His father was a Talmudic scholar and Av Beit Din or chief jurist, probably of Fez), one of whose responsa are extant,[1] and on whose death Samuel wrote an elegy.
[3] This was because Sura Academy had for a century occupied a less prominent position than that of Pumbedita, and that, especially in the time of Hai ben Sherira, information was preferably sought at the latter institution.
A Cairo Genizah fragment of the Taylor-Schechter collection, containing a letter to Shemariah ben Elhanan written, according to Schechter's opinion, by Samuel ben Ḥofni, and another letter of Samuel's to Kairouan,[4] show the great efforts which at this time the last representative of the Babylonian schools had to make to maintain the ancient seats of learning in Mesopotamia.
[5] Samuel's responsa, written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judeo-Arabic (those written in Arabic were translated into Hebrew) discuss tefillin, tzitzit, Shabbat and holidays, forbidden and permitted food (kashrut), women, priests, servants, property rights, and other questions of civil law.
[29] In modern times his significance as a Bible exegete has been given proper appreciation through Harkavy's studies of the manuscripts in the St. Petersburg Library.
[35] The fragments show that Samuel's translation of the Pentateuch was dependent upon, though it was more literal than, that of Saadia, which had been written almost one hundred years earlier.
His source is the midrashic and Talmudic literature, though he specifically mentions only Seder Olam Rabbah and Targum Onkelos.
He deliberately placed himself in opposition to Saadia, who had held fast to the belief that the witch of En-dor had brought Samuel to life again, that the serpent had spoken to Eve, and the ass to Balaam, even though he felt himself compelled to explain the wonders by supplying the intermediary agency of angels.
Samuel denied these and similar miracles, and, with an irony reminiscent of Ḥiwi al-Balkhi, he put the question, "Why, if they were able to do so at one time, do serpents not speak at present?"