88 Meira Polliack
Duran (1350 – 1414) and Don Isaac Abravanel (1437 – 1508), who represent
the Renaissance period in Jewish exegesis.
In this complex exegetical consciousness lies the contribution of medi-
eval Judaeo-Arabic exegesis to the development of Jewish Bible interpreta-
tion as a whole. In the Karaites’ call to return to Scripture and their re-
jection of talmudic literature and its interpretive methodology, they paved
the way to the wider adoption of these features. Th e Karaites’ ideological
stance enabled them to embrace the fundamental transition that took
place in medieval Jewish culture as the result of its encounter with Islam.
Th ey gave open and initial expression to the understanding of the Bible
as a text, that is, as a product of written communication (even if it had an
oral core transmitted from God to his prophets) and as part of a “universe
of communications” in which texts “emerged as a reference system both
for everyday activities and for giving shape to many larger vehicles of ex-
planation.”10 Th ese developments empowered individual writers as well as
readers who acquired the tools of literature, composition, structure, and
eloquence within a literate mentality.
Th e Relationship between Bible and Tradition:
Legal Exegesis and Nonlegal Exegesis
Legal ExegesisTh e degree of derivation of legal (halakhic) norms from the Bible was
one of the key issues that divided Karaites and Rabbanites. Th ere were con-
ceptual as well as exegetical aspects to this dispute. While the Karaites, in
an ongoing attempt to base Jewish legal practice on Scripture alone, main-
tained that the Bible had to be rescrutinized, the Rabbanites upheld the au-
thenticity of classical rabbinic tradition by continuing to sanctify Oral Law
as a foundational base, complementary to Written Law, in the derivation of
Jewish halakhah.
Th e Karaites widened the basis for halakhic derivation from the Bible
to include all of its twenty-four books. Halakhah could thus be derived di-
rectly not only from the books of the Pentateuch (as in rabbinic lore) but
also from Prophecy and the Writings. Th e widening of the sanctifi ed writ-
ten basis from which law can be deduced was necessary given that there
was no recourse to a sanctifi ed oral tradition as a “complementary” legal
source to written tradition. Another exegetical manifestation of the newly