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 subtle doctors. The Gaons succeeded the Sebureans, about the beginning of the sixth century. Chanun Meischia was the head of the excellents, and restored the academy of Pandebits, which had been shut up for thirty years.