Concepts of Scripture among the Jews of the Medieval Islamic World 97the connection between the biblical text and the “real” world of its time but
also the attempt to remold this study within the mentality of a rationalist
age aff ected by a signifi cant rise of literacy (similar, in this respect, to the
era of Enlightenment, which fostered modern critical study of the Bible).
Already in early 10th-century Karaite works, we fi nd a keen and unprec-
edented interest in questions such as: What kind of reality is the biblical
text describing? Is it describing events that actually occurred in historical
times? If so, in what ways, and what does it choose to leave out? Yefet and
other Karaite exegetes of the Jerusalem school engaged in such questions
especially in their commentaries on the prophetic books as well as in rela-
tion to texts with a pronounced historical setting (such as Genesis, Samuel,
Ruth, and Esther). Not surprisingly, it is Yefet’s older contemporary, the
major Karaite philosopher and exegete Abū Yūsuf Ya‘qūb al-Qirqisānī, who
provides these questions with a wider philosophical and theoretical basis.
Qirqisānī, who was active in Iraq in the fi rst half of the 10th century, is
mainly known for his commentary on the legal portions of the Pentateuch,
known as Kitāb al-anwār wal-marāqib (Th e Book of Lights and Watchtow-
ers), a milestone in the development of Karaite halakhah, philosophy, and
historiography. Qirqisānī also wrote programmatic commentaries on Job,
Ecclesiastes, and Genesis. Mostly extant are portions from the Commen-
tary on Genesis, which exist in a “short” or “abridged” version and in a
“long” version. Th ese appear to have formed part of his commentary on
the nonlegal portions of the Pentateuch, known as Kitāb al-riyād. wal-
h.adā’iq (Th e Book of Parks and Gardens). Qirqisānī’s preamble to Kitāb al-
riyād. discusses the validity of rational speculation on the Bible, aft er which
are presented thirty-seven propositions about biblical interpretation.19
Th ese propositions clarify Qirqisānī’s opinion concerning the nature of
the Hebrew language, the composition of the Bible, and other textual fea-
tures. Several of Qirqisānī’s hermeneutic rules grapple with the question
of whether the Bible contains a “reliable” depiction of the reality of bibli-
cal times. Qirqisānī asks, for instance, whether the Bible, when describing
non-Israelite nations, cites their words in the original language (thus sug-
gesting that these nations spoke Hebrew) or translates their tongues into
Hebrew. Furthermore, are there signs in the text as to whether their words
were transmitted in the original? In the same introduction Qirqisānī con-
tends that the Torah mentions place names according to how these were
known in the time of Moses (whom Qirqisānī, unlike Yefet, openly and un-
equivocally identifi ed as its composer [mudawwin]) and not in accordance
with how they were known at the time in which the events are recounted as