Concepts of Scripture among the Jews of the Medieval Islamic World 91same time not fully committed to new ones. Th e Karaites’ justifi cation in
their eyes, however, was that they had begun the process of revision that
would break a millennium of interpretive deadlock. Th ey understood this
process as one of trial and error and demanded candidness in this respect,
partly in counterreaction to what they perceived as rabbinic conceit in es-
pousing the heavenly and fl awless derivation of oral law. Th ese concerns
fi nd poignant expression in the following section from the 10th-century
Karaite Yefet ben ‘Eli’s introduction to his commentary on Deuteronomy:13
From the Giver of Knowledge I ask that He steady us in the correct way,
benevolently and with kindness, and that He open our eyes to his laws,. . . forgive the errors and mistakes which may transpire, and that He ab-
solve us from any admonition, for He knows our intention, for we do not
intend to be at variance with Him, but we seek the truth. [He knows] that
we are interpreting the words of the [Karaite] scholars, may God have
mercy on them, and may He establish them, for they opened the eyes of
the people of Exile who dwell in darkness, in which we are now, and taught
them, and instructed them and directed them away from transgression, on
which they were set, to the way of the truth and to the law of the Lord of
the Universe.
Nonlegal ExegesisNonlegal exegesis of the Bible also divided Karaites and Rabbanites.
Since exegetes of both orientations were less bound by a theological frame-
work in their discussions of the biblical stories, it is in respect to the nar-
rative portions of the Bible that their newly acquired Judaeo-Arabic cul-
ture seeps through their readings and that their innovative approaches and
methods of interpretation become apparent. Biblical narrative (including
historiography) provided an outlet for a more inventive reading of Scrip-
ture, whose themes and structures could be elaborated in ways akin to the
art of fi ction, whereas biblical texts charged with legal (and hence practi-
cal) as well as prophetic or poetic implications were more restrictive in the
types of readings they sanctioned.
Th e Karaite exegetes of the 10th and 11th centuries, and especially the
great 10th-century commentators Ya‘qub al-Qirqisānī and Yefet ben ‘Eli,
exhibit a heightened consciousness of biblical narrative per se, when com-
pared to Rabbanite commentators of the same era, such as Sa‘adiah Gaon
or Samuel ben H.ofni. Focusing their intellectual acumen on the Bible as