CARAITES. We have again another History of their Original from Dr. Prideaux1. The compilation of the Talmud appearing in the beginning of the sixth Century, all people of good sense were so shocked with the trifles, the Stuff, the ridiculous and incredible fables it was cram’d with, and to see at the same time a set of men should dare to assert all this to come from God, that many gave it up, and were resolved to found their Faith only upon the Word of God contained in the Scriptures, looking upon the Talmud as a meer human composition, not to be received without examination. This refusal to admit the Talmud an as irrefragable rule of Faith, did not however for a long time produce any Schism amongst them.
But about the year 750 Anan a Babylonish Jew of the race of David, and his Son Saul, declared openly for the written Word of God alone, exclusive of Traditions which were not conformable to it. Their declaration produced a Schism: they who maintained the Talmud with all the Traditions, being almost all Rabbins, or Disciples of the Rabbins, were called Rabbinists: the others who rejected human Traditions, receiving the Scripture only for a Rule, were called Caraïtes, or Scripturists, from the word Cara, which in the Babylonish language signifies Scripture.
The Jews2 pretend, that the true cause of this Schism proceeded from the Ambition of Anan, who exasperated at his being refused the degree of Gaon, that is to say, Excellent, (for this is a title given to certain Doctors,) and out of humour at his disappointment in pursuing after the office of Prince of the Captivity, to which he had pretended as one descended from David, gave the first rise to the Schism we are speaking of.
The Caraïtes pass for the most learned of the Jewish Doctors: there are few of them in the West: the greatest part of them are in Poland, Muscovy, and the East. About the middle of the last Age there was a particular account taken of their number: there were two thousand of them in Poland, at Caffa in Crim Tartary twelve thousand, at Cairo three hundred, at Damascus two hundred, at Jerusalem thirty, in Babylon an hundred, in Persia six hundred: in all four thousand, four hundred, and thirty: the whole of them together makes but a very small number, compared with the gross of the Nation which is of the Rabbinists party.
The Rabbinists or Traditionists have so great an aversion for the Caraïtes3, that they will have no alliances, nor even any conversation with them; they treat them as Mamzerim, or bastards, because they observe none of the constitutions of the Rabbins in their marriages, divorces and purifications of their Wives. Their aversion is such, that if a Caraïte would turn Rabbinist, the other Jews would not receive him.
To give an example of the Method of the Caraïtes, we may take what is said in Deut. vi. 8, 9. Exod. xxiii. 19. xxxiv. 26. Deut. xiv. 21.Moses: Thou shalt bind my words upon thy hands, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and upon thy gates. The Rabbinists understand all this literally, and practise it accordingly. The Caraïtes on the contrary believe, that God by these words intended nothing more than that the Law of God ought always to be present to the mind of every Israelite, whether they go in or out, &c. In like manner Moses forbids them to seeth a kid in his mother’s milk; which the Rabbinists understand literally, or as if the eating both the flesh and milk at the same meal were a thing prohibited. The Caraïtes on the contrary explain this by another Deut. xxii. 6.passage in Deuteronomy, Thou shalt not take the dam with the young, &c. It is a precept of humanity given by God to his people.
Rabbi Caleb, a Caraïte, reduces the particulars wherein the Rabbinists differ from the Caraïtes, to three points. 1°. The Caraïtes deny that the oral Law comes from Moses, and reject the Cabbala or Traditions. 2°. They have an abhorrence for the Talmud. 3°. They observe the Sabbath much more rigorously in many things than the Rabbinists. Moreover, they set no limits almost to the prohibited degrees of Marriage; and as to their copies of the Law, they have them as well as the Rabbinists, but concern themselves little about dictions full or defective; they are nevertheless of opinion according to Peringer, that the vowel Points are derived from Moses.
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