GAONS. A certain Order of Jewish Doctors is called by this name, who appeared in the East after the closing of the Talmud. The word Gaons signifies excellent, sublime, as in our Divinity-Schools we have irrefragable, sublime, resolute, angelick, and subtle Doctors. The Gaons succeeded the Seburæans, or Opiners, about Basnage hist. des Juifs, t. 6. l. 9. c. 5. art. 3.the beginning of the sixth Century. Chanan Meischtia was the head and first of Excellents; he restored the Academy of Pandbita, which had been shut up for the space of thirty years.
Among the Excellents is likewise reckoned one Judas the Blind, who taught about the year 763. To him we are obliged for certain lectures which are very much esteemed by his nation. The Jews, to avoid reproaching him with the defect of his eyes, surnamed him, abounding with Lights.
Scherira, one of the Gaons, appeared with much lustre at the close of the tenth century. He divested himself of his office in order to make a cession of it to his son Hai, who was the last of the Excellents. Hai lived in the beginning of the eleventh century, and was esteemed as the most Excellent of the Excellents. He taught till his death, which happened in 1037, and with him ended the Order of the Gaons, which had subsisted 280 or 350, or even 448 years: for as people are not agreed about the time when these Doctors began; so likewise is the continuance of their reign disputed.