Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Saadia's "Book of Beliefs and Opinions" in English

The Book of Beliefs and Opinions by Saadia Gaon; Samuel Rosenblatt
Review by: Israel Efros
The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Apr., 1950), pp. 413-415
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1453124 .
Accessed: 21/11/2014 10:48
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of Pennsylvania Press and Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Jewish Quarterly Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 212.215.183.124 on Fri, 21 Nov 2014 10:48:25 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SAADIA'S BOOK OF BELIEFS AND OPINIONS

IN ENGLISH*
SAADIA'SKitab al-'Amanat wal-I'tikadat, in its Hebrew version,
under the name of Emunot we-deot,by Yehudah ibn Tibbon, is, in all
its editions, so replete with misprints as to distort or blur the sense of
many a passage. This is because, as the late B. Klar pointed out, the
editio princeps of Constantinople,itself careless, was the basis of all the
later six editions, and the original crop of errorsgrew with each printing.
See Tarbiz, XII, 51. A critical edition of this important version by
"the father of the translators," important also philologically, was
preparedby Dr. Henry Malter, but it still awaits the light of day.
Some fragmentary renderings have been made into Latin, and more
extensive translations into German, but they are all incomplete and
mostly unsatisfactory. See Malter, Life and Worksof Saadia, pp. 373376. Recently an abridged rendering into English by Alexander Altmann appeared in Oxford, 1946.
It is therefore gratifying to have now a complete English translation
by Dr. Samuel Rosenblatt. It is a faithful and elegant rendering. One
feels grateful to Dr. Rosenblatt for a skillful achievement of a laborious
task, and also to the editors of the Yale Judaica Series in which this
is the first volume.
It begins with a prefatory word by one of the editors, signed J. O.,
and with a preface by the translator, followed by a valuable analytical
table of contents. Then comes the version, divided into ten treatises and
subdivided, as in the Josefow edition of Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew version,
into chapters, to which is added as an appendix a translation of the
variant text of the seventh treatise, "Concerning the Resurrection of
the Dead." It is this variant, published by Bacher, which was the
basis of the seventh treatise in Ibn Tibbon's translation. The book
concludeswith an index of subjects and names and an index of passages
cited, and finally with a short glossary.
* Saadia Gaon, TheBook of Beliefs and Opinions, translated from the
Arabic and the Hebrew by Samuel Rosenblatt. New Haven, Yale
University Press, 1948, pp. XXXII +496.
413

This content downloaded from 212.215.183.124 on Fri, 21 Nov 2014 10:48:25 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

414

THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

I have examined particularly the third treatise in this version and

wish to record the following notes as a contribution to the second
edition.
1. "I say, then, that logic demands that whoever does something
good must be compensated,etc." (p. 139) The term logic would suggest
that of the three sources of knowledge,discussed by Saadia in the introduction, i. e. sensation, intuition, and logical inference, it is the third
that gives us this idea that kindness deserves reward. However, in
an essay entitled "Saadia's Theory of Knowledge" (JQR. XXXIII,
140-141), I tried to show that these basic principlesof law which Saadia
1
U}laI c
here discusses under the general name of c:L,Jl
were meant by Saadia as knowledgeof the second class or as immediate
cognition. The word JiaJl here and in the entire passage should not
be translated by "logic" or "reason" but by "intuition," or, more
broadly, "mind."
2. "In the second class are to be included such injunctions as the
one ... to describe Him with mundane attributes" (p. 140). This
second class is the prohibition of contempt or insult. But what is
meant here by "mundane"? The Arabic is <_,JJ1, i. e. vile, contemptible, which Ibn Tibbon translates rightly by onin but which
"worldly" (at the end of this
R. probably confused with d, ,,
The latter Arabic term occurs also on
treatise: :i UJW ,; 1).
pp. 171 and 177, where see note b, and comp. Al-Chazari (Hirschfeld),
pp. 144, 168 fwr'm which must have been a not uncommon form
of Hebrew transliteration.
3. In the beginning of chapter two, Saadia discusses the reasons for
the principal prohibitions: murder, adultery, theft, falsehood, introducing each reason with the expression L
J. This expression
R. translates by "divine wisdom" (141), whereas the point is that it is
rational or humanly reasonable to prohibit those vices which fall into
the category of nlr$z nimvs. When Saadia introduces the discussion
i I 'AJ
of the fourth vice by saying
(Tibbon:
1I
-I
1nn,min
nznrn psi), R. translates: "[divine] Wisdom has made it one
7
of the first injunctions that we speak the truth" (142), thus missing
the point entirely. What Saadia means is not that it is one of the first
divine injunctions- where is it among the first in the Bible?- but
that it is one of the human "first ideas," a pvw'iWzvv,an axiom, thus
belonging to the second source of knowledge. See my above-mentioned
study, note 16.

This content downloaded from 212.215.183.124 on Fri, 21 Nov 2014 10:48:25 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

415

SAADIAS BOOK

4. Although the translator seems disinclined to present explanatory

notes, there are places where an explanation would be most welcome.
Thus on p. 157, we have the expression "in the light of these [three]
principles." To which principles does Saadia here refer? There is
disagreement among scholars on this question. See S. H. Margulies,
Magazin fur die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, XV, 168. But R. offers

neither reference nor comment.

5. "Similar objections apply also to all previously mentioned arguments" (163). One cannot see how they would apply. The meaning
of this passagecan only be that he who advances this seventh argument
would also have to face the objection raised against some previous arguments,

namely, that the idea of the abrogation of law involves an inner contradiction.
6. Regardingthe belief that God compensatessacrificiallyslaughtered
animals for the excess of their pain over that of natural death, Saadia,
according to R., adds. "But this, we say, applies only if it could be
proved by means of reason, not by prophecy, that there exists such an
excess of pain" (175). What is wrong with proving it by prophecy?
The idea is not that the excess, but that the belief in compensationfor
animals,can be based only on reason,becauseprophecycontains nothing
to that effect. The proper translation should therefore be: We believe
this - if the excess is proven - because of reason and not because of
V )kic I.:,t. j
o
are parenthetical.
prophecy. The words y Y
See Jakob Guttmann,

Die Religionsphilosophie

des Saadia, p. 290.

7. "Preference being thereby shown to the priests" (178). The

.j
Arabic is
5r . R. adds the words "to the priests,"
though without brackets, as an explanation,which is hardly satisfactory.
See Guttmann, ibid., p. 296, n. 1.
ISRAEL EFROS

Dropsie College

This content downloaded from 212.215.183.124 on Fri, 21 Nov 2014 10:48:25 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions