b. The rejection of the oral law and the Phari saic enactments which constituted the vital differ ence between the Sadducees and the Pharisees, was thoroughly espoused by Anan, and is the car dinal doctrine of the Karaites to the present day. His distinguishing tenet was, 'Search the Scriptures thoroughly' CVM, NI1'411n 1L,'"B11), thus making literal teaching of the Bible the only infallible source and test of religious truth and observance. It is from this important principle that these mo dern Sadducees derive their honourable appella tion, Earaites or Karaim (P,N1p)= Scripturalists, or Bene 11.1ihra (Nipn .0z), Eagle Mikra (+3): Nnpr:)=Followers of the Bthle, in contradistinction to the Bene Ilfishna (rin,n +n), Baale Ha-Kabbala (r62pn +17::;), the followers of the oral law, which, as we have seen, was also the name of the Saddu I cees in olden times.* In their rejecting tradition, however, the Karaites, like their predecessors the Sadducees, do not discard every ancestral observ ance. Anan, their founder, simply refused to regard the expositions and decisions of the Phari sees or Rabbins as final, and as precluding private and individual examination of the simple meaning of Holy Writ according to the laws of grammar and exegesis. He only claimed for himself and his followers the liberty which the older Mishna doctors exercised prior to these traditional enact ments, of ascertaining logically what is tbe mind of the spirit. Hence the remark of Japheth, the Karaite Biblical expositor [JAPHETH]: 'The mode of interpretation pursued by the Mishna-doctors is that adopted by Arian, Benjamin Nahavendi, and other opponents of the Rabbinists, who wrote works on the laws (rnyn wherein every one of them propounded his views and supported them by arguments demonstrating the correctness of his opinions, which peradventure may be right or wrong' (Pinsker, Lickute Kadmoniot, 20, 21). Hence, too, Anan adopted R. Ishmael's thirteen exegetical rules [ISHMAEL B. ELBA] in his expo sition of the Bible. These principles he embodied in his commentary on the Pentateuch, which, though quoted by many early Karaite write's, and even as late as Ibn Ezra, who cites the Introduc tion to his Comment. on Pentateuch, has not as yet come to light.
c. The Sadducean restriction of the Levirate law to cases of betrothal (i-lp11N) continued to be the laNv of the early Karaites. Thus Benjamin b. Moses Nahavendi (flour. 800-8ro A.D.) distinctly declares that 'if the woman is actually the wife of the man, and he dies without issue, she is for ever interdicted to the Levir ; still some member of the family is to act as Goa (5N'W, and marry her in order to preserve the name of the deceased in his possession' (comp. Ibn Ezra on Dem% xxv. 5 ; Geiger, in He-Chaluz, vi. 26, ff.; 7zidische Zeit schrift, i. 34, ff.) d. The Karaites also espoused the literal carry ing out of Me right of retaliation, which was held by the Sadducees. The controversy between the celebrated Karaite Ibn Sitta and Saadia Gaon upon this point is given by Ibn Ezm in his Comment. on Exod. xxi. 23. 24 e. The Karaite also held to the Sadducean law of inheritance (Fiirst, Karderthum, i. 54).
f. The rigid interpretation of the injunction in Lev. xi. 39, 4o, maintained by the Sadducees, which extends the defilement of a carcase to the skin and all its parts, is also defended by the Kara ites. Thus Elias, in his Adereth (cap. i. fol. 70
d), distinctly says, The skin defiles, since it is a part of the carcase, but the followers of tradition [i.e. the Rabbinic or Pharisaic Jews] maintain that it does not defile because they do not call it the carcase' (Geiger, in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenliindischen Gesellschaft, vol. xvi. p. 725 ; Pinsker, Lickute Kadmoniot, p. 83, ff.) g. Like the Sadducees of old, the Karaites re ject the artificial mode of amalgamating the dis tances (mrun nr,v), introduced by the Pharisees to remove from the people the rigorous and in convenient Sabbatical laws. Thus they interpret Exod. XVi. 29, that a man is not to move about on the Sabbath more than z000 yards within tbe city and its precincts, and that only when the city is inhabited by Jews ; and in case the majority of the inhabitants are not Israelites, he is not to quit the house'at all except to go to the synagogue (Aa'ereth Elijahu, 29 C ; Geiger, ,fidische Zeitschrift,ii. 27; Furst, Karderthum, 51).
h. The Karaites also defend all the other rigor ous enactments of the Sadducees respecting the observance of the Sabbath. Thus they will allow no lights to be kindled for the Sabbath eve, but sit in darkness ; nor any food to be eaten, the cook ing or warming of which, though begun on the preparation-day, continues on the Sabbath, rigidly interpreting the injunction in Exod. xxxv. 3 (Adere Elijahu, 3 t b ; Ibn Ezra, Comment. on Exod. xxxv. 3); nor connubial intercourse, partly because it is contrary to the principle of rest, and partly because it is deemed contrary to the holiness of the day (Adereth Elijalm, 28 b ; Ibn Ezra, Com ment. Old Exod. xxxiv. 21) ; nor will they permit a child to be circumcised if the eighth day happens to be the Sabbath (Adereth Elijahu, 26 a ; Levi b. Japheth in Pinker's Lickute Zadmoniot, Ap pendix, p. 90).
i. Like the Sadducees of old, the Karaites main tain that the paschal animal was to be slain on the last quarter of the fourteenth of Nilran, taking the phrase n+z-wri 143, between the two evenings (Exod. xii. 6 ; Lev. xxiii. 5), to denote the space between the setting of the sun and the moment when the stars become visible [PAssovER]; and that the omer is to be offered on the first day following the weekly Sabbath, so that the feast of Pentecost is always to be on the first day of the week, taking the expression nnvri rritin* (I,ev. xxiii. 1, r5, 16) literally (Adereth Efijahn, 40 c-43 b [PENTE cosT]).
k. Like the Sadducees, the Karaites reject the Pharisaic regulations about the phylacteries ; nay, in this they go beyond their progenitors in doc trine, for they discard the phylacteries altogether, and interpret Exod. xiii. 6 metaphorically.
1. Like the Sadducees, the Karaites interpret rigidly the injunction about lying-in women (Lev. xii. 2-3), extending their impurity and keeping aloof from their husbands to the whole period of thirty-three days, in addition to the first seven days after the birth of a boy, and of sixty-six days in addition to the first fourteen days after the birth of a girl.