IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS I explored Sa'adyah's activities in diverse fields which lay beyond the traditional purview of the geonim and the leading rabbinic sages of his day, where he showed a remarkable innovativeness in the very decision to pursue these subjects in a systematic way. Yet he also found ample room to leave his mark within the traditional domains of the Talmud and halakhah. My survey of Sa'adyah's writings and contributions to this field will be presented in two parts: first I examine the variety of genres and structures that he employed, and then their talmudic and halakhic contents. As we have seen, Sa'adyah frequently incorporated halakhic and aggadic elements drawn from the Talmud and midrash in different genres, particularly in his piyutim and biblical commentaries. The present chapter will examine those works that deal primarily with the Talmud and halakhah.

The Variety of Literary Genres

As far as we know, the only literary activity in which the Babylonian geonim before Sa'adyah's time engaged was the writing of responsa. In this particular field, the material that has come down to us from Sa'adyah himself is limited to about thirty or forty responsa—in contrast to more than 500 by the prominent midninth- century gaon, Natronaiben Hilai, and over 1,000 by Hai ben SheriraGaon in the early eleventh century. This disparity is most probably due to the waning of the Sura academy in the period before Sa'adyah's appointment and its weakening ties with the Jews of the diaspora. Another factor was the prolonged feud between Sa'adyah and the exilarch David ben Zakai that interfered with Sa'adyah's administration of the academy formuch of his term.

No exceptional features distinguish the responsa of Sa'adyahGaon from those of his predecessors, although in certain respects, such as his frequent references to biblical passages, they are somewhat innovative. This should not come as a surprise, since the centuries-old responsum tradition, unlike most of the genres that Sa'adyah engaged in, had its own set of literary conventions, and as a newly appointed gaon responsible for answering queries he had little leeway with regard to their structure. We should also bear in mind that the responsa were composed in the name of the senior scholars of the academy and with their consent, and this no doubt also contributed to the conservative style of the genre.