judaism beyond the rabbis 307
grammar. If Karaites were to be found increasingly here, as also in
Damascus, Cairo and North Africa, this was in part the product of a
deliberate mission to persuade Rabbanites of their folly, not least by
attacking the anthropomorphism to be found in the rabbinic bible interpre-
tation. Karaites had their own synagogues and academies, but their
leaders tended to seek influence through writings and legal decisions
rather than in any formal hierarchy, and they lacked institutional
authority to impose their views other than by persuasion.^28
All the more remarkable is the extent of Karaite influence on Rab-
banites at the peak of Karaism in the tenth to eleventh centuries. In part
this was because Rabbanites and Karaites operated in the same religious
world: so, for instance, Yefet b. Eli, a Karaite scholar in Jerusalem in the
second half of the tenth century, provided a literal translation of scrip-
ture into Arabic soon after Saadiah had composed for Rabbanites his
immensely influential version of scripture in Judaeo- Arabic (Arabic in
Hebrew script). There is no evidence that Rabbanites ever converted to
Karaism en masse as a result of Karaite propaganda, but the threat of
Karaism elicited a rich Rabbanite response, of which the earliest was by
Saadiah himself: at the age of twenty- three, Saadiah published an attack
(in Arabic) on Anan, and he has been credited with stemming the tide of
Karaism through his energy and adamant opposition.
On the other hand, we have seen (p. 288) that Saadiah and Karaite
scholars could and did unite in their opposition to the much more dan-
gerous ideas of Hiwi al- Balkhi (from Khorasan, which was then in
Persia), whose criticisms of the Bible in the second half of the ninth
century questioned (among other things) the justice, omniscience,
omnipotence, constancy and uniqueness of God, and the coherence and
rationality of the biblical accounts. Thus Saadiah berated Hiwi
al- Balkhi:
Thou has asked further concerning the kinds of suffering; hunger and sick-
ness, fear and desolation and destruction, and heat and cold, why they are
not kept from men ... Know thou and understand, that God chastiseth
His creatures for their good ... Thou hast complained: ‘Why hath He left
a remnant of the seed of evildoers?’ But wherefore should He not have left
Noah since he hath not sinned. Had He destroyed him, thou wouldst have
said, ‘Doth He consume in flame the righteous together with the wicked!’^29
Karaites would happily agree with the Rabbanite Saadiah in this
defence of the biblical tradition, and despite a literary war of words
over centuries, and Saadiah’s treatment of Karaites as minim (heretics),