judaism beyond the rabbis 301
Karaites
As Greek Judaism was gradually subsumed in much of the Christian
Mediterranean world by the intellectual vigour and self- confidence of
rabbinic interpreters of the Torah, the rabbis provoked in Islamic lands
a rejectionist movement which by the end of the first millennium crys-
tallized into the distinctive and powerful denomination of Karaites who
refused to accept rabbinic traditions in the interpretation of biblical law
and denied altogether the authority of the oral traditions preserved in
the Talmud and the value of rabbinic discourse about the interpretation
of the Talmud itself.
The foundation myths about their separation from rabbinism
espoused by Karaites themselves, in a rich and well- preserved literary
tradition down to the present day, and the equally suspect slurs on the
motivations and doctrines of early Karaite teachers put about by the
rabbis both in retrospect and at the time of the emergence of Karaism,
need to be interpreted in light of the considerable evidence from the
Cairo Genizah of complex relations between Karaites and followers of
the rabbinical tradition (designated ‘Rabbanites’ by their Karaite opp-
onents) throughout the early centuries of the new movement. Karaism
was integral to the history of medieval Judaism both in what it contrib-
uted to the development of the religion as a whole and in the reactions
that Karaites elicited from the rabbinic movement.^19
Where did it all start? According to a Rabbanite account composed
at some time between the tenth and twelfth century, it began with the
pique of a certain Anan b. David, a rabbinic sage probably from Bagh-
dad, who was passed over, at some time in the eighth century, for the
post of exilarch in Babylon:
Anan had a younger brother named Hananiah. Although Anan exceeded
this brother in both learning and age, the contemporary Rabbanite schol-
ars refused to appoint him exilarch, because of his great lawlessness and
lack of piety. They therefore turned to his brother Hananiah, for the sake
of the latter’s great modesty, retiring disposition, and fear of Heaven, and
they set him up as exilarch. Thereupon Anan was seized with a wicked
zeal – he and with him all manner of evil and worthless men from among
the remnants of the sect of Zadok and Boethus; they set up a dissident
sect – in secret, for fear of the Moslem government which was then in
power – and they appointed Anan their own exilarch.