FROM HIS EARLIEST YOUTH, Sa'adyah Gaon was drawn to the study of Hebrew. Hebrew linguistics did not develop as an independent field but as an ancillary discipline to biblical exegesis, on the one hand, and to poetry on the other. Biblical exegetes sought to plumb the linguistic depths of a particular sacred corpus, and their relationship to the Holy Tongue remained essentially passive, whereas the writing of poetry required an active knowledge of the appropriate language (which was not quite the same as biblical Hebrew). Both areas of study and creative effort played an important role in the Palestine-centred Jewish culture of Sa'adyah's upbringing, and before Sa'adyah's time Masoretes and liturgical poets alike had devoted considerable energies to linguistic study, each in their own way. But Sa'adyahwas the first to respond to these needs within Jewish culture and to the development of Arabic linguistics in the surrounding Muslim culture by studying the Hebrew language in a comprehensive and systematic way.

First Breakthrough: The Egron

While still in Egypt, at the precocious age of 20 Sa'adyah published the first edition of the Egron, which may have been his earliest work.1 In his preface to the book, written in a lofty style and pseudo-biblical language, he presents a historical survey of the Hebrew language and a statement of his reasons for composing such a work, referring to himself as ‘the collector’ or ‘compiler’. Hebrew, he explains, is the Holy Tongue, the language of God and the angels, and man's primordial speech from Creation, until the sin of the Tower of Babel led to the dispersal of the various nations and languages, as recounted in Genesis II. Thereafter the Hebrew language became the unique heritage of the sons of Ever, apparently identified with the original ‘Hebrews’, in consequence of their faithfulness to God. The nation of Israel evolved out of this group and retained its language in the course of many wanderings ‘throughout the earth’ until at last they returned to the Land of Israel. But after the destruction of the First Temple, when most of the Jews were exiled from their land, the status of the Hebrew language declined.