Saadia Gaon and his Mutazilite Approach in Interpretation andTheology

Certain method of demonstrating theological and exegetical claims isone of the heritages of Mutazilite Muslim theologians. One of the maincharacteristics of this method is that there is a considerable attention toreason as the permission to use rhetorician figures like metaphor andallegoric exegesis in describing theological doctrines as well as ininterpreting of the Quran. Assuming that using this method was notconfined to Muslim Mutazilite theologians and, before and after them,some of the Jewish Christian theologians have used this method, thepaper focusing on the divine attributes and relying on some instances ofthe interpretations of the Bible, will try to show that Saadia Gaon, aJewish theologian (d. 942), had a method similar to that of MuslimMutazilte theologians and, therefore, it might be called him "MutaziliteJew". Using a method like Mutazilite theologians, he interpretedintricate concepts in the Old Testament by concentrating on rhetoricalaspects of the text, and defended Jewish theology against the objectionsfrom his theological opponents, that is Christians.