The 6th and the beginning of the 7th century were sad times for the Jews, both of ;Palestine and of Babylonia. Their coreligion ists, living outside of these two countries, scat tered all over the northern coast of Africa, over Italy, France and Spain, and already over Germany, were numerically so insignificant that their spiritual life left no traces behind. The conquest of the Orient by the Moham medans brought new impulses to the Jews. First of all the schools of Babylon were re vived, and devoted themselves to talmudical literature, to the composition of a liturgy, and by and by, also, to a more systematic study of theology, resulting in works on Biblical exegesis, on Hebrewgrammar, on philosophy, ,and, finahly,,on theosophy. The spiritual leaders of this age were the men who presided over the schools of Babylon, and were called Gaon, and therefore this period, extending from 630 to is called the period of the Geonim.
Their most important object was to codify the law, and to make their decisions in indi vidual cases as accessible as possible. So a number of codes were composed, either ar ranged according to subject matter, like the Halachoth Gedoloth of Simeon Kahira (700), or arranged according to the lessons from the Pentateuch, like the Sheekot of Abai. Further more, the, authority of the famous scholars of Babylon was appealed to in difficult cases that came up for decision, in doctrinal questions, or very often for the interpretation of important talmudic passages. A copy of the replies was preserved, and as years passed by compilations of these replies were made, and served, as in our day, the decisions of the Supreme Courts. These decisions were written partly in the Jewish-Aramaic dialect of those days and partly in Arabic, which, since the rise of Islam, had superseded the former dialect spoken by the Jews. Another literary activity was that which was devoted to liturgical needs. The synagogue was strictly congregational, but the desire for unity on the one hand, and the im possibility of having properly qualified con gregational leaders in every small congregation on the . other, created a need for a uniform liturgy. Amram (800), the Gaon of Suva, was appealed to, and compiled such an order of services. This official liturgy, however, was soon supplemented by what might be called hymns, and is technically called by a word taken from the Greek, Viyut? The authors of Piyuts are called They amplified the service by dwelling on certain favorite themes, such as the sacrifice of Isaac, or by, a poetical paraphrase of the official liturgy.
Their activity lasted from 800 to 1200, although occasional attempts at this kind of poetry ex tend down to our times. Their most prominent representative is Eleazar Hakalir. They em ployed both rhyme and acrostic, but owing to i far-fetched allusions their style is obscure and the poetical value of their productions meagre.
In 760 a serious schism took place. Politi cal conditions, combined with sectional strife and the growing propensity for the hair-split ting methods of rabbinical legislation, created a sect which rejected every authority but the Bible. The leader of this movement was
Anan ben David, and his followers called them selves Bene Mikra ("Sons of the Scripture"), or Karaites. (See article THE KARAITES in this section). This movement produced quite an extensive polemical literature, and led to a deepening of exegetical studies as also to various attempts at presenting the theological conceptions of Judaism in a clear and concise form, while the doctrinal part of theology had formerly been altogether neglected out of preference for the law. The most important defender of the Karaitic doctrine is Salmon ben Jeroham, and on the side of the Rabbanites, as they were then. called, Saadia, the Gaon of Sura (892-942). The latter translated the Bible into Arabic, wrote Arabic commentaries on Biblical books, and besides• his activity in other directions, is noteworthy as a pioneer in what is called the Philosophy of Religion, but ought more properly .to be termed apologetics. He wrote a book in Arabic on Judaism, and Philosophy) From this time on, a decline in the spiritual life of the Babylonian Jews is noticeable. At the end of the 10th, and in the beginning of the 11th only the names of Sherira, and his son, Haii, are prominent as rabbinical authors. Both occupied the position of Gaon of Pumbeditha, in Babylonia. The former, especially, is noteworthy for his coin pilation of the history of rabbinical law, which was undertaken for apologetic purposes, in order to prove that the rabbinical law had come down in uninterrupted tradition from the days of Moses. With this decline in Babylonia, new centres of spiritual life appeared in other countries. In Morocco, Isaac Israeli (850-950) appears, whose treatises, written in Arabic, are considered important contributions to the medical literature of his day. He also wrote Biblical commentaries, and he was the first•to present the idea that some of the pas sages of the Pentateuch were written after Moses' time. In the 10th century, we meet the first Jewish author known by name in Europe. He is Sabattai Donolo, who wrote on astronomy and on Cabala. Cabala, literally tradition, is the Jewish theosophy, which, while obscure in its origin, seems to go back to Neo-Platonic philosophy, and received its first systematic presentation in the Sefer Yezirah of Creation'), written most likely about 850. (See article THE CABALA in this section). Before Donolo, however, there were some Jewish authors in Italy, whom we do not know by name. One of them wrote the Josippon, a Hebrew abstract of the works of Josephus. Another wrote a homiletical compilation, called the Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer, and ascribed to Eliezer ben Hyrkanos, who flourished about 100 in Palestine, but really written by a Roman Jew, about 840.