GAONS, a certain order of Jewish doctors who appeared in the East after the closing of the Talmud. The word gaons signifies excellent or sublime; as in the divinity schools we formerly had irrefragable, sublime, resolute, angelic, and subtile doctors. The Gaons succeeded the Seburéans, about the beginning of the sixth century. Chanon Meischia was the head of the excellents, and
restored the academy of Pandebita, which had been shut up for thirty years.