Jewish Concepts of Scripture

Concepts of Scripture among the Jews of the Medieval Islamic World 99

were also kept alive through the Hebrew translation enterprise undertaken
by the Karaite exegetes in Byzantium during the 12th century.22
From this period, however, the unique features of classical Judaeo-
Arabic Karaite exegesis began to diminish within Karaism. Th e fervent
anti-Karaite Rabbanite polemic took its toll, while the Crusaders’ conquests
dealt a blow to the Karaite center in Jerusalem, its scriptural- messianic
ethos, and its emphasis on living in the Land of Israel. But there was also
the inevitable dwindling of a revolutionary spirit in the face of the hard-
ships and problems of reality. A situation in which, as Qirqisānī puts it in
his Kitāb al-Anwār, “scarce two of them [the Karaites] are to be found who
agree on anything” meant disarray in managing the Karaite communities
and sustaining their religious life. Consequently, from the 12th century, the
Karaites consolidated their own version of a sanctifi ed tradition of bibli-
cal interpretation, albeit less binding (and less ancient) than that of rab-
binic tradition.23 Karaites still encouraged personal freedom of interpreta-
tion, but its ways became inhibited and charged with harmonization. Th e
time of Karaite innovation in biblical study had eff ectively ended by the
12th century, but the unique Karaite contribution to the medieval Jewish
conception of Scripture continued its innovative eff ect in the works of the
great Spanish Jewish exegetes and well into those of the Renaissance.

Notes

1. On Karaite history and literature, see further Fred Astren, Karaite Juda-
   ism and Historical Understanding (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
   2004); Yoram Erder, “Th e Mourners of Zion: Th e Karaites in Jerusalem in the
   Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” in Meira Polliack, ed., Karaite Judaism: A Guide to
   Its History and Literary Sources (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2003), 213 – 35; Moshe
   Gil, “Th e Origins of the Karaites,” in Polliack, Karaite Judaism, 73 – 118; Meira Polli-
   ack, “Medieval Karaism,” in Martin Goodman, ed., Th e Oxford Handbook of Jewish
   Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 295 – 305.


2. Brian Stock, Th e Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of In-
   terpretation in the Eleventh and Twelft h Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University
   Press, 1983), 3.


3. On the relationship between the rise of literacy and the formation of hereti-
   cal and reformist religious groups, see ibid., 88 – 240.


4. See Daniel Frank, Search Scripture Well: Karaite Exegetes and the Origins of
   the Jewish Bible Commentary in the Islamic East (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2004);
   Geoff rey Khan, ed., Exegesis and Grammar in Medieval Karaite Texts (Oxford: