A Heretic of the Dilāṣian Foreigners

[Hebrew:] O my God, will You not judge what you see? Punish them with the staffs prepared for the backs of scoffers, smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered (Zechariah 13:7), for in his mouth is a rod of pride (Proverbs 14:3), and he in his heart he lays wait for him (Jeremiah 9:7). Filthy all day with transgressions, soiled all night with abominations, his sleep drenched with semen, prevaricating all day long with delusional thoughts, he [Se‘adya] derides Your Torah, scorns Your commandments, and reviles Your people like the most wicked in the world. Destroy him, and let Your servants rejoice on his day of calamity—do not wait long to take him!

[Judeo-Arabic:] Then he [Se‘adya] told how they attacked him and how the matter concluded for them, [until] he hid himself. Thereupon he [Khalaf] said:

[Hebrew:] The exilarch ordered that he [Se‘adya] be deposed from his position of power, and that Mar Joseph Ga’on, a son of geonim [from the Natronay family, who were geonim in Sura] and grandson of the priestly servitors, be seated in his place. And the exilarch [David ben Zakkay] went forth to the great synagogues in Baghdad, where the two heads [of the academies and the judges] were sitting before him, and all the people, high [and low alike, could hear the pro-]nouncements which he revealed like a hidden treasure. [And he excommunicated him (Se‘adya), spewing the most] scorching curses from his mouth.

[Judeo-Arabic:] Thereupon he [Khalaf] spoke at great length until finally he said:

[Hebrew:] And written [testimony from the la]nd of Israel came and bore witness against him, that wicked man, [that he (Se‘adya) was a son of conver]ts and not of the seed of Jeshurun, [according to the testimony of those witnesses from the la]nd of Israel. And many [of those from Baghdad] also wrote to the upstanding merchants asking [about his parentage. And] they replied in writing [and with their personal seals certifying] all of it, that he was a descendant of converts [and that his ancestors had been circ]umcised and immersed in a ritual bath.

And he [Se‘adya] wrote a scroll [The Manifest Book] which he pretended was a book of prophecy¹—like one of the lying prophets—bastardizing himself as follows: “I am a descendant of Judah!” And I [Khalaf] took impassioned action for my God [like Phineas in Numbers 25:13] and replied to him in accordance with: Answer a fool according to his folly (Proverbs 26:5). [ . . . ]

[Judeo-Arabic:] Thereupon he [Khalaf] set him straight about those who had died on the day that he had established the fast, in order to refute his testimony that on that very day the plague dissipated. He [Khalaf] said to him [Se‘adya]:

[Hebrew:] Was not the destruction of So-and-so and such-and-such decreed for you on that day?

[Judeo-Arabic:] After this, he [Khalaf] denounced him in strong terms, and made clear to him his deceit regarding Kohen Tsedek, the head of the academy, and regarding the community. And he set him straight about each and every detail, until he [Khalaf] finally said to him [Se‘adya], “You have alleged that I am a degenerate. Tell me, please, who is the real degenerate, you or I? For indeed you [made an irreverent joke, telling] the doctor, when he wrote you a prescription for a laxative to drink, ‘How many doses of this liquid laxative does it take to liberate the mixtures [in the body] when one drinks it?’ He said to you, ‘Ten, ten sittings.’ And when the tenth sitting arrived, you told him [the doctor], ‘Salaḥti ki-devarekha! I have let it go, just as you said!’”²