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

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review Report of Manuscript (ID Religions-1475143)

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

This article seeks to examine one of the great intra-Jewish debates of the pre-modern period: that between the Karaites and the Rabbanites. It does this by reviewing some examples of the major theme of the Karaite polemical literature: the rejection of the central doctrine of Rabbanite Judaism – the divine source of the Oral Torah and, vitally, the mode of its transmission through authoritative chains of named sages. The author then shows how the Karaites moved from a strict scripturalism to the development of their own chains of tradition which are presented as authentic and authoritative. The article presents this intra-Jewish debate as an example of how tradition and its transmission provide a locus of contestation in the other so-called ‘Abrahamic’ religions (Christianity and Islam) and observes that the argumentation of the Karaite polemical literature is similar to that found in inter-religious polemical literature, and in Christian and Islamic polemics against the Talmud. For the author, the Karaite-Rabbanite debate is paradigmatic of how various religions develop attempts to balance written and oral traditions.   

While the article is not ground-breaking in its conclusions, it does serve a very useful purpose in making a key episode in the development of Judaism (and the central theme of its literature) available and comprehensible to scholars of other religions. If this strength of the article is made more explicit and developed somewhat, I believe the article will be worthy of publication in Religions. The author does indicate that this is the purpose of the article, but I think they could do so more emphatically and more clearly at the outset, and signpost this along the way. 

Some comments:

• There are a number of errors in the written expression. The piece needs to be very carefully copy edited to eliminate all such errors. Some examples:
  • line 7 – formative rather than formation
  • line 7 – delete the before Karaism
  • line 14 – similarity rather than similitude (not an error, just an archaism)
  • line 27 – delete the before Judaism
  • line 27 – delete the before memory
  • line 33 – lower case m in medieval
  • line 41 – write Mount rather than throughout
  • line 55 – pluralize Essene
  • line 56 – lower case m in medieval and modern
  • line 56 – Hasidic rather than Hassidic
  • line 70 – lower case d in divine
  • line 78 – the destruction of the Temple rather than Temple destruction
  • line 81 - tenth-century (compound adjectives need to be hyphenated throughout)
  • line 94 – add the before emergence

N.B. This list is far from exhaustive. I emphasise that a very thorough copy-editing of the article is necessary before publication.

The bibliography also needs to be thoroughly copy-edited for consistency and accuracy. Three examples will suffice:

• Gutman (1950) – empty brackets are given after JQR; also title of this journal should be given in full as author has done with other journals.
• Lasker (1993) – quotation mark correctly opens the title of the book chapter, but it is not closed.
• Rabbinowich (1988) gives page numbers at the end, but they belong in the main text, not the bibliography as this is a monograph.

  Some additional points:

• Two works by Polliack are cited in the article: (2006) and (2015), but neither appear in the bibliography!
• Harkavy (1891) is cited in line 121, but the volume number is not given.
• Lazarus-Yafeh (spelled correctly in bibliography) is incorrectly spelled as Lazarus-Yaffe (line 332).
• Transliterations of Hebrew and Arabic need to be accurate and consistent. Some examples:
  • In Sefer ha-Miṣvot, and ha-daʿat (line 303) the article is separated from the noun with a hyphen; while in sevel hayerushah (line 290) it is not. The former is to be preferred.
  • line 303 initial letter of hokhmat should be ḥ
  • line 304 kibbuṣ not kibbuẓ [it is the same consonant in Miṣvot]
  • line 332 ḥadith is correctly transliterated with a ḥ; however, in line 335 it is written with h
  • consistency in the italicization of Arabic and Hebrew terms is necessary; so while ḥadith is italicised, tajsīm is not (line 359) etc.
  • In transliteration of Arabic and Hebrew, long vowels should be indicated: for instance, the author does this correctly with tajsīm (line 359) and Tawrāt (line 326), but not ḥadīth. The whole article needs to be carefully revised in this regard.
  • In line 327 the transliterated Arabic word Tawrāt is also given in Arabic script [توراة]. This is done nowhere else in the article, so why just here?
  • Footnote 2 [page 10], the word is accurately transliterated as qabbalah (line 36), but here, the “root k’b’l’” is written. While it is good to give the more popular transliteration Kabbalah in the footnote, if giving the actual Hebrew verbal “root”, the q should be written. I would also suggest that the “root” qbl does not mean anything in Hebrew – rather, it is a grammatical abstraction from a number of actual  words that belong to the semantic field of reception. It might be better to state that the word qabbalah is related to the verb qibbēl which means to receive etc.
  • line 64 – I think in the context of the article, better to retain Rabbanite rather than introducing Rabbinic here. Also, though Rabbinic Judaism and its heirs may predominate now, is it fair to refer to it as “mainstream Judaism”? At certain times and in certain places, Karaite Judaism was the dominant form of Judaism.
  • I would be more cautious about the use of the terms sect and confession unless their intended meaning is clearly signaled. 
• If the Amoraim (line 87) are mentioned, mention the Tannaim
• The article would be improved by some unpacking of the nature of the intra-Islamic debates on the transmission of the Ḥadīth This would require only a short paragraph, but would enrich the article. As it stands, the reference to Islam is quite short and unclear.
• Could the author make some reference to the scholarly literature on scripture and tradition as general categories across religions? This would really improve the article. 

Author Response

Thank you for the comment. Please see the revised manuscript. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is more of a historical essay than a research-based, analytical article on the topic. In future you could take into consideration, e.g., the works of Fred Astren and Marina Rustow on Karaite history, key concepts (such as the term 'sect') and the development of Karaite traditions (esp. chain of tradition).

Author Response

Thank you for the comment. Please see the revised manuscript. 

Reviewer 3 Report

unclear phrasing: lines 213-215, 242-243

spelling: sa'adya gaon: line 82: Sherira ??

Interesting article. I miss the Samaritans as opponents of Jewish biblical and oral traditions. Could be interesting to see them in the picture in coming works. Several works were written in Arabic in medieval times that discuss differences between Jews, Samaritans and Karaites. Extensive ref. in R. Bóid, Principles of Samaritan Halachah, 1989.

Author Response

Thank you for the comment. Please see the revised manuscript. 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

This article is now ready for publication.

Author Response

Dear Editor,
The discussion whether Karaism is a sect, a movement or an autonomous religion, is irrelevant as it is a question of perspective, at a time where all terms evolve to receive a new meaning. If we consider the point of view of traditional Orthodox Judaism, centered on the belief of the Sinaitic revelation where both the Written an Oral law were given to Moses to transmit them to the People of Israel in accordance with a very specific chain of transmission – every departure from this belief is considered by it as a heresy (כפירה), a term which today may have become politically incorrect but reflected adequately an aspect of the fundamental antagonism between a “mother” orthodoxy, and its divergent “daughters”. If we consider the post-modernist point of view, this same picture is only an issue of alternate chain of transmission of a common basis of beliefs and creeds. In this last view, Karaism is but one of the many facets of Judaism in a broad sense.

I changed a comment in n. 1, and I hope that it is all right now.
Thank you,