Why were there no Jewish philosophy tracts until the Rasag?

Question

Jews had their first bump into philosophy when Alexander the Great conquered Israel (in the early Tanaic period). Since then, we lived under the Greeks and Romans for a few hundred years. Both of those nations had their philosophers (Romans not so much, but a lot of Greek philosophy continued on through them).

Yet, the first "philosophical" work was the Rasag, who lived a few hundred years after the Amoraim. There are a few debates that are recorded between Rabbis and "Elders of Athens" and Rabbis and Sadducees, but they are mostly Rabbis pushing them off and not a true attempt at learning (and teaching) philosophy.

Why do we not have any of the "philosophy" of the Tanayim/Amoraim? Did they not hold of this study? If not, why did the Rasag and Rambam study it?

Answer 1

How about jewish hellenistic philosophers like Philo? And a lot of Halacha is influenced by Greek thought, such as the place of women.

Among the Tannaim there were bitter debates whether Greek wisdom should be taught and learned. The Mishnah in Sotah 9:14 bans Greek wisdom. However, this was definitely done because of heavy Greek persecution

Answer 2

In a recorded lecture, R' Yaakov Weinberg Zt"l claimed that philosophy in Judaism was always organic. There was never a need for formalized or systematized philosophy when that philosophy was the entirety of the life one grew up with and lived. It was only when it became necessary as a defense of the Rabbinic view, in response to outside influences and sectarian sects which were gaining sway, that R' Saadia presented a formal "response" and defense of the Pharisees, and following in his footsteps, the Rambam.

Answer 3

From what I understand the aggadic material in the talmud may contain coded discussion of philosophic ideas. It would seem that much of this type of information was conveyed orally for generations previously and only put into writing out of necessity. There was a great fear that this material would either upset the ruling non-jewish government and/or would be misunderstood and abused by those not well enough versed so it was written cryptically.

Answer 4

The reason is because only the most important documents were transcribed through history. Many works might have been lost and only those which people bothered copying survived. Some of those are philosophical, most of the early Jewish contributions to philosophy came from Qaraite Jews. Rabbabinic thought placed more emphasis on legislating the tradions of second temple Judea than on philosophy until the 10th century or so.

Qaraite Jews however only had the Tanakh to work with and therefore devoted a great deal of effort to philosphy. Most of the Mutakallimun (Jewish Kalamists) were Qaraite like Ya'aqov Qirqisani, Yehuda Hadassi, Daniel Qumisi, Yefet ben Ali, Yehoshua ben Yehuda, Yosef ben Avraham, et cetera and only Saaida Gaon and Rambam contributed to world philosophy in a major way until Baruch Spinoza. Of course the Ramban and many of the Rishonim deal with philosophy indirectly through commentaries and contemplations on Hashem, prophecy, ethics and other subjects but I mean works that are soley intended to be read as philosophy like Guide for the Perplexed.

It may have been that Qaraite Jews were just more predisposed to philosophy since they originated from the Sadducees (who were accused of being secular philosphical types) and were only preoccupied with preserving the mesorah of the Tanakh in Tiberius (most or all of the Masoretes were Qaraites including Aharon ben Asher and Shlomo ben Buya'a, the Allepo Codex was actually written for the Qaraite synagouge in Jerusalem) and wandering around Israel looking for aviv barley, so they probably had a lot of time on their hands.

The Tanakh has a sort of existential bent to it which probably influenced them. Also a few philosophical works surived from the first temple period like Qoheleth and Iyyov. In addition to Philo another second temple philosophic text is the Sadducean work Ben Sira.