96 Meira Polliack
be concerned with the exercise of control over the fl ow, positioning, and
gapping of the data within the narrative span. In this, there is some par-
allel with modern literary theory, which distinguishes the “narrator” or
“authorial- narrator” from the actual, biographical person of the “author”
who composed the text and which considers the “narrator” as a literary
device, a fi ctitious entity, a varying “point of view” as the teller of the story.
Whereas modern literary criticism of the Bible considers various devices
employed by the biblical narrator, such as gapping, to have been mastered
by the biblical authors in order to create complex literary eff ects (for ex-
ample, characterization, the buildup of tension, or the creation of irony),
Yefet relates to these in exegetical terms, focusing on their interpretive sig-
nifi cance in the understanding of the biblical story.
No parallel has been uncovered between the Karaite usage of the nomi-
nal form mudawwin — in any of the senses of author-composer, authorial
narrator, or editor — and medieval Qur’ānic exegesis. Nevertheless, the Ar-
abic term tadwīn and the root dawwana are quite rife in H.adīth literature,
wherein they connote the process of the writing down of traditions relat-
ing to the Prophet Muhammad and their collation as books. Th ese tradi-
tions were transmitted orally in the fi rst centuries of Islam, and there was a
fi erce opposition to their commitment to writing which was only resolved
in the 9th century.18 Th e mudawwin’s comprehensive and groundbreaking
application by Yefet to biblical literature appears therefore to be original to
Karaite thought. It refl ects a wider Karaite perception of the nature of the
Bible as a literary work, whose core may have been transmitted orally in
biblical times but was eff ectively turned into a written oeuvre, a book, dur-
ing the time of the Prophets, at the latest, and certainly before the Second
Temple (rabbinic) era.
Th e Bible as HistoryIn the history of biblical interpretation, questions concerning the Bible’s
origins, historical background, and credibility have oft en been arrived at
through the identifi cation of literary cruxes. Critical study of the Bible as
it emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries linked questions of literary genre
and those of historical background. Th e medieval Karaite study of the Bi-
ble as literature raised similar questions. Naturally, these were not defi ned
through a modern conception of “origins” or “sources” but focused on the
nature of the world described in the biblical text. It was not only the literary
contextualization of biblical study which led the Karaite exegetes to explore