Sherira Gaon

Rab Scherira Gaon ( Hebrew : רב שרירא גאון) * around 906 ; † probably 1006 ; was a rabbi and at the same time a prominent Jewish philosopher and exegete. He was the head of the 10th century Babylonian Academy in Pumbedita . His main work is Iggeret Rav Scherira Gaon ("Letter of the Scherira Gaon", abbreviated ISG), a comprehensive story about the origin of the Talmud . He was one of the most famous geonim of his time, and he was the father of Chai ben Scherira Gaon (d. 1038), the last of the great Babylonian scholars. For example, Chai ben Scherira Gaon mentions that Jewish students from Constantinople were staying in Babylon. The reason for this was that a renaissance of the Hebrew language was taking place in Byzantium as a sign of the reception of rabbinic Judaism .

Iggeret

The Iggeret is a treatise-length letter written by Scherira Gaon in 987, which answered a question from a community in Kairouan, what is now Tunis in Tunisia. In this answer the history and the authentic communication of the Mishnah and the Talmud were outlined with biographical and genealogical information on the individual scholars. In contrast to Saadia Gaon , who founded the unadulterated transmission of the Torah or the Mishnah with logic, Scherira Gaon genealogically documented the unadulterated and unbroken chain of teaching and tradition . This had become necessary because the Karaites in Tunisia rejected the Mishnah.

One of the well-known quotes from Scherira was: “Why have you forgotten us? [...] Should they suffer from hunger and die from hunger? ". This makes it clear that the reply letters were also a source of finance from which the Geonim also lived. Due to the “atomization” and decentralization of the Jewish communities by the diaspora, the Geonim were important because they were a kind of consulate where one could clarify one's internal Jewish legal questions.

The letter has come down to us in two versions. The "French edition" was in Aramaic and is considered to be the more original version. The “Spanish edition” contains more Hebrew parts and is thought to be a paraphrase. The two editions argued over the question of the editing of the Mishnah on the part of Yehuda ha-Nasi .

The meaning of the text lies in the fact that it is one of the few sources on the early history of the emergence of rabbinic Judaism, along with Seder Tannaim we-Amoraim and the material scattered in the Talmudim.

literature

• BM Lewin (ed.): Iggeret Rav Scherira Ga'on. Frankfurt 1920, reprint Jerusalem 1972
• M. Beer: The Sources of Rav Sherira Gaon's Igeret. Bar-Ilan 4-5 (1967), pp. 181-196
• M. Schlueter: How was the Mishna written? In: TSMJ 9, Tübingen 1993
• Günter Stemberger : Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash. 8th edition Munich 1992, p. 16

Web links

• Iggeret Rav Scherira Gaon (PDF file; 2.81 MB), Daat Encyclopedia (Heb.)