CLASSICAL RABBINIC JUDAISM is grounded in a comprehensive system of halakhah that determines behavioural norms in every aspect of life and sets community boundaries accordingly (as opposed to Christianity, with its emphasis on correct belief). Differences of opinion abound on virtually every philosophical subject, and it would be difficult to speak of a well-formed rabbinic theology with respect to even the most basic issues. The literature of the Sages does not expound dogma or attempt to deal in a systematic way with broader questions of belief and outlook. On rare occasions, a particular opinion is denounced, but holding such an opinion carries no penalty in this world; at worst, the believer's place ‘in the world to come’ is said to be forfeited. Afewbasic principles of faith, such as the belief in a God who revealed himself to the children of Israel and charged them to keep the Torah's commandments, were presumably shared by all the tana'im and amora'im (and their contemporaries), but they were little inclined on the whole to theological and philosophical speculation.

The Background to Sa'adyahGaon's Philosophy

The impetus to orderly theological speculation came from without at a time when both Christians and Muslims were making a concerted effort to systematize their religious principles and buttress them with rationally based argumentation.1This activity derived in part from the proliferation of cults within Christianity and Islam, from the controversies that raged among adherents about the tenets of their faith, and from exposure to each other's religions; but an even more important factor in this development was the encounter with the ancient Greek philosophical tradition. While Christians writing in Greek and Syriac had grappled with Greek philosophy long before the rise of Islam, Muslims were exposed to it for the first time during the eighth and ninth centuries, when many Greek works were translated into Arabic (often by way of an intermediary translation into Syriac).Much of the Greek influence on Arabic-speaking culture in the early centuries of Islam came less from those thinkers who identified them selves as philosophers, or falasifa—followers of the school of Aristotle, and to a lesser extent of Plato—than from the mutakallimun (literally, speakers)—members of the broad movement known as kalam, meaning speech or discourse.