Karaite Judaism

Rabbinic Halakha, grounded in the Oral Torah of Mishnah and Talmud, is rejected in favor of law derived directly from the plain sense of the Written Torah by each believer's own study.

Midrashic literature is formally rejected as an authority alongside the rest of the rabbinic corpus.

The Mishnah is formally rejected as an authority alongside the rest of the rabbinic Oral Torah corpus.

The rabbinic prayer rites are not used. This community prays from its own siddur, built from scripture, and its rejection of the Oral Torah is what the body exists to assert.

The same.

The same. The Hasidic rite is a rabbinic rite twice over.

The Oral Torah as a body of binding revealed tradition is formally rejected, the movement's central and defining distinctive.

The rabbinic morning service is not used; this community prays its own order at its own times.

The Talmud is formally rejected as an authority; this stream calls each believer to interpret scripture directly rather than through rabbinic tradition.

The codex was dedicated to the Karaite community of Jerusalem and stayed in Karaite hands before it reached Aleppo, and the family of scribes that produced it is generally held to have been Karaite, though that is argued over.

Karaite Judaism receives the angel named in Daniel as the prince who stands for Israel, while the rabbinic bedtime formula that ranges four archangels about the sleeper belongs to the Oral Torah the movement does not accept.

Karaite prayer is largely psalms, which puts the psalter at the centre of the service rather than around its edges.

The accents are the written text's own notation, and a movement that takes the written text alone as authority reads by them.

The scroll of the law is read and is the sole authority, which is the whole of the Karaite position rather than one part of it.

The order of benedictions is a product of the Oral Torah, which the Karaites do not accept as authority, so their prayer is built from scripture instead.

Hanukkah is not observed. The festival has no warrant in the twenty four books and rests on rabbinic authority that Karaite Judaism does not accept, so no lamp for it is kindled.

The Kabbalah rests on an oral tradition the Karaite movement does not accept, and its central book was unknown before the thirteenth century, so it carries no authority in Karaite teaching.

A rabbinic composition with no basis in scripture, and Karaite prayer, assembled out of psalms and biblical passages, does not contain it.

Metatron belongs to the Talmud and to the mystical Heikhalot literature, both of which the Karaite movement sets outside its authority, and the Hebrew Bible names no such angel.

The code sets out the Oral Torah in systematic form, and the Karaite movement holds the written Torah alone, so the work is refused precisely for what it is.

Karaite Judaism refuses the authority of the rabbis and of the oral law they transmit, holding the written Torah alone to be binding. Its own scholars carry a different title and a different kind of authority.

Raziel is a figure of post-biblical mystical literature with no basis in the Hebrew Bible, and Karaite Judaism takes the written Torah alone as its authority.

Sandalphon is a talmudic figure, and the Karaite movement does not receive the Talmud as authoritative.

The code is the summit of the rabbinic legal tradition the Karaite movement was formed in opposition to, and it carries no authority for a community that recognises no oral law.

Karaite reading takes the commandment to bind the words as a figure for holding them constantly in mind. The leather boxes of rabbinic practice are neither made nor worn, because the text is held not to ask for them.

The ban is rabbinic legislation, and the Karaite movement recognises no legislative authority beyond the written Torah.

Karaite courts apply Karaite law read from scripture without the rabbinic tradition, so the institution has the same shape and a different basis.

The Written Torah's Sinai revelation is affirmed as strongly as in Rabbanite Judaism; this stream's distinctiveness lies in rejecting the Oral Torah half of the classical claim.

Burial is in the earth.

Israel's election is affirmed on the direct authority of the Written Torah, shared ground with Rabbanite Judaism despite this stream's rejection of rabbinic legal authority.

Circumcision is practised on the eighth day.

The covenant is held as given in the written Torah, and the refusal of rabbinic law is argued precisely as fidelity to its terms.

Creation from nothing is held as the plain sense of the written Torah, which is the authority this stream recognises.

The fasts kept are those scripture names, and the rabbinic fasts are not.

The dietary laws of scripture are kept. The rabbinic separation of meat from dairy, which is derived rather than written, is not.

A founding Karaite scholar's own case against rabbinic authority, opening with his own account of Jewish sectarian history; already an existing citation source in this atlas, cited here as the encyclopedia entry for the work itself.

Marriage is contracted within the community, and Karaite marriage law has its own rules of forbidden degrees which differ from the rabbinic ones.

The Masoretic Text is used as the authoritative Hebrew text of the Tanakh.

A Messiah is awaited on the basis of the Written Torah and Prophets, independent of rabbinic messianic elaboration.

Only the commandments of the written Torah are held as binding, counted and interpreted by this stream's own scholars rather than by the rabbinic tradition.

Karaites keep the Sabbath from the written Torah alone, and historically refused to leave fire or lights burning through the day, since the rabbinic devices that permit these rest on the Oral Law they reject.

Karaites read the prohibition on kindling fire by the plain sense of the text, so the classical position allows no light or heat left burning through the Sabbath at all, and the day is reckoned by their own observational calendar.

Passover is kept, without the rabbinic Haggadah and without the four cups, which are not in scripture.

Prayer is drawn overwhelmingly from the Psalms and from scripture rather than from the rabbinic prayer book, and it is said prostrate.

Prophecy is held as given in the written Torah and the prophets, and it is that text rather than its rabbinic interpretation which carries the authority.

This is the belief that defines Karaite Judaism, which takes the written Scripture as its sole authority and denies that the Talmud carries the force of divine law.

The Tanakh, called Mikra, is held as the sole source of divine law and authority.

Karaites hold the covenant binding as it stands in the written Torah, arguing that Israel's obligation is to the text God gave and not to the rabbinic tradition later built upon it.

The Torah is held as the sole source of divine law, interpreted by each believer's own study of its plain sense.