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Making the Hebrew Bible Legible to Arabic Speaking Jewish Communities

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Making the Hebrew Bible Legible to Arabic Speaking Jewish Communities

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Alongside his philosophical and administrative work as Gaon of Sura, Saadia Gaon produced the Tafsir, an influential Arabic translation and commentary on the Hebrew Bible aimed at making the text directly accessible to Jewish communities whose everyday language, under Islamic rule, was Arabic rather than Hebrew. The project treated the Bible's language, not only its doctrine, as something requiring active translation for the community he served.

He paired that translation work with a Hebrew grammar and dictionary, part of a larger body of liturgical and legal writing, addressing Hebrew itself as a subject of scholarly study at a time when Arabic had become the working language of the Jewish communities he wrote for. Producing both an Arabic rendering of the Bible and a grammar of the Hebrew original are documented as two sides of the same linguistic project rather than unrelated undertakings.

That the same scholar who defended rabbinic Judaism philosophically in Judeo-Arabic also translated the Hebrew Bible into Arabic and wrote a Hebrew grammar to preserve direct scholarly access to the original marks Saadia Gaon's linguistic output as a documented effort to hold Arabic accessibility and Hebrew scholarship together rather than letting one displace the other.

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Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Sources
Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Macmillan Reference USA, 2007View the Source
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