Medieval Europe · 882–942
Saadia Gaon
Egyptian-born head of the Sura academy in Babylonia
There are four sources of knowledge: the senses, reason, inference and reliable tradition. Revelation teaches what reason could eventually discover, so that everyone can have the truth at once.
Life and thought
Saadia ben Joseph was born in 882 in the Fayyum, in Egypt, and left as a young man for Palestine and then Babylonia (Iraq), the centre of Jewish learning. He made his name in controversy, against the Karaites, who rejected rabbinic tradition, and in a dispute over the Jewish calendar, and in 928 he became gaon, head of the ancient academy of Sura. Quarrels with the exilarch cost him the post for some years before his death in Baghdad in 942.
He translated the Bible into Arabic, wrote a Hebrew grammar and dictionary, and in The Book of Beliefs and Opinions (933) wrote the first systematic Jewish philosophy, using the methods of Muʿtazili kalām. Knowledge, he argued, comes from four sources: the senses, reason, inference, and reliable tradition. Revelation teaches the same truths that reason can reach, but at once and for everyone, so that no one has to wait a lifetime of study for them. He proved that the world was created and that its Creator is one.
Works
Meanwhile, in other traditions
c. 870–950Al-FārābīLogician called the “Second Teacher” after Aristotlec. 874–936Abū al-Ḥasan al-AshʿarīMuʿtazili theologian who broke with his school around 912On the record
Saadia was born in 882.
Older works give 892, based on Abraham ibn Daud’s remark that he died at “about fifty”. A Genizah list of his writings compiled by his sons says he died aged sixty less forty days, which gives 882; this date, closer to him in time and place, is now generally accepted. He was born in the Fayyum in Egypt and became gaon of Sura in 928. His Arabic translation of the Torah (the Tafsīr) cannot be dated precisely, so the atlas no longer gives it a year.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Saadya [Saadiah] Gaon” · Wikipedia, “Saadia Gaon” (notes on the birth year)