlei, Tehillim, Iyyov, and Daniel.³ 
• Rabbinics – 
  • Talmudic novellae – 
  • Halakhic codes – 
  • Responses to the works of others – 
  • Responsa – 
• Jewish thought – 
• Misattributed works – 

Torah Commentary-

Characteristics

• Verse by verse / Topical – 
• Genre – 
• Structure – 
• Language – 
• Peshat and derash – 

Methods

• – 

Themes

• – 

Textual Issues

• Manuscripts – 
• Printings – 
• Textual layers – 

Sources

Significant Influences

• Earlier Sources – 
• Teachers – 
• Foils – 

Occasional Usage

• –

Possible Relationship

• –

Impact

Later exegetes

• –

Supercommentaries

• –

¹ Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Paperback ed., 2013)

² This terms means something like “interpretation, meaning,” (perhaps similar to the Hebrew word פשר found in Kohelet 8:1) and is distinct from the Arabic word for translation, tarjama, (similar to the word תרגום) which was the title preferred by the Karaites of R. Saadia's time for their translations. This probably intentional, as R. Saadia writes in the introduction to his work that he considered it to be more of an interpretation than a literal translation.

³ R. Saadia gave these commentaries various names based on their subject matter. For example, his commentary to Yeshayah is titled, “The Book of Striving for Improvement in Worship”. These titles appear to be referring to the topics of the books of Tanakh themselves, not R. Saadia's commentaries. H. Ben-Shammai, “Saadya’s Introduction to Isaiah as an Introduction to the Books of the Prophets.” [Hebrew] Tarbiẓ 1991 (60: 371–404)