From Scripturalism to the ‘Chain of Tradition’: Between Rabbanite and Karaite Judaism

Abstract

This article focuses on the controversy and theological polemics advanced by the Jewish-Karaite movement against one of the central concepts of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism—the Oral Torah and the legitimacy of its transmission (“Chain of Tradition”). This process passed through a series of formative stages of Karaism: from radical scripturalism fundamentally rejecting any transmitted tradition to the gradual development of alternative “authentic” Chain of Tradition, adjusting its principles to vital social and intellectual needs. This case of intra-confessional Judaic debate is presented here in the wider context of comparative religious phenomena. In fact, this paradigm present in different forms in the other Abrahamic religions can be viewed as a search for balance between the oral and written traditions. In spite of numerous differences between religions, this paradigm explains to some extent the similarity in arguments of the intra-confessional polemics in Abrahamic religions, as well as the similarity in the argumentation of Muslim, Christian, and Karaite polemicists against the Talmud.