Among the many accomplishment of the 10th-century sage Saadiah Gaon—one of the leading rabbinic authorities of his day—was a translation of the Torah and a few other biblical books into Arabic, along with a commentary. Although not the first to attempt to render the Bible into that language, he was the first Jew to do so. Harry Freedman explains some of Saadiah’s influences:

Nothing remains of [the Arabic-speaking Christian scholar] Hunayn ibn Ishaq’s [earlier] biblical translations, although it is likely that subsequent Arabic Bible manuscripts were based on his. Saadiah almost certainly drew on his scholarship, but only after it had been refracted through the prism of the literary critic and philologist ibn Qutayba.

Islamic writers and intellectuals of [Saadiah’s] time placed great emphasis on the literary economy of language. They frowned on the use of unnecessary words or phrases and on superfluous repetition. That the Hebrew Bible contained such apparently unnecessary material offered ammunition for the Muslim accusation that the Jews had falsified the Bible. Ibn Qutayba had ameliorated Hunayn’s classic Arabic translation by converting repeated names into pronouns and deleting phrases that seemed redundant. Saadiah’s Tafsir, as his translation came to be known, displays similar stylistic alterations.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.