KARAITES Reference library
The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion (2 ed.)
...cent.), who permitted such unions. In Israel today Karaites have no de jure control over personal status, but the state informally recognizes Karaite marriages and divorces as long as both partners are Karaites and willing to accept the authority of the Karaite court. Zvi Ankori , Karaites in Byzantium (New York, 1968). Haggai Ben-Shammai , “ Between Ananites and Karaites: Observations on Early Medieval Jewish Sectarianism, ” Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations 1 (1993): 19–29. Philip Birnbaum , ed., Karaite Studies (New York, 1971). Bruno Chiesa and ...
Karaites Quick reference
A Concise Companion to the Jewish Religion
...Karaite heresy with that of the Sadducees . This view is not accepted by scholars in the field although certain Sadducean ideas appeared to have enjoyed a subterranean existence until they emerged among the Karaites. The Karaites were treated as full, though heretical, Jews in the Middle Ages; many Rabbinic authorities permitted marriages between Rabbinites and Karaites. But eventually the breach between the two communities so widened that neither saw the other as belonging to the same religion. It has been estimated that there are around 20,000 Karaites in...
Karaites Reference library
The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages
... Karaites living in Israel, most of whom are of Egyptian origin; further, 5,000 Karaites live in the USA, Egypt, Turkey, and the new Russian republics. A current scholarly question is the issue of Karaite origins and the possible relationship between medieval sectarianism and Jewish groups of the Second Temple period (including the Qumran sects). Francesca Yardenit Albertini H. Ben-Shammai , ‘ Between Ananites and Karaites: Observations on Early Medieval Jewish Sectarianism ’, Studies in Muslim–Jewish Relations (1993), vol. 1, 19–29. L. Nemoy , Karaite...
Karaites Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages
...philosophical, exegetical, legal and poetic literature, notably in Aramaean, Arabic and Hebrew . L. Nemoy , Karaite Anthology. Excerpts from the Early Literature , New Haven-London, 1952. E. Trevisan-Semi , Les Caraïtes. Un autre judaïsme , Paris, 1992. N. Schur , The Karaite Encyclopedia , Frankfurt am Main, 1995. J. Olszowy-Schlanger , Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza , Leiden, 1998. Jean-Christophe...
Karaites Reference library
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
...as Judah b. Elijah Hadassi (who summarized Karaite theology in his Eshkol ha-Kofer ), Aaron b. Joseph ha-Rofe (who was an eminent biblical exegete and wrote Sefer-Mivhar , the classic Karaite commentary), and the codifier, Aaron b. Elijah the Younger, whose Gan Eden earned him the title of ‘the Karaite Maimonides ’. They were perceived as Jews by their gentile rulers, and were in general subject to the same edicts. During the Second World War, the German government pronounced that the Karaites were not Jews and they were thus spared the horrors...
Karaites Reference library
Steven B. Bowman
The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium
... (“Scripturalists”), Jewish sect that emerged in Babylonia from the followers of Anan ben David , an alleged 8th-C. descendant of King David . In principle they rejected the Talmud of normative Jewry, resurrected prerabbinic customs and absorbed Islamic influence. Therefore Byz. Jews denigrated them as foreigners and condemned their differing rules for calculating holidays, for marriage and divorce, and for the ritual slaughter of animals. Karaites rejected until after 1453 the use of candles to light the Sabbath eve. Individual Karaites who...
Karaites Reference library
Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls
...early modern period, Karaites were found in the Crimea and Poland-Lithuania, where a few Karaite scholars of distinction were influenced by contacts with Protestant academics in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. In the nineteenth century, eastern European Karaites distanced their group from Judaism, and, as a result of the Holocaust and Soviet policies, have virtually disappeared. In the twentieth century, the majority of Near Eastern Karaites immigrated with other Jews from Arab lands to Israel. Contemporary Israeli Karaites have focused some...
Karaites
Karaite Quick reference
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology
... member of a Jewish sect which bases its tenets on literal interpretation of the scriptures. XVIII. f. Heb. k e rā'îm scripturalists, f. Kārâ read; see -ITE...
The Hebrew Bible Reference library
Geoffrey Khan
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...consonantal text but also from the accents. So the reading tradition, which includes both vocalization and accents, comprises two separate layers. An Arabic transcription of Exodus 1: 22 to 2: 5 from the Hebrew Bible, written in the 11 th century by a Karaite scribe. The Karaites were a group within Judaism. By permission of the British Library. The separateness of the reading tradition from the tradition of the consonantal text is reflected in the fact that in the Talmudic period different exegesis was applied to each layer...
The Bible in Judaism Reference library
Philip Alexander
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...world and in forcing orthodox Rabbanite scholars to take an interest in Hebrew grammar. Karaism, supposedly founded by Anan ben David in the eighth century, rejected the authority of the Talmud and advocated a return to the Bible as the sole arbiter of faith and practice. The Karaites seem to have been particularly open to the Islamic science of their day and used it effectively to attack what they saw as the naïveté and illogicality of rabbinic literature. Karaism made significant inroads into rabbinic Judaism in the ninth and tenth centuries and forced a...
8 The Transmission of Jewish Knowledge through MSS and Printed Books Reference library
Emile G. L. Schrijver
The Oxford Companion to the Book
...in the centuries that followed. The most prominent early bible codices are the *Moses ben Asher Codex, the Leningrad Codex, and the *Aleppo Codex . The Moses ben Asher codex contains the earliest date mentioned in a *colophon of a Hebrew MS, 895 ce . Now housed in the Karaite Synagogue of Cairo, it was copied in Tiberias and contains the text of the Prophets. A detailed codicological analysis of the MS published by Glatzer in 1988 , however, has proved quite convincingly that the codex, with its colophon, was copied at least a century later from an...
Transitions and Trajectories: Jews and Christians in the Roman Empire Reference library
Barbara Geller
Oxford History of the Biblical World
...mastery of Torah, the rabbi came to embody Torah. His activities on earth echoed the activities in heaven, where not only Moses but also God studied Torah. With the exception of the religious systems of such groups as the Jews of Ethiopia and the Samaritans and Karaites (the latter two having been treated at times as part of, and at other times as separate from, the Jewish community), all the varieties of modern Judaism are forms of rabbinic Judaism. But during the formative centuries of rabbinic Judaism, it is unclear how much authority the...
Yitshaq Ben Avraham Troki
Rabbanites
