## 1. Life



 Saadya Gaon (Saadya ben Joseph, known in Arabic as Sa'id 'ibn
Yusuf al-Fayyumi) was born in Fayyum (upper Egypt)
in 882 and died in Baghdad in 942. Theologian, philosopher and rabbi,
Saadya's legacy includes a number of philosophical and theological
treatises, 2 Arabic translations of the Bible, a [mostly non-extant]
Biblical commentary in Arabic, various rabbinical, mathematical, and
grammatical writings, a Hebrew dictionary, liturgical poems and a
Jewish prayer book. 



 A key figure in the life of the Jewish community, Saadya's rabbinic
career included influential involvement in a controversial Jewish
calendrical reform and a contested rise to the position of head Rabbi
at the Sura Academy.



 In his general philosophical comportment, Saadya upholds the need for
and importance of reason, even in a religious context of revelation
and faith. In fact, in his commitment to the importance of human
reason (including the sense in which reason can judge the rightness of
at least a number of Biblical commands and prohibitions), Saadya's
theological ideas may be said to reflect Islamic Kalam
sensibilities (in particular, the teachings of the
Mu'tazilites). 


## 2. The Importance of Reason: *The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs*



 It is this commitment to upholding the importance of reason --
and its fruits, knowledge and certainty -- that lies at the core
of Saadya's  main philosophical text, the *Kitab
al-Amanat wal-'I'tiqadat*, or *The
Book of Doctrines and Beliefs* (known in Samuel Ibn Tibbon's
Hebrew translation as *Sefer ha-'Emunot
ve-ha-Deot*). In what follows, we will refer to this text as
the *Amanat*. In this magnum opus, Saadya aims to
move people beyond the various epistemological and existential
paralyses through which they are consigned to living always and only
in the shadows of error and doubt. Concerned to help cure this
distinctive human ill, Saadya hopes to provide people instead with
truth and certainty -- the grounds for right living. And so,
following upon an opening passage of epistemological praise to
"the Lord, the God of Israel, to whom the truth is known with
absolute certainty," Saadya begins the
*Amanat*, with a statement of his work's
epistemological purpose:



> 
>  ...I will begin this book, which it is my intention to write,
> with an exposition of the reason why men, in their search for Truth,
> become involved in errors, and how these errors can be removed so that
> the objects of their investigations may be fully attained; moreover,
> why some of these errors have such a powerful hold on some people that
> they affirm them as the truth, deluding themselves that they know
> something... (Altmann,
>  27)[1]
> 



 The sad state of affairs among men which Saadya sees as the impetus
for his work is described a few lines later in terms of erroneous
life-patterns which stem from various failures of reason:



> 
>  I have been led to make these introductory remarks by my observation
> of the state of many people in regard to their doctrines and beliefs
> [note: this is the title of the work]. Some there are who have arrived
> at the truth and rejoice in the knowledge that they possess
> it...Others have arrived at the truth, but doubt it; they fail to
> know it for a certainty and to hold on to it...Still others
> confidently affirm that which is false in the belief that it is true;
> they hold on to falsehood, and abandon that which is
> right...Others again base their conduct on a certain belief for a
> time, and then reject it on account of some defect they find in it;
> then they change over to another belief and renounce it in turn
> because of something in it which seems questionable to
> them...These people are changing continually all their
> life... (Altmann, 28-9)
>  



 Concerned to remedy a people's inability to surmount error and doubt,
Saadya's epistemological curative is directly in the service of life:
Saadya wants to be able to provide his readers with the capacity to
*know truly and with certainty* because he wants to provide them
a genuine space in which to *live truly and with certainty*. 



 Saadya, we may say, essentially sets out to provide his readers with
a dual reason-based and faith-based ground for living. It is in the
service of this dual-ground for living that Saadya grapples throughout
his text with the question of reason's relation to revelation,
beginning with an analysis of four modes of proper knowing,
viz. knowledge from sense perception, knowledge from reason, knowledge
from inference and knowledge from tradition. 


## 3. Tradition, Revelation and Prophecy



 Tradition for Saadya demarcates a unique category of knowing, in
that, unlike the 3 other epistemological processes he addresses
(viz. sensory, inferential and reason-based knowing), knowing by
tradition comes to a person (or a group) all at once (as opposed to
being a process unfolding in time, as is the case for the other 3
modes of knowing). Furthermore, knowledge received from tradition is
not only *immediately received*, but is additionally
*immediately certain* to its
recipient(s). "tradition" translates Saadya's Arabic
"*al-kabar*" (Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew: *haggadah*),
which literally has the sense of "a report." The
conceptual heart of tradition can hence be understood as a kind of
reliable report -- or *heard* testimony transmitted from
person to person. It might further be noted that tradition
(*al-kabar*) has its root in the Arabic verb *kabara*,
"to experience," with the additional sense of "to
know," and even "to know thoroughly." As such,
Saadya's Arabic notion of tradition-as-report carries with it already
a suggestion of reliable knowledge.



 Here, explicitly identifying Scripture as tradition (though
elsewhere, he speaks of rabbinic writings as tradition too), he
explains:



> 
>  [God] knew that His laws and the stories of His wondrous signs would,
> through the passage of time, require people to hand them down to
> posterity, so that they might become as evident to later generations
> as they were to the earlier ones. Therefore, He prepared in our minds
> a place for the acceptance of reliable tradition (*al-kabar
> as-sadiq*) and in our souls a quiet corner for trusting it so
> that His Scriptures and stories should remain safely with us (Altmann,
> 109)
>  



 Reliable tradition, hence, is the report that one can trust. It is an
immediate source for certain knowledge.



 While in his discussions of tradition, Saadya uses the word
'*kabar*' which we have already seen to carry with it
the sense of reporting (but also, knowing), on this issue of
tradition-as-report it is useful also to consider another Arabic root,
*sami'a* (to hear). While in and of itself, this root
simply means 'to hear,' it is, we might note, conceptually
linked to the notion of 'report' in the simple sense that
receiving a report most often involves hearing. And so, there is, in
the Arabic, a conceptual link between 'to hear' and
Saadya's notion of tradition (*kabar*, as a
"report"). In fact, the Arabic root 'to hear'
appears in one of its constructed forms
(*sama'i*) with the literal straightforward
meaning of 'traditional', or 'derived from
tradition'. This link, then, between the notions of hearing and
tradition in Saadya's Arabic linguistic and conceptual space is
important to helping us properly 'recover' the essence of
Saadya's notion of "revelation." Contrary to the
Latin-rooted "revelation," which literally means,
"recovering" (from Latin *veo*, to cover,
and hence "to reveal" literally as "to
recover"), the Arabic term which gets translated as
"revelation" in Saadya's work is grounded in the Arabic
root "to hear." Consider in particular Saadya's important
discussion of a class of Biblical precepts, often translated as
"laws of revelation." Following on a distinction already
drawn in rabbinic sources, but providing the first extended discussion
of this distinction in a Jewish philosophical text, Saadya draws our
attention to the presence of 2 classes of laws in the Hebrew
scriptures, most frequently translated as the "laws of
reason" and the "laws of revelation." For the
"laws of reason," Saadya uses the word
*'aqliyyat*, from the word *'aql*
(lit. the faculty of intellect), and hence, we might say, these laws
are 'the ones that are (or, can  be) known by human
intellect,' or 'the ones that are (or, at least can in
theory be) arrived at through human reason'. As for the
"laws of revelation," Saadya here employs the word
*sam'iyyat*, from the root *sami'a*,
'to hear'; hence these laws are literally 'the ones
that are heard'. The point, then, is to be aware that the Arabic
root of the word translated as "revelation" in the
distinction between "laws of reason" and "laws of
revelation" is a word that linguistically carries on its sleeve
the notion of "being heard" and, as such, carries with it
a more immediate correlation with the very concept of tradition (as
the [heard] report) than does the Latin-rooted term
"revelation." 



 Appreciating the link -- through the conceptual chain of
*reporting* and *hearing* -- between tradition and
revelation in Saadya is important for many reasons. First, it is
important in and of itself, reminding us that translation can often
make us miss the conceptual overtones of the tradition we are trying
to recover. Secondly, this link speaks directly to Saadya's own
commitment to the rabbinic tradition in Judaism as itself just as
important as -- and on equal epistemological footing with --
the revealed scripture (contrary to the Karaite movement in Judaism
which during Saadya's time was especially vociferous in flatly denying
any binding authority to rabbinic law, and against whose ideas Saadya
composed polemical responses). In other words, coming to appreciate
the conceptual link in Arabic between the idea of revelation and that
of tradition (as we have shown above) might certainly be useful in
helping us better appreciate Saadya's own treatment of the rabbinic
tradition (or, oral law) as divinely revealed. Furthermore, coming to
appreciate this 'link-in-*hearing*' between
revelation and tradition additionally helps to elucidate the direct
link in Saadya between these two concepts, and prophecy. For Saadya,
prophecy is, in part, a divinely "created word"
*heard* by the prophet. On this picture, it is obvious --
simply from the conceptual space of the Arabic terms -- that,
through this idea of *hearing*, revelation, tradition and
prophecy are all intimately related. Although his notion of prophecy
also includes a visual element, the "created glory"
(though it is interesting to note that for Saadya, the ultimate
prophetic experience of Moses was *only* auditory and did not
include this visual element), it is nonetheless important to stress
the immediate connection between notions of divine speaking, and human
reception-*as-hearing*, itself with overtones for both revelation
and tradition as the joint repositories of 'the things that are
[reliably] heard' (and hence, known).



 In addition, then, to this "created word" auditory
phenomenon revealed to the prophet, Saadya's doctrine of prophecy also
involves the "created glory", a kind of visual element of
the prophecy, described in particular by Saadya as the verification
mechanism for the prophet. It is in seeing the created glory that the
prophet knows his prophetic encounter to be true (though, as mentioned
above, Saadya suggests that the prophecy of Moses lacked this visual
aspect, consisting in an encounter with created word alone). 



 In Saadya's *Commentary on the Book of Creation*
(*Tafsir Kitab al-Mabadi*), we learn more
about the created glory in Saadya's doctrine of a
"2nd air." There, created glory, or the
"2nd air," is described as a prophetic
intermediary of some sort between God and man. 



 The prophetic air in question is described by Saadya as
"second" precisely in the sense that it is anterior to, as
well as subtler and more powerful than, regular elemental air (which
he calls "manifest air"). In other words, from the human
vantage point, regular breathable air is "first", and
"prophetic air" is "second." If we take this
in some spatial sense, the idea would seem to be that this
2nd more subtle, refined variety of air lies *midway*
between the regular human realm and the divine realm. This reading
would suggest that created glory is not only a source for prophecy,
but is, at least *prima facie*, a cosmic intermediary, playing an
intermediating role in the prophetic encounter. Futhermore, thus
seeing the 2nd air as a 'cosmic intermediary'
might seem to suggest that it is an hypostasized reality, a point
which seems further supported by Saadya's own description of this
2nd air as a '*shay makhluq*'
('a created *thing*'). 



 Along these lines, it might be noted that in an influential study of
the prophetic phenomenon in Saadya, Altmann sees Saadya's
commitment to created glory as a commitment in particular to some sort
of an hypostasized entity; in fact, it is precisely on the basis of
this hypostasizing view that Altmann argues for distinguishing
Saadya's theory of prophecy from the Mu'tazilite
 view.[2]
 All this said, though, the exact nature of the created glory in
Saadya is somewhat ambiguous, and, as such, it seems *at least
plausible* to deny that this element of Saadya's prophetic view is
intended in a strictly reified sense. What is clear, in any case, is
that it is through his descriptions and analyses of created word and
created glory that Saadya strives to unambiguously ground the
legitimacy and objectivity of prophecy, and hence, of tradition
itself.


## 4. "Laws of Reason" vs. "Laws of Revelation"



 While the entire Bible is, for Saadya, revealed (particularly as an
auditory prophecy-to-Moses which is then reported to -- and
hence, received as tradition by -- future generations), Saadya's
focus on the "laws of revelation" demarcates not all of
the revealed Bible, and not even all of the laws found in the revealed
Bible, but rather, only a subsection of those laws. To better
understand what the "laws of revelation" refer to,
consider again the contrast class, viz. the "laws of
reason" (which are of course also found in the revealed
Bible). As mentioned above, this distinction between 2 classes of
Biblical laws is already alluded to in rabbinic literature
(cf. *Babylonian Talmud*, *Yoma* 67b); Saadya, though, is
seen as the first Jewish writer to really engage this discussion
philosophically. Saadya addresses this distinction in the third
chapter of his *Amanat* (a chapter devoted to an
investigation of "commandment and prohibition"). The
"laws of reason" (again, the ones described as
" '*aqliyyat* " from the root
"intellect") are essentially characterized there as
commandments and prohibitions in the Bible whose reasons could be
arrived at independently by any rational human being. In other words,
these are laws which ought to 'make sense' to any
reasonable person, and, as such, are basic (one might say, natural)
moral laws which, left to our own devices, we ought come up with on
our own. Examples of such laws are the prohibitions against murder,
adultery, theft, and lying. The "laws of reason" are
described by Saadya as legislating over matters that, as Saadya says,
God "has implanted approval [or, in cases of prohibition,
disapproval] of...in our reason" (Altmann, 97). The
"laws of revelation" (*sam'iyyat*, again,
from the root *sami'a*, 'to hear') are
described on the contrary as follows:



> 
>  The Second Class of law consists of matters regarding which reason
> passes no judgment in the way either of approval or disapproval so far
> as their essence is concerned... (Altmann, 97) 



 In the pages immediately following, Saadya gives as examples of such
laws: the laws demarcating Sabbath and other festival days as separate
from 'ordinary' days, rules about who gets chosen as a
prophet and/or leader, the Jewish dietary laws, certain sexual
prohibitions, and laws of purity and impurity.


## 5. Reason and Revelation in Dialogue



 Having seen the difference between the "laws of reason"
and the "laws of revelation," we get an even better sense
of Saadya's uniquely religious epistemological stance by looking more
generally at how reason and revelation relate to one another in his
system. Broadly considering ways in which reason and revelation come
together for Saadya, we find the complexity of Saadya's
epistemological sensibility, the sense, that is, in which revelation
is both brought in support of, but also itself supported by,
reason. 



 First, Saadya provides what he takes to be a reason-based account of
why the "laws of reason" were included by God in the
revealed Bible at all -- after all, if they are the sorts of
things that reasonably sensible human beings ought to arrive at on
their own, why did God bother revealing them? To this question, Saadya
can be taken as providing two answers:



 1. God, in His benevolence, did not see fit to leave us to figure
morality out on our own; even though we *could* arrive at certain
key moral ideas on the basis of our own human reasoning, God, by
revealing these moral ideas to us, essentially gives us a shortcut, as
it were.



> 
>  ...the Lord (be He exalted and glorified) has informed us
> through the words of His prophets that he wishes us to lead a
> religious life by following the religion which He instituted for
> us. This religion contains laws (*shari'a*), which he
> has prescribed for us, and which it is our duty to keep and to fulfill
> in sincerity...His messengers established these laws for us by
> wondrous signs and miracles, and we commenced to keep and fulfill them
> forthwith. Later we found that speculation confirms the necessity of
> the law for us. *It would, however, not have been appropriate to
> leave us to our own devices*... (Altmann, 95; italics added)
> 



 For Saadya, it is only reasonable that God in His kindness reveal to
us even those laws which we could, in theory, arrive at on the basis
of our own reasoning, for this both expedites as well as ensures our
engagement with proper norms for living. Human reason is in this way
shown to be helped by revelation. And yet, in this very act of
analysis -- in which a reasoned account of the importance of
revelation is given -- Saadya essentially at one and the same
time shows us how revelation is helped -- at least in the sense
of supported -- by reason.



 2. Following a further line of reasoning (itself outlined more fully
below in our treatment of Saadya's analysis of why God issued
"laws of revelation"), Saadya explains how, by including
"laws of reason" in the list of divinely revealed
commandments and prohibitions, God, in effect, allows His subjects to
do what they would be doing anyway (viz. acting in accordance with
basic, reason-based moral ideals), but enables them to get the
additional bonus of being rewarded for 'doing God's
bidding'. 



> 
>  When faced with this statement [viz. that the commandments and
> prohibitions are a divine gift], the first impulse of reason will be
> to object that God should have been able to bestow upon men perfect
> bliss and to grant them everlasting happiness without imposing upon
> them commandments and prohibitions. Moreover, it would seem that in
> this way His goodness would have been more beneficial to them, seeing
> that they would have been free from the necessity of making any
> laborious effort. My answer to this objection is that, on the
> contrary, the order instituted by God, whereby everlasting happiness
> is achieved by man's labours in fulfillment of the law, is
> preferable. For reason judges that one who obtains some good in return
> for work which he has accomplished enjoys a double portion of
> happiness in comparison with one who has not done any work and
> received what he receives as a gift of grace. reason does not deem it
> right to place both on the same level. This being so, our Creator has
> chosen for us the more abundant portion, namely, to bestow welfare on
> us in the shape of reward, thus making it double the benefit which we
> could expect without an effort on our part... (Altmann, 94)
>  



 God gives His followers more opportunity to reap rewards by making
even the self-evident norms of moral living matters of divine
obeisance. We might say that for Saadya, God supplements a natural
law ethics (and/or a Virtue Theory ethics) with a divine command
theory for the purpose of increasing human rewards. reason, in this
way, is helped by revelation. And yet again, in the very composition
of an account of the reasonableness of revelation, Saadya here too
shows revelation to be helped -- at least in the sense of
supported -- by reason.



 Regarding the larger question of obeisance to God, Saadya (in chapter
3 of the *Amanat*) provides what he takes to be a
reason-based account of why one ought to follow God and obey His laws,
and can in this way be seen as providing a reason-based appraisal of
revelation most broadly construed. This argument is provided in 4
parts, and centers, in turn, on the reasonableness of God's expecting
us to render thanks to Him, the reasonableness of God expecting us to
respect Him and His name, the reasonableness of God's expecting us to
act rightly towards fellow humans, and the reasonableness of God's
giving us commands and prohibitions for the express purpose of being
able to give us rewards. In this discussion, Saadya in yet another way
employs reason in support of revelation. Here, revelation is once
again helped -- at least in the sense of supported -- by
reason.



 In fact, Saadya even provides what he takes to be a reason-based
account of the "laws of revelation" -- the very laws
"regarding which reason passes no judgment" and which, as
such, are not, in his very own opinion on the matter, subject to human
evaluation at all! According to Saadya, humans don't know what God has
in mind regarding this class of laws, and yet, champion of reason as
Saadya appears to be, he nonetheless decides (albeit tentatively, and
with qualification) to provide reasons for these laws. In fact, Saadya
not only gives reasons for the "laws of revelation" as a
class of law in general, but he then additionally offers explanations
for the particularities of individual cases in point of such laws. In
this latter effort, Saadya not only provides numerous possible reasons
for the particularities of any given "law of revelation,"
but attempts in his explanations to show how the law in question is
actually of practical benefit to humans. 



 Starting with the first, more general level of explanation, Saadya
provides a reason for God's having commanded "laws of
revelation" broadly speaking: First, it was a benevolent act
designed by God to give humans extra opportunities to serve Him, and,
thereby, extra opportunities to increase their rewards and
happiness:



> 
>  But our Lord has given us an abundance of such commandments and
> prohibitions [viz. laws of revelation] in order to increase our reward
> and happiness through them, as is said, 'The Lord was pleased,
> for His righteousness' sake, to make the law great and
> glorious' (Isa. 42.21). That which belongs to the things
> commanded by God assumes the character of 'good', and that
> which belongs to the things forbidden by Him assumes the character of
> 'evil' on account of the Service thereby
> performed..." (Altmann, 97-98)
>  



 By having more opportunities to serve God, we are given more
opportunities to reap divine rewards. For Saadya, nothing could be
more reasonable.



 An example, then, of Saadya's subsequent attempt to provide even
further reasons for the particulars of specific "laws of
revelation" (reasons, moreover, which point to the practical
benefits of those laws) can be seen in his two attempted explanations
of the Jewish dietary laws:



> 
>  The prohibition not to eat certain animals has this advantage: it
> makes it impossible to liken any of the animals to the Creator since
> it is unthinkable that one should permit oneself either to eat or to
> declare as impure what one likens to God; also it prevents people from
> worshiping any of the animals, since it is unthinkable that one should
> worship either what serves for food or what one declares as impure
> (Altmann, 101)
>  



 In both his more general and more individualized attempts to explain
the reasonableness of the "laws of revelation," Saadya
once again employs reason in support of revelation. 



 And yet, turning to some stronger senses in which, on the contrary,
reason is supported by revelation, Saadya (in a section in chapter 3
of the *Amanat* addressing why it is necessary for
God to send "messengers and prophets") provides a general
explanation not only (as above) of why the "laws of
reason" are themselves revealed, but of why the "laws of
reason" must be further accompanied by additional revealed
information. In this discussion, Saadya stresses that even the most
rational moral ideal is beset with vagueness about the details of how
best to effect the sought after result; and so, while reason can tell
us that we ought not commit adultery, it doesn't necessarily provide
us with the sorts of 'when, where and how' *details*that are needed to translate even the best moral theory into
actual practice. In effect, Saadya explains that,



> 
>  ...mankind is fundamentally in need of the prophets, not solely
> on account of the revelational laws, which had to be announced, but
> also on account of the rational laws, because their practice cannot be
> complete unless the prophets show us how to perform them. Thus, for
> instance, reason commands gratitude toward God for the blessings
> received from Him, but does not specify the form, time, and posture
> appropriate to the expression of such gratitude. So we are in need of
> prophets. They gave it a form which is called 'prayer';
> they fixed its times, its special formulae, its special modes and the
> special direction which one is to face when praying... (Altmann,
> 103-104)
>  



 In one sense, this too can be seen as another reason (supplementing
the two provided above) why the "laws of reason" are
themselves revealed in the Bible: different from anything addressed
above, here the idea would be that the Biblical revelation includes
details for action that human reason on its own does not provide. And
yet, it seems worth noting that Saadya in this section of his text (as
represented by the above quote) seems to focus explicitly on those
requisite details that are provided by the *rabbinic tradition*
(details about times of prayer, etc.). This seems to suggest that this
line of reasoning about the relationship of reason and revelation is
slightly different from what we have addressed above. And so: whereas
above, the question was 'Why are the "laws of
reason" revealed in the Bible?', here, the question is
'Why are the "laws or reason" accompanied by
revealed Oral law traditions about these laws?' Seeing Saadya's
line of reasoning here in this way, we may highlight the link between
the notions of revelation, prophecy and tradition, here precisely in
the sense of rabbinic tradition. As discussed above, for Saadya, the
authority of the written Bible and the oral law (or, rabbinic
tradition) are on equal footing. Here again, though now with
implications for the role of rabbinic tradition, we see that, for
Saadya, reason is helped by revelation (here, it would seem, in the
sense of rabbinic tradition).



 In further support of some stronger senses in which Saadya employs
revelation in support of reason, there seems to emerge what we might
identify as a kind of 'illuminationist' strain in Saadya's
epistemology, a strain in light of which human reason seems ultimately
grounded upon a personal divine revelation of sorts. Consider how
Saadya, right at the *Amanat*'s outset, revealingly
qualifies the nature of human reason in a discussion of his own role
as 'knower' through an especially evocative image of
sinking men in the hands of a salvific diver. Describing his reaction
to the state of his community's ignorance and doubt, Saadya says:



> 
>  ...my heart grieved for my race, the race of mankind, and my
> soul was moved on account of our own people Israel, as I saw in my
> time many of the believers clinging to unsound doctrine and mistaken
> beliefs while many of those who deny the faith boast of their unbelief
> and despise the men of truth, although they are themselves in error. I
> saw men sunk, as it were, in a sea of doubt and covered by the waters
> of confusion, and there was no diver to bring them up from the depths
> and no swimmer to come to their rescue. But as my Lord has granted
> unto me some knowledge which I can use for their support, and endowed
> me with some ability which I might employ for their benefit, I felt
> that to help them was my duty, and guiding them aright an obligation
> upon me, as the Prophet says, "The Lord God hath given me the
> tongue of them that are taught, that I should know how to sustain with
> words him that is weary" (Isa. 50.4), although I confess to the
> shortcomings of my knowledge... (Altmann, 29)
>  



 Saadya sees himself as the able swimmer setting out to rescue the
people Israel -- and all of mankind -- from their drowning
fates, and yet, in his image, his own reliance upon the hand of God is
immediately evident: Saadya sees himself as the salvific diver, or, to
change imagery, the 'tongue' that through books might
speak people out of their quandaries, and yet, as he states above, it
is "my Lord [who] has granted unto me some knowledge... and
endowed me with some ability." Finding in himself a guiding
voice, he is quick to find too that his is a voice that is received
from above: His voice is that of the "them that are
taught" -- his ability to help save those who are drowning
is not his own, but is, rather, 'taught,' a gift given to
him by God. 



 In this, there emerges an important sense in which, for Saadya,
reason rests on a kind of personal revelation. And so, here too,
revelation is ultimately brought in support of reason.



 The importance of revelation as a ground in Saadya can be further
seen in his understanding of the commandments and prohibitions as
themselves gracious gifts from God:



> 
>  The first of His acts of kindness towards His creatures was the gift
> of existence...Thereafter He offered them a gift by means of which
> they are able to obtain complete happiness and perfect bliss...
> (Altmann, 93)
>  



 In his sensitive responsiveness to even existence itself as divine
gift, Saadya finds in the commandments and prohibitions of revelation
a God-given path to salvation: by following these God-given precepts,
one can hope to secure his or her welfare. In this, his understanding
of Jewish law as heavenly gift, we can already see the sense in which
for Saadya, revelation is a ground for living -- it is the basis
upon which a person can live in the light of divine favor.


## 6. Prooftexts, Revelation and Faith



 In further support of a sense in which Saadya identifies revelation
as a ground, we may look to the very methodology and structure of the
*Amanat* itself. In particular, consider the
*Amanat*'s liberal employment of Biblical prooftexts:
every reason-exemplifying analysis or argument is, within Saadya's
work, ultimately rooted in a scriptural verse. Beckoning, we might
say, to the lived experience of faith (as opposed to the important,
though limited, cognitive experience of reason), these prooftexts
themselves stand as testaments to both the centrality and
phenomenological uniqueness of 'knowing by tradition' (or,
revelation) in Saadya's world-view. Evocative and transformative in
their scope, these Biblical verses are themselves revelations --
and enactments -- of faith in the very fabric of Saadya's
reason-based endeavor. In this way, we may say that the method and
form of Saadya's writing (viz. his use of prooftexts *in
addition* to his use of reasoned arguments) helps emphasize the
importance for Saadya of revelation and knowledge-from-tradition as
separate from reason-based knowing. As such, we may say in particular
of those Biblical prooftexts employed by Saadya *in support of the
importance of reasoning*, that they simultaneously (one might even
say, paradoxically) beckon us to (a) the limitations of reasoning, (b)
the need for (and consistency with reason of) revealed Knowledge, and
even (c) the need to ground a life of reasoned reflection in a life of
revealed tradition. Through his constant engagement with revealed
texts to support the importance of reason, Saadya, in the very act of
championing reason, can be seen as planting reason on the ground of
revelation. 



 Saadya's liberal peppering of his analyses and arguments with
Biblical prooftexts can in this way be seen as incarnations of faith
in his text, incarnations which speak volumes about his complex
understanding of reason's relation to revelation. It would seem that
faith -- and not simply reason -- runs throughout and
grounds Saadya's text, itself a model for Saadya's conception of the
well-lived life.


## 7. Maimonidean Critique?



 Following on many of the above considerations about the grounding of
reason in revelation, and struck more generally by what might be
described as a 'faith-seeks-understanding' methodology,
one may legitimately ask: In spite of his own defense of, call for and
engagement with reason, is reason really the hallmark of Saadya's
world-view? To see how one might answer "no" to this
question, consider the writings of Moses Maimonides (a later Jewish
medieval philosopher). For Maimonides, Saadya's speculative
theological reasoning might easily be seen as
reasoning-in-the-service-of-pre-established-ideas (in this case,
theological commitments). This sort of 'reasoning' is
precisely the sort of thing that Maimonides (in the extended critique
of Kalam which he offers in his *Guide of the Perplexed*)
lambastes as a fanciful, non-philosophical mode of
pseudo-reasoning. To the extent that Saadya's work falls prey to
Maimonides' critique of Kalam theology, it would not, properly
speaking, be a truly reason-based system. While Saadya states that
"the truth of reliable tradition" is "based on the
knowledge of sense perception and the knowledge of reason"
(Altmann, 37), there are serious grounds for suggesting, nonetheless,
that for Saadya, it is tradition and revelation, and the presence of
God in man's life that these entail, which are ultimately the first
foundations for knowing and living. The centrality of reason
notwithstanding, revelation may ultimately be Saadya's final
ground.


## 8. Revelation as Praxis



 In considering the possibility of revelation as ground, consider the
sense in which, for Saadya, revelation entails praxis. In addition to
describing knowledge as that which God has placed within him, Saadya,
in the above 'salvific diver' quote, sees that in having
received the divine gift of knowledge, he has become a locus of
obligation: in having divinely received reason's fruit, he has, at one
and the same time, been called to take on the God-given responsibility
to help save those who are drowning. Acting on his responsibility to
snatch the lost drifters from the watery graves of doubt and error,
Saadya hopes that



> 
>  [t]he knowledge of God and
> His law will spread in the world like the spreading of water in all
> parts of the sea, as is said, 'For the earth shall be full of the
> knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea'
> (Isa. 11.9)" (Altmann, 31)
>  




 As is already evident in these sentiments at the very start of the
*Amanat*, and as becomes clearer throughout the
course of the text, for Saadya there is always an immediate
correlation between the ability to think (or reason) on the one hand,
and, on the other hand, both (a) a receptivity to divine giving,
coupled with (b) an obligation of moral responsiveness in the face of
the Other. In this (as in other ideas of his), we find an intimate and
inextricable link between the human capacity to manifest reason, the
human capacity to receive revelation, and the human responsibility to
be ethically responsive. In this sense, 'receiving
revelation' must itself be understood as a person's -- or
community's -- joint resolution to hearing *and
acting*-in-accordance-with the voice of God, itself manifest in
hearing *and acting*-in-accordance-with the voice of
tradition. tradition in this sense emerges in Saadya as a communal
receptacle for revelation, parallel, though on a larger scale, to the
receptive heart of the individual prophet who receives the word of
God. Along these lines, we might say that
revelation-*cum*-tradition emerges as the key ingredient to
Saadya's epistemological prescription for truth and certainty, and as
such, as the key ingredient to Saadya's prescription for living
-- his prescription, that is, for how to live life with the sort
of fullness that only truth and certainty can provide, and which only
faith-with-reason can hope to attain.


## 9. God, Unity, Creation, Soul



 Saadya upholds the absolute unity of God, and argues firmly for
creation *ex nihilo*. In this former regard, Saadya shares a
sensibility with the Mu'tazilite theologians, and reveals
a knowledge of various heated debates on this theme at play in Islamic
circles during his time. On the issue of creation, Saadya defends a
creation *ex nihilo* position (though here breaks further company
with the Mu'tazilites who, in addition to creation *ex
nihilo*, advanced an atomistic doctrine of continuous
[re-]creation). In fact, between the various arguments he offers in
his *Amanat* as well as in his *Commentary on the
Book of Creation*, Saadya defends the creation *ex nihilo*
position against 18 other theories, each of which he critiques in
turn. In this series of arguments, Saadya reveals a familiarity with a
number of philosophical and theological doctrines, including those of
the pre-Socratics, Plato and the Pythagoreans (though it should be
noted that his knowledge of these thinkers would have been largely
based on doxographies and other Arabic encyclopedic sources). 



 In addition to refutations of 12 of the cosmogonic views (more of
which he refutes in other works), Saadya provides us in the
*Amanat* with proofs for the creation of the world
*ex nihilo* by God. He proceeds in three stages: he begins with
four proofs for the creation of the world (described respectively as
proofs from finitude, composition, accidents, and time), moves on to
three reasons for why that creation must be rooted in an external
creator (as opposed to some idea of the self-createdness of the
world), and ends by showing how that creation must furthermore be
understood as creation *ex nihilo* (as opposed to a creation out
of some pre-existent matter). As Harry Wolfson has shown, Saadya bases
his four proofs for the createdness of the world on Islamic
Kalam traditions (see Wolfson, 1943).



 Providing details of Saadya's arguments for creation *ex nihilo*
is less interesting for our current purposes than making some
observations about Saadya's sensibilities about reason and revelation
in these discussions. In the case of creation as well as the case of
God's unity, Saadya sees demonstration by reason as a cornerstone of
belief. At least in the case of some religious beliefs, reason alone
arrives at the ideas in question, and, furthermore, can prove that
they are true. It is worth noting in this regard a potential contrast
with some of the other chapters in the *Amanat* (such
as chapters 6 and 7 on soul and resurrection respectively) which start
with the phrase "Our Lord has informed us that..." Might
this suggest that, for Saadya, the analysis of certain religious
topics is predicated on a somewhat different methodological
perspective on the role of reason? However we answer this question, it
is at least true that for Saadya, in the case of creation, reason is
able to prove the religious idea of an external, *ex nihilo*
createdness. And so, Saadya speaks here of the thesis which "we
seek to establish" (49), and ends the section with the
description of "having thus succeeded in demonstrating by
argument [the doctrine of creation ex nihilo]..." (62). This
established, though, he then goes on to add "...as it has been
verified by the Tradition of the Prophets and by miracles..."
(62). The role of revelation in Saadya's thought is always present. In
addition to supplementing each demonstration with a supporting text
from either the Bible or the Talmud (the written Rabbinic tradition),
he ends his exercise in reason with reference to tradition, prophets,
and miracles.



 Following upon this delicate interplay of reason and revelation, it
is interesting to note how the proofs for creation come up again in
Saadya's treatment of resurrection. While the reasons Saadya gives for
believing in the truth of resurrection have primarily to do with the
reliability of Tradition, Saadya additionally invokes his reason-based
proofs of creation *ex nihilo* to support the at least prima
facie reasonabless of such beliefs. Speaking against the critic who
finds the very idea of God's rejuvenating the dead philosophically
untenable, Saadya stresses that resurrection is not "rejected by
reason because the second creation of a thing which was already in
existence and became dissolved, is more acceptable to reason than the
creation *ex nihilo*" (158). Since the idea of something's
being created *ex nihilo* is less reasonable than the idea of its
being re-created, and since the idea of creation *ex nihilo* has
already been proven true by reason, therefore, *a fortiori*,
surely belief in resurrection is at least reasonable. Here, Saadya's
proof for creation *ex nihilo* emerges in the service of his
belief in resurrection.



 Preceeding the discussion of resurrection, and following a few
chapters after his analyses of creation, Saadya addresses the nature
of soul. Although rejecting Plato's creation view, Saadya rests his
own theory of soul upon a Platonic tripartite psychology. And so,
after rejecting a number of other views of soul, Saadya describes the
soul's three faculties as "the faculty of discernment, the
faculty of appetite, and the faculty of courage" (147). Of
course, to this Platonic foundation, he adds a number of
Tradition-rooted descriptions of soul as well. In fact, even before
any philosophical consideration of the nature of soul, Saadya begins
his discussion with a quote from *Zechariah* 12:1 about God's
forming "the spirit of man within him." Also before any
philosophical considerations, Saadya -- following on this opening
Scriptural text -- speaks of God's "set[ting] a time-limit
to the combined existence of body and soul" (141), to His
"separating" body and soul at the time of death
"until the time when the number of souls which His wisdom has
decided to call into being is completed" (141), and to the time
when "He re-unites [souls] with their respective bodies and
metes out their reward" (141). Scriptural citations coupled with
doctrines of resurrection and final judgement set the stage for
Saadya's discourse on the nature of soul, leading us once again to
consider the delicate interplay of reason and revelation in the pages
of his thought. This interplay can be further seen in Saadya's own
Plato-plus-Tradition understanding of soul. In addition to coupling
Platonic tripartite psychology with Jewish beliefs about resurrection,
Saadya actually links each of Plato's three discrete soul-fuctions to
three discrete Hebrew terms for "soul" found in Scriptures
(*nefesh* as corresponding to the appetitive function,
*ruah* as corresponding to the faculty of passion and courage,
and *neshamah* in correspondence to the faculty of knowledge)
(147). Saadya additionally cites the Scriptural tendency to speak of
"heart and soul together" (148) in support of what he
takes to be provable on empirical grounds (upon which he elaborates),
viz. that "the soul is in the heart of man" (148).