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Some of this glory was reflected also upon the neighboring countries under Mohammedan domination, Palestine, Egypt, and Kairuan or northern Africa to the west of Egypt. Thus all the men, Rabbanites as well as Karaites, whom we treated so far lived and flourished in the east in one of the four countries mentioned.
The Karaites are less scrupulous; and as they were the first among the Jews to imitate the Muʿtazila in the endeavor to rationalize Jewish doctrine, they adopted their views in all details, and it is sometimes impossible to tell from the contents of a Karaite Muʿtazilite work whether it was written by a Jew or a Mohammedan.
The Rabbanites being staunch adherents of the Talmud, to the influence of which they owed a national and religious self-consciousness much stronger than that of the Karaites, who rejected the authority of tradition, did not allow themselves to be carried away so far by the ideas of the Mohammedan rationalists as to become their slavish followers.
Later when on account of the exile differences arose among the Jews, there were formed the two parties of the Karaites and the Rabbanites. The Karaites followed the Muʿtazila, and so did some of the Rabbanites, because their views coincided with those of the Bible, from which they were borrowed. The views of the philosophers as being opposed to the Bible they naturally rejected.
In the seventy-first chapter of his "Guide of the Perplexed," he says, "You will find that in the few works composed by the Geonim and the Karaites on the unity of God and on such matter as is connected with this doctrine, they followed the lead of the Mohammedan Mutakallimun.... It also happened, that at the time when the Mohammedans adopted this method of the Kalam, there arose among them a certain sect, called Muʿtazila.
The Rabbanites according to him insist that "there is no death without sin, nor suffering without guilt," whereas the Karaites admit that some of the sufferings of the righteous are not in the nature of punishment at all, but are what are known as "chastisements of love."
By the Karaites tradition was rejected, and there remained only belief in the words of the Bible. On the side of reason was urged first the claim of the testimony of the senses, and second the validity of logical inference as determined by demonstration and syllogistic proof.
Rejecting tradition, the Karaites expounded their beliefs both as a justification of themselves against the Traditionalists and possibly as a remedy against their own tendency to divide within their own order into smaller sects.
The only exception was made in the case of the Karaites, who, according to Nicholas's decision, had emigrated from Palestine before the Christian era, and could not therefore have participated in the crucifixion of Jesus.
The first error, we are told, that we must remove concerning the soul, is the doctrine of the "naturalists," with whom the Muʿtazilites among the Arabs and the Karaites among the Jews are in agreement, that the soul is not an independent and self-subsistent entity, but only an "accident" of the body.
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