Rav Saadia HaGaon (c. 882–942) perhaps one of the first Gaonim scholars actively embraced ancient Greek philosophy. The Arab conquest of much of Iberia traditionally began in 711, Saadia lived mainly in Egypt and Babylonia, within the Abbasid intellectual world. Greek works—including Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Galen, and others—earlier re-discovered translated into Arabic, through the Abbasid translation movement, especially from the eighth through tenth centuries. His Rav Saadia HaGaon unlike Rambam, never a “straightforward” Aristotelian philosopher.
The conquest of much of Iberia began in 711, Saadia lived mainly in Egypt and Babylonia, within the Abbasid intellectual world. Greek works—including Aristotle, Plato, Euclid, Galen, and others—already translated into Arabic through the Abbasid translation movement, especially from the eighth through tenth centuries. His Book Kitāb al-Amānāt wa-l-Iʿtiqādāt, known in Hebrew as Sefer ha-Emunot ve-ha-Deʿot (The Book of Beliefs and Opinions), completed in the 930s, draws especially on Islamic kalām, particularly Muʿtazilite theology. Greek philosophy would later dominate virtually all “Golden Age” Spanish Reshonim thinkers such as Rambam and Ibn Eza, Isaac Israeli, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi.
These later Spanish Reshonim assimilated these ancient Greek ideas of deductive logic similar to how the Tzzeddukim adopted the ideas of making Jerusalem into a Greek city-state. Assimilation into ancient Greek cultures transformed the leaders of Spanish Jewry. The rediscovered Greek philosophical tradition became a major intellectual force in that euphemistic Jewish Golden Age medieval Spain.
The Talmud interprets the 2nd Sinai commandment, based upon other Torah commandment precedents, as do not assimilate and follow the customs manners or cultural traditions practiced by Goyim societies. This כלל defined through the פרט wherein the head of the Tribe of Shimon paraded past Moshe and Aaron with his Midianite wife; Ezra would demand that returning Jews from g’lut Bavil divorce their foreign wives.
The rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophy and logic reopened the Jewish “Civil War” known as Hanukkah some 1000 years earlier. Every Hanukkah, Jews remember in ועל הנסים Bencher: כשעמדה מלכות יון הרשעה על עמך ישראל להשכיחם תורתך. This phrase requires scholarship. Its vast scope includes the assimilated Tzeddukim who supported the rejection of the Oral Torah inductive logic system replaced by the Greek deductive logic formats, no different from the Shomronim who Ezra despised. The Syrian Greek empire sought to turn Jerusalem into a City-State.
Cyrus the Great paid from his own treasury for Ezra’s generations to build a “Temple” in Jerusalem. Ezra excluded the Assyrian Shomronim replacement populations; which the Mishna and Gemara of mesechta Baba Kama refers to all peoples’ who refer to themselves as the “real Israelites”, but who reject the revelation of the Oral Torah logic, later codified through פרדס inductive reasoning which defines all of Talmudic and Midrashic literature, under the general term Canaanites – a restatement of the Torah language “strangers”
דברים טה:כא – לגר אשר בשעריך תתננה ואכלה, או מכר לנכרי. The Talmud in this sense directly compares to the late 19th Century Russian socialist revolutionaries who had to conceal their radical political writings in an attempt to avoid Czar bureaucratic censors and/or secret police.
The Romans did not like this distinction wherein the Canaani had no social or legal rights to sue Israel for damages. Most superficial “historians” attribute the Hanukkah war to Antiochus IV and his supporters who favored Greek Hellenization of Judea. And ignore the long traditions started by Cyrus the Great as employing Banana Republic priests/Tzeddukim as the 2% fabulously wealthy caretakers who collected taxes from the impoverished conquered population of Judea. They “passover” the strategic necessity of building a Jewish temple as the means to collect taxes and ship resources of Judea back to Persia.
Some 1000 years later the reintroduction of Greek philosophy reopened the wounds of the Hanukkah civil war which pitted the P’rushim against the assimilated Tzeddukim who like the later church “denied” the existence of the Oral Torah פרדס logic kabbalah as later codified in the Talmud and Midrashim as the Horev revelation of 13 tohor middot Spirits.
During the Hasmonean period, almost immediately after declaring themselves as king, they broke their alliance with the P’rushim and cut an alliance with the Tzeddukim which initiated a civil war. The Hasmonean dynasty ruled for about 110 years before the Romans installed Herod. By some accounts a Century of their rule, Civil War fought between the P’rushim and Tzeddukim.
The Tzeddukim died as a class after the destruction of the 2nd Temple by the Romans. The church concealed the ancient Greek writings after Constantine converted to their faith and became emperor of Rome. Both the Western and Eastern church authorities viewed the Greek writings which dominated Roman polytheism culture as hostile. Renaissance scholars gained additional Greek manuscripts through Byzantine contacts, especially after, (with some minor exceptions), the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The concealment of those Greek ideas, together with the fall of Rome conquered by Germanic Tribes initiated the period known as the “Dark Ages”; akin to the three Century church imposed Ghetto Gulags upon the Jewish people. The rediscovery of the concealed Greek philosophies directly compares to the awe of Jews after Napoleon freed them from their Ghetto gulags.
The conquest of Spain by Arab armies, impacted the Western church something like a title wave hits the beaches. The ancient Greek texts no longer threatened the dominance of the church. Greek writings now read only secondary to the Bible itself! Xtian churchmen such as Augustine, Boethius, John Philoponus, Thomas Aquinas, and many Byzantine scholars now actively engaged in Greek philosophy. The expression “Dark Ages” recognizes the collapse of the Roman road system and collapse of international trade. The American and French revolutions introduced the distinction between serf vs. citizens. The British introduced the Industrial revolution which transferred the primary wealth producing capabilities of a nation from rural serf/lord communes to Cities – which in its own right caused a huge population transfer akin to Stalin’s wars against the kulaks of the Ukraine.
Saadia Gaon represents an early Jewish effort to employ rational argument in the restructured priority of “Jewish g’lut survival theology”. His scholarship obviously not identical to the Hellenistic crisis commemorated by Hanukkah. Instead it raised a related question, specifically how to address the Karaim rejection of the Oral Torah! How can g’lut Jews encounter an intellectually powerful external culture without surrendering Torah as the ultimate source of our Torah brit identity of Constitutional authority which mandates lateral Sanhedrin common law courts to rule the 12 Tribal Republic through legislative review over all Tribal and King statute laws?
Saadia’s sh’itta/methodology, compares to the Xtian word “converted”. He made “theology” the handmaiden of Torah common law – since no Sanhedrin courts can exist in g’lut! He employed סברה\reasoning/rationale as his היגיון logic. שכל\sechel – discernment skills which require the wisdom to separate like from like. For example wisdom-time oriented commandments which require k’vanna from תולדות/secondary commandments – both positive and negative – which do not require k’vanna but rather serve as precedents to employ sechel to interpret Oral Torah middot spirits as the dedication of halachic actions raised to דאורייתא מצוות.
His Kitāb al-Amānāt wa-l-Iʿtiqādāt employed Greek philosophy as a tool of his apologetics employed against the Karaim who rejected the Oral Torah as did the Shomronim and Pauline Church – all of which placed in the category of מלשינים. He clearly prioritized פרדס inductive logic over foreign deductive logic. The Rambam just the opposite, his code worthless to understand how the Gemara employs vastly different halachic precedent rulings as the chief tool to re-interpret the k’vanna of the language of the Mishna based upon a halachic fixed “witness” perspective; akin to the 3 views of a blue print.
Saadia, without Sanhedrin courts leaned upon Greek logic to support Jewish g’lut beliefs in “tradition”. Tradition which stands upon the kabbalah foundations of פרדס & the rabbinic middot “traditions” taught by Hillel, Akiva, Yishmael and HaGallilee. Sadducees rejected the Oral Law and the Resurrection of the Dead (concepts heavily tied to the emerging Rabbinic/Messianic theology). The dominant medieval Karaite position seems to have been closer to belief in a future resurrection, clearly influenced by Xtian and Muslim theologies. A study of Karaite theology notes that Karaites could affirm roughly twelve and a half of Maimonides’ thirteen principles, with the major exception being the authority of the Oral Law; akin to Rav Shach description of Chabad as “the closest religion to Judaism”.
The Xtian Bible affirms Daniel as a prophet. The Hebrew T’NaCH and Talmud mesechta Megillah openly states Daniel, not a prophet. Confusing a mystic with a prophet compares to prioritizing Greek deductive logic over Hebrew inductive logic – as did the Rambam. The concept of Moshiach applicable to all Jews in all generations who live in the oath brit land; based upon Moshe & Yehoshua prioritization of establishment of the Small Sanhedrin Capital Crimes Courts in the 6 Cities of Refuge and Brit melah which remembers the Avot alone (Yom Kippur t’shuva) as the fathers of the Cohen national Republic of 12 Tribes. Herein defines the mitzva of Moshiach from the Torah and also the resurrection of the dead. The latter linked directly to the first Torah commandment “be fruitful and multiply” as it applies to childless Avram who cut the brit between the pieces on this specific “future” condition being met by his O’lam Ha’Bah Cohen seed.
While the Hellenized Jews of the Second Temple period (like Josephus or Philo) used Greek philosophy to explain Judaism to the Gentiles (who specifically downplay the particularism of Torah common law courts as the only Constitutionally mandated basis of government rule of law), Saadia employed Greek philosophy to wall off Judaism from the Karaites. He obviously rejected the Tzeddukim attempt to make Jerusalem a Greek polis; the Babylonian Talmud served as the model for the future Jewish rule of Canaan through righteous judicial justice; as such only the T’NaCH/Talmud\Siddur sealed masoret exists as the valid interpretation of the Sinai constitution.
G’lut a Torah 2nd commandment curse. G’lut Jews by definition could not obey the Torah לשמה anymore than g’lut Israelites enslaved under Par’o and his corrupt vertical “Star Courts”! G’lut Jewry limited to Shi’ur Koma (the legal arguments) and the Psak (rulings). The Karaites, living in the same Islamic world, were adopting the “text-only” fundamentalism which defines both Classic Xtianity and Islam which Israelis like myself refer to as טיפש פשט.
The Rambam too rejected the Aristotelian doctrine of an eternal universe and defended creation in time. His טיפש פשט failed to grasp that the בראשית creation story/משל introduces the major Torah theme נמשל of wisdom-time oriented commandments! His code, interpreted through his bi-polar book of commandments fails to grasp the Av basis of Common law courts as wisdom-time oriented commandments based upon the foundational precedent of the Creation story which introduces the “thesis statement” of Torah Constitutional common law.
The error of reading the Torah as a history book as absurd as a Hercules man\God wherein Zeus rapes a married woman! Or the gospel narishkeit which declares that JeZeus fulfilled the words of the prophets! Mussar defines Torah prophesy just as the Jewish people has yet to establish a Torah Constitutional Republic of 12 Tribes – Yovel learns from remembering the oath sworn to the Avot “melah” and Pesach as remembered/t’shuva in the דאורייתא תפילה ק”ש. The 7th Middle Blessing of the Shemon Esrei remembers the redemption from slavery as רב חדס discernment – expressed in Talmudic Aramaic as מאי נפקא מינא?
Classic Diaspora (Galut) scholarship – inherently defensive or “assimilated,” whereas post-Shoah Israeli scholarship offers a different paradigm; a recognized historiographical debate, often associated with the “Canaanite” movement or the critique of the “Diaspora Negation” (Shlilat HaGalut) in early Zionism. Galut religious Judaism, the goal of statute halacha rotated around the central axis of preservation and boundary maintenance. The religious statute law became simplified & stable to assist g’lut Jewry to survive hostile assimilations; akin to a hostile corporate take-over of competition – environment. This created a “defensive” religious belief systems, which attempted to clearly define what Jewish theologians promoted as kosher belief in a Monotheistic God.
Post-1948 Israeli scholarship (e.g., the work of scholars like Yehezkel Kaufmann or later Menachem Elon, often prioritized the restoration of Jewish Constitutional common law as a national-constitutional system.), rather than religious ritual slavery obedience. The focus shifts from “how do we survive?” to “how do we govern?” The Herzl Jewish State nationalist model more resembles the NaCH mussar common law/\Talmudic-Midrashim common law which employs Gemara halachot as בניני אבות to interpret the language of the Mishna based upon a fixed perspective akin to how witnesses to the New Moon views-points differ from one another.
The style between the two sets of realities – radically changes. T’NaCH/Aggada-Talmudic halacha common law Court rulings, case-based: argumentative which weighs the precedents brought by the prosecutor with the counter precedents brought by the defense. This decentralized (((Vaguely like English Common Law but more like the post Star Courts American introduction of the lateral jury system. No English court has the authority to challenge a law passed by Parliament because Parliamentary statute laws define the British Constitution.))). The ghetto Shulchan Aruch halachic code permanently manifested the Rambam’s statutory and centralized (akin to Roman/Napoleonic Code). Israeli thought resembles to the original Reform post ghetto condemnation of Judaism as archaic laws. Ruling the land with righteous judicial legislative review, absolutely as a must, requires a revival the פרדס prophetic mussar vision – dialectical energy expressed through both the sealed T’NaCH & Talmud, to address modern statecraft. Whereas Galut Orthodoxy erroneously prioritizes the certainty of these religious statute-law Codes, akin to how the Wilderness Generation of Moshe cowardly refused to invade Canaan due to their faithless fear of giants in the land!
The trajectories of German philosophers goes from the realities of an Agricultural based economic system to an Industrial based economic system. Marx’s urban proletariat theory clearly contrasted by Bakunin’s Anarchist Mir peasant agricultural visions of socialism. Just as Mao’s theories of socialism likewise focused upon peasant realities which defined Chinese culture in the 20th Century. Nietzsche/Schopenhauer influenced the aesthetic and elitist aspects of Fascism (the Will to Power, the Übermensch). Bakunin, his social anarchism, inherently anti-statist and anti-nationalist. The evolution of the SRs to a federalist multiple state, later USSR Republic reality – structurally opposite to the Totalitarian State of Nazism. Herein an attempt to understand the reasons for Hitlers’ absolute hatred of ‘inferior race’ Slavic communism. The failure of liberal/bourgeois rationalism (Kant) led to both the irrationalism of Fascism and the agrarian populism of the SRs, despite the fact that these two branches of philosophy diverged violently.
Post Shoah Israelis view the Yad Chazaka as a revolutionary coping mechanism. It abandoned the vision of future O’lam Habah “Sanhedrin courts”, which stand upon the foundation of Yovel liberty for all 12 Tribes restored; its “replacement theology” created a religious “Civil Code” for g’lut Jewry. This “modern” Enlightenment-adjacent – made religious statute law far more accessible to the common man; it sacrificed akin to JeZeus on the cross, the פרדס middot of Sanhedrin common law as a vision applicable — when Jews slaughter the Romans and restore the Torah Constitutional Republic\Moshiach.
The 19th Century Reform leadership of Geiger or Holdheim viewed these static codes as utterly archaic dead remnants of ghetto g’lut. They openly called Berlin as their “New Jerusalem”! G’lut Reform Judaism, like Karaite rejects Oral Torah common law.
Conflict Resolution 