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apply when only the children of sons were living. They maintained literally the doctrine of retaliation, the eye for eye and tooth for tooth. In their view, the false witness might be put to death only when his lie had actually caused the death of his victim.

And in their religious customs and observances the Sadducees were in many things rigid iconoclasts. They absolved the people from the duty of daily sacrifice; rejected the libations of water from the feast of tabernacles; left the wearing of phylacteries free to individual taste and choice; forbade the lighting of lamps on the eve of the Sabbath, since the Mosaic law expressly forbids all kindling of fires on that day (in this respect directly contradicting the injunction of the Pharisees to light lamps in sign of joy on the day of joy and honor); ordered that no warm food should be eaten on the Sabbath day; and prohibited all connubial intercourse on the Sabbath. Many of these peculiarities of the Sadducaic system appeared in the Caraite teaching; while some of them, especially those concerning the future state, were not adopted by the later heretics. The beginnings of Sadducism were earlier than the age of Alexander the Great, and in the year 333 B. c. the sect had its teachers. A hundred and twenty years before Christ it had reached its greatest influence and its highest point of development. In the apostolic age it had already begun to decline, and in the talmudic age its writings were only fragmentary comments upon the Mosaic law in the spirit of ancient Sadducism. Before the year 500 of our era, Sadducism had ceased to exist as a school of thought or as a separate sect. The Sadducees had long since been fused with the Pharisees, and in the common suffering from heathen oppressions, differences had been forgotten and a full affiliation realized. Nevertheless a foundation had been laid for future heresies; and along with the fuller rabbinical traditions in the Jewish church, there was now the tradition of literalism.

This ancient Sadducism was the earliest and the most important precursor of the Caraite sect. Another and

nearer preparation for Caraism came in the awakened critical sense of the sixth century, and in the speculations and inventions of the Masorites. The examination of the language of the scripture, of the form and inflection and sound of the words and letters, which the Nikkuds of Acha of Irak (Babylon), and Mocha of Tiberias, systematized and made popular, opened the way for a new development of the textual spirit. The marks and accents of the Masora were indeed additions to the text, but they were not intended as additions, but only as signs. Accent and quantity, Keri and Kethib and Dagesh, only helped to fasten attention to the strict letter of the text. The Masora was but the improvement of the alphabet and grammar of the language. It was the formation of a new Hebrew, enlarged and improved. It is not a little remarkable, however, that Acha and Mocha both wrote their Masoras in the Aramaean dialects of their native provinces.

The labors of Acha and Mocha were continued in Babylon by Chabib, and in Tiberias by Pinchas, each of these teachers becoming the head of a school, and venturing beyond the accents and vowels in their dealing with the text of scripture. Pinchas was not merely the author of a complete Masoretic arrangement of the words of the scripture, but was also the first who had dared to arrange the Mosaic writings into rhythm and verse. In the treatise Soferim-the last effusion of the ancient talmudic spirit, the last important work of the school of Tiberias-we have not only Masoretic speculations upon accents and letters, but freer description of the proper material for rolls of the law, alphabetical prayers for the synagogue, acrostic poems and forms of prayer in the new Hebrew style. In the seventh century the manuscripts of the Bible were greatly multiplied. It became a pious duty and delight of the scholars of the rabbins not only to study, but to copy the text of the sacred volume; and this habit of transcribing became a ground of more exclusive literalism. One of these manuscripts, if we may believe Abraham Sacculd, who found it in Africa

about the year 1590, was composed as early as the year 600 in the city of Hilla, near the ruins of ancient Babylon, and remained for ages a principal authority in questions of Masoretic dispute. Other manuscripts of great value came down from this century to the Middle Age, of which the most noted are those of Jericho, Jerusalem, and Sanbuk, the Damascene manuscript (Sepher Damaski), and the Great Cyclikon, or Machasora, arranged for the complete ritual of the year. Another preparation for Caraism is in the writings of the Jewish physicians, who made the sacred text the basis of their medical and hygienic inquiries. Asaph of Jericho wrote, about the year 630, a book on the healing art, which was widely copied and held in high authority. His direction was followed by numerous successors, some of whom even partially adopted the religion of Islam, and were received into the courts of the caliphs. Other secular studies, too, were joined to the rabbinical lore. Jews were found to write and translate in Arabic the sentences of the the Lord's volume, and the songs of the synagogue. The second half of the seventh century is especially marked by these accommodations of Judaism to the newly arising Arabic literature. These defections from the sacred custom of the people prepared the way for Caraism by the shock which they gave, by the reaction which they aroused. The departure from the strict law of scripture seemed naturally to bring in this worldly alliance with a false religion and its unworthy dialect.

In the first half of the eighth century, the way for Caraism was still more directly prepared by the appearance of heretical teachers, claiming to be prophets and Messiahs. About the year 720 there appeared in Syria a reformer whose name, taken from his native town in Lower Galilee, has come down to us as Serini. He preached openly a return to the scriptures as authority, a rupture with all talmudic traditions and claims, and announced that he was sent to redeem and lead Israel back to its own land, and to drive out the intruding Arabs. Many thousands followed

his standard, flocking to it from all parts of the world. Even many of the Spanish Jews left their goods to be confiscated, in their blind devotion to this new Messiah. The end of his attempt, as might have been predicted, was only disaster and ruin to his followers. Yet the "Serinites," as these followers were called, were for the most part obstinate in their schism, and very few of them returned to talmudism after their leader's discomfiture.

Some twenty years later, another Messiah arose at Ispahan in Persia, whose Sadducism was still more pronounced than that of the Galilean Serini. His name was Abu Isa Ishak Ben Jakub Obeid-Alla. He organized an army of ten thousand adherents to overthrow the Islamite government; but his army was speedily defeated and dispersed at Rai in the province of Chorassan. His moral code had features of asceticism. He allowed no divorce for any cause, even for adultery, and taught that the marriage bond was eternal, a sign of the connection of Israel with Jehovah, — and that the temporary permission of divorce in the former time was only a concession to human sin. He regulated the feast-days by the solar and not, as the rabbins reckoned, by the lunar year. Like the ancient Rechabites, he forbad the use of wine, and joined to this a prohibition of animal food. While he upheld the prayer of the rabbins, with its eighteen eulogies, and enjoined its strict use upon his followers, he increased the seasons of daily prayer from three to seven, after the manner of the Arabs. Most of his reforms were orally taught, but he left some writings of poetry and ritual, which Ben Hadassi stigmatizes as arbitrary and without the prophetic spirit. Scharastani says that Abu Isa wrote a book which rejected all religious offerings. His followers were called the Isawites or the Ispahanites; and the sect had a name to live for some time after the death of its leader.

About this time, too, there were living in the, neighborhood of Rai, the Banu Musa, a tribe of Jews which had separated themselves from the talmudic Jews; they had neither

Mischna nor Gemara, knew nothing of the Tannaim, the Gaonim, the Amoraim, and the Saboraim, very rarely were visited by any rabbinical teacher, and used in their worship only the ancient Hebrew tongue. Abu Isa endeavored to interest them in his revolutionary movement, but with what success it is not related.

To all these inmediate precursors of Caraism, — such isolated tribes as the Banu Musa; the Jews dwelling among Arabs, and adopting their tongue; the sects, such as the Serinites and the Isawites, which openly rejected talmudism; the Grammarians and Masorites, the new Hebrew poets and physicians, whose secular studies seemed to cast contempt on the lore of the schools, must be added also the protest which the bolder exilarchs had given for a century. and a half against the arrogance and the exclusiveness of the heads of the schools. As early as A. D. 600 the exilarch Kafnai had claimed and exercised an independence of these spiritual dictators, and his example had been followed by Chaninai, Bostanai, Chasdai, Solomon and David, and Chananiah, a contemporary with the founder of Caraism. Scheriva, in his chronicle, complains that these rulers did not hesitate to speak their dislike of the teaching of the schools.

But closer still to the beginning of Caraism were a class of teachers whose relation to Anan its founder was something like that of Erasmus to Luther. Among these "fathers of the Caraites," as they are called, are mentioned Genai ben Baruch, Anan's teacher, who wrote a ritual afterwards adopted by the heretical leader; Frajinus, Elisha, and Chanoba, interpreters of the Pentateuch, and honored in the memorial prayers of the Caraites; Obadiah of Bazra, surnamed Ha-maschil, the sagacious one, who wrote wisely upon the laws of the Pentateuch; Abu Nissi Noah, who wrote acrostics and alphabetic poems; and Judah the Persian, who wrote an astronomical calendar, in which he reckoned the years and the months according to the course of the sun.

From this survey of the antecedents of Caraism we

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