Rav Saadia Gaon · Baghdad, 933
The first systematic work of Jewish philosophy. Rav Saadia wrote it in Judeo-Arabic for readers unsettled by the competing schools of his day, and set out to show that what the Torah teaches and what careful reasoning concludes are the same thing.
Our edition sets the classic Hebrew translation of R. Yehuda ibn Tibbon (1186) beside a new English translation, with short notes where the argument needs unpacking.
Rav Saadia builds from how we know anything at all to how a person should live.
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