says that the Maghariya sect used in support of their doctrine the “prolegomena of an Alexandrian sage” who gave certain remarkable interpretations of the Bible; and in one of Dr. Schechter’s Genizah fragments, which is probably to be ascribed to Kirkisani, there are contained examples of the Alexandrian’s explanations of the Decalogue, which occur, and occur only, in Philo’s treatise on the “Ten Commandments.”

This connection between Philo and an obscure Jewish sect, or an obscurer Persian-Jewish writer, may appear far-fetched and not worth the making.  In itself doubtless it is unimportant, but it serves to keep Philo, however barely, within Jewish tradition.  For it shows that Alexandrian literature, though probably through the medium of a Mohammedan source, was known to some Jews in the centuries of transition.  It may be that further examination of the great Genizah collection, which has opened to Jewish scholarship a new world, will reveal further and stronger ties to unite Philo with his philosophical successors, of whom the first is Saadia Gaon (892-942 C.E.).  Indeed the main interest of this newly-discovered connection, if it can be seriously so regarded, is that it suggests the possibility of Saadia’s acquaintance with Philo by means of a translation.  That Saadia read the works upon which Christian theologians relied, is certain; and a fragment in which he refers to the teaching of Judah the Alexandrian[331]—­also unearthed from the Cairo Genizah—­goes some way to support the suggestion.  The passage refers to the connection of the number “fifty” with the different seasons of the year, and though it does not tally exactly with any piece of the extant Philo, it is in the Philonic manner.  And Philo, who was surnamed Judaeus by the Church, would have been re-named by his own people, translating from the Church writers, [Hebrew:  yhuda].  One would the more willingly catch on to this floating straw, because Saadia was at once a compatriot of Philo, born in the Fayyum of Egypt, and the first Jew who strove to carry on his work.  He aimed at showing the philosophy of the Torah, and its harmony with Greek wisdom in particular.  Aristotle, who had been translated into Arabic, had meantime supplanted Plato as the master of philosophy for theologians, and Saadia’s magnum opus, [Hebrew:  amonot tsd’ot], is colored throughout by Aristotelian ideas.  But the difference of masters does not obscure the likeness of aim, and, albeit unconsciously, Saadia renews the task of the Hellenic-Jewish school.

Saadia’s work was carried on and expanded in a great outburst of the Jewish genius, which showed itself most brilliantly in the Moorish-Spanish kingdom.  The general cultural conditions of Alexandria in the first century B.C.E. were reproduced in Spain in the tenth century.  Once again the Jews found themselves politically emancipated amid a sympathetic environment, and again they illumined their religious tradition with all the culture which their environment could afford.  The mingling of thought gave birth to a great literature, both creative and critical; to a striking body of lyric poetry; to a systematic theology, and a religious philosophy.