Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Lewis Reich" <lbr AT sprynet.com>]

On 18 Feb 00, at 11:53, Wondell M. Rachman wrote:  

> So what you're saying is that his premises were based on the available
> information. I'd never heard of Saadia Gaon before, and assumed he was
> a modern linguist that had access to all of the above.
> 
> Is there anything in his writings that is credible or substantiated,
> then?


Saadiah ben Joseph (882-942) was one of most important Jewish figures 
of the post-Talmudic (geonic) period. Born in Egypt, he  served as head of 
one of the two major Jewish academies in Babylonia. He was an active 
polemicist against Karaism, and wrote legal monographs, grammatical 
works, a philosophical work ("Beliefs and Opinions"), and a translation of 
the Bible into Arabic.  He was the first to write Jewish legal works in 
Arabic, 
which had replaced Aramaic as the language spoken by the Jews of 
Babylonia.  

Lewis Reich