Rethinking Karaism: Between Judaism and Islam

Abstract

Since the late nineteenth century, scholars have tried to explain Karaism in light of comparative scripturalist trends in the history of religion. These trends manifest a common desire to reinstate the revelational text (i.e., the Hebrew Bible, the Qur'an) as the sole basis for religious law and practice. They deny or considerably delimit, on the other hand, the role of “received tradition” (i.e., Jewish torah she-be‘al peh, Islamic Sunnah) as an independent or complementary source of religious authority and legislation. Consequently, the Karaites’ rejection of Jewish oral law as codified in the Mishnah and Talmud and their attempt to reinstate the Hebrew Bible (in its entirety) as the binding source for Jewish law and religious practice, have often been described as the Jewish variation on the theme of sola scriptura.¹