Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Overview -- Methods and Themes in Saadia’s Exegesis of Esther -- Publication History -- Written Witnesses Employed for the Present Edition -- Editorial Method -- Some Methodological Remarks on the Annotated English Translation -- Signs, Sigla, and Abbreviations -- The Title and the Introduction -- The First Section (al-Qiṣṣat al-ūlā) -- The Second Section (al-Qiṣṣa al-thāniyya) -- The Third Section (al-Qiṣṣa al-thālitha) -- The Fourth Section (al-Qiṣṣa al-rābiʿa) -- The Fifth Section (al-Qiṣṣa al-khāmisa) -- The Sixth Section (al-Qiṣṣa al-sādisa) -- The Seventh Section (al-Qiṣṣa al-sābiʿa) -- Secondary Judaeo-Arabic Witnesses to Saadia’s Commentary on Esther: Edited Texts of the Reworkings and Précis -- Bibliographical Abbreviations -- Indexes -- Plates -- Editorial Introduction (Abridged) -- The Judaeo-Arabic Text of Kitāb al-īnās bi-ʾl-jalwa.

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This volume presents a critical edition of the Judaeo-Arabic translation and commentary on the book of Esther by Saadia Gaon (882–942). This edition, accompanied by an introduction and extensively annotated English translation, affords access to the first-known personalized, rationalistic Jewish commentary on this biblical book. Saadia innovatively organizes the biblical narrative—and his commentary thereon—according to seven “guidelines” that provide a practical blueprint by which Israel can live as an abased people under Gentile dominion. Saadia’s prodigious acumen and sense of communal solicitude find vivid expression throughout his commentary in his carefully-defined structural and linguistic analyses, his elucidative references to a broad range of contemporary socio-religious and vocational realia, his anti-Karaite polemics, and his attention to various issues, both psychological and practical, attending Jewish-Gentile conviviality in a 10th-century Islamicate milieu.

Text in the original Judaeo-Arabic and English translation; introductory material and annotations in English.