Michael G. Wechsler - Böcker

This volume comprises an edition and translation of one of the earliest specimens of Jewish programmatic commentary on the book of Esther. The commentary’s author, Salmon b. Yerōḥām, is a central early figure in the “Golden Age” of Karaism (late-9th–11th cent.), a Jewish scripturalist and penitential movement centered at that time in Jerusalem. Among the various facets of Salmon’s commentary that we explore in our introduction are his translation technique, exegetical method, homiletical emphases, and polemical concerns. We also explore his use of sources, both explicit and tacit (in the latter case to a surprisingly broad degree as regards rabbinic sources and Saadia), as well as the reception of Salmon’s commentary in subsequent Jewish exegetical tradition.

This volume presents a critical edition of the Judaeo-Arabic translation and commentary on the book of Esther by Saadia Gaon (882–942). This edition, accompanied by an introduction and extensively annotated English translation, affords access to the first-known personalized, rationalistic Jewish commentary on this biblical book. Saadia innovatively organizes the biblical narrative—and his commentary thereon—according to seven “guidelines” that provide a practical blueprint by which Israel can live as an abased people under Gentile dominion. Saadia’s prodigious acumen and sense of communal solicitude find vivid expression throughout his commentary in his carefully-defined structural and linguistic analyses, his elucidative references to a broad range of contemporary socio-religious and vocational realia, his anti-Karaite polemics, and his attention to various issues, both psychological and practical, attending Jewish-Gentile conviviality in a 10th-century Islamicate milieu.