Introduction to Karaite Judaism: History, Theology, Practice, and Custom Book

N the 10th century, Saadia Gaon, a Babylonian Torah scholar, wrote this book to address a wide variety of topics, using both reason and scripture. In addition to endorsing traditional Jewish views, Saadia sought to address topics seemingly left up for grabs by the Torah. Tbe book begins with the most abstract material, and then gets more specific (and perhaps a bit less deep) towards the end.

The first two chapters (or "treatises") address tbe nature of creation. In the first (and deepest) chapter, Saadia seeks to prove that God created the universe out of nothing. This chapter was a bit over my head in spots. One interesting sidelight: Saadia addresses a dozen alternative theories, and implies that the first alternative is the most credible, the second is the second most credible, and that the last is the weakest. But in my untutored opinion Saadia's order of proceeding is not obviously logical: his top alternative is that God created the universe out of "eternal spiritual beings" and the allegedly weakest alternatives are "skepticism" (i.e. that "it is proper for man to refraining from believing anything because they claim that human reasoning is full of uncertainties" (p. 80) and the views "of those who feign complete ignorance". But the latter alternative seems to me stronger than the former. Either 9th-century people viewed the world very differently than I, or Saadia was putting the weaker alternative first in order to strengthen his argument.

The second chapter discusses the nature of God- asserting that God is One and has no body. Interestingly, Saadia seems to reject the common midrashic view that the various names of God in the Torah refer to different Divine attributes. Instead, Saadia points out that Scriptures often uses names interchangeably. He criticizes Trinitarian Christianity on the ground that if God is not a physical being, he cannot possibly have multiple attributes which differ from each other because "anything that harbors distinction within itself is unquestionably a physical being" According to Saadia, God is like truth- something that cannot be perceived by the senses yet nevertheless exists.

In the third chapter, Saadia discusses the Torah's laws and the reason therefor. He asserts that some commandments are obviously supported by reason, and the rest exist either because God has "imposed upon us a profusion of commandments and prohibitions in order thereby to increase our reward" or to teach submissiveness to God. In addition, some of the latter group may have minor rational purposes: for example, the dietary laws discourage idolatry because man is unlikely to "worship what has been given to him for food, nor what has been declared unclean for him."

In this chapter, Saadia also defends the validity of Scripture and related traditions, on the ground that if people did not accept authentic tradition, they could not believe anything beyond what their senses perceived - for example, they could not be certain that a law was in fact issued by the government.

Most of the last half of the book relates to the afterlife. Saadia endorses the traditional Jewish view that a messiah will deliver Israel (and will rule over the resurrected Jewish dead). He also asserts that eventually, all people who have ever lived (including non-Jews) will be judged and sent to paradise or eternal damnation, both of which involve variations of light and fire. This view is based partially on citations to Scripture, and partially on reason. Specifically, Saadia reasons that the injustice prevalent in the world can be remedied only by rewards and punishments in the afterlife. Less persuasively, he asserts that punishment should be eternal as a deterrent to evil - an argument that is not particularly persuasive because would-be evildoers (a) have no way of knowing what God's punishments are (especially if they have not read Saadia's book) and (b) may not think they are doing anything punishable. Moreover, the idea of eternal punishment seems inconsistent with Saadia's view that God disapproves of misconduct "only on our account, because of te harm they might inflict upon us."

The last chapter is the most practical. Saadia lists a variety of good things (e.g. prayer, food, sex) and says that the ideal person should balance these needs rather than pursuing one to the exclusion of others.