Saadia Gaon

Saadia

They cannot truly contradict, because both come from the same Source. God gave us the Torah as revelation and reason as a faculty of the mind He created. If they appear to conflict, the fault lies in our understanding, not in the sources themselves. In my Emunoth ve-Deoth, I showed that the fundamental truths of Torah, the creation of the world, the unity of God, the obligation to justice, can all be demonstrated through rational argument. Reason confirms what revelation teaches, and revelation guides reason where unaided thought might wander. The person who fears that reason will undermine faith has little confidence in either.

Saadia

The Torah and Talmud are sufficient for those who study them deeply and live within a community of scholars. But in my time, Jews lived throughout the Abbasid caliphate, surrounded by Muslim theologians using sophisticated philosophical arguments, and challenged by the Karaites who rejected the oral tradition entirely. Our people needed their beliefs organized into a coherent system that could withstand intellectual scrutiny. A faith that cannot explain itself to a questioning mind is a faith that will lose its young people. I wrote the Emunoth ve-Deoth not to replace Torah study but to give our community the rational foundations upon which their trust in tradition could stand firm against every challenge.

Saadia

The Karaites claimed that only the written Torah was binding and that each individual could interpret it independently. I showed that this position is self-defeating. The written Torah contains commandments that cannot be performed without the explanatory tradition. When Torah says to bind signs upon your hand, what signs? What binding? Without the oral tradition that specifies tefillin, the commandment is unintelligible. Furthermore, a community where each person interprets scripture independently will fracture into as many sects as there are readers. The oral tradition is not an addition to Torah but its necessary companion, transmitted from Sinai alongside the written text. I defended this with both logical argument and careful textual analysis, for a polemic that relies on passion alone persuades no one worth persuading.