Page 208 - GQ 12

A 14th-century Karaite view of Jewish history and philosophy of religion 23*

‫כל אחד ואחד כותב לעצמו כפי כחו מביאור התורה ומהלכותיה כמו ששמע מפי רבותיו‬
‫ומדברים שנתחדשו בכל דור ודור <בדינים> שלא למדום מפי השמועה אלא במדה‬

24.‫משלש עשרה מדות‬
So too, each individual wrote down, according to his ability, parts
of the explanation of the Torah and of its laws that he had heard
from his teachers, as well as the new matters that developed in each
generation, which were not learned by tradition, but which had
been deduced by applying the Thirteen Principles for Interpreting
the Torah.

The fourth faṣl (f. 10r) deals with the skills that humans acquire via tradition
(naql) and which cannot originate in reasoning (naẓar), namely: arts,
language, script, and the numbering of the days of the week. Yefet states
that languages originate in divine inspiration (ilhām).

The fifth faṣl (f. 10r–12v) discusses the obligatory recourse to rational
speculation in order to establish Jewish tradition and the authenticity of
the Karaite maḏhab. This requirement is imposed due to the existence of
different and contrasting maḏāhib, all of whose adherents claim ‘My way
is the truth, and any other way is false’ (‫וצאחב כל ואחד מנהא יקול אן אלחק מעי‬
‫)ואל ̇די מע גירי באטל‬.25

After offering scriptural evidence in favor of the Jewish claims – taken
mainly from Jeremiah – Yefet details his reconstruction of the historical-

the thirteenth century, see D. Lasker, “Maimonides and the Karaites:
From Critic to Cultural Hero,” in Maímónides y su época (ed. Carlos del
Valle Rodriguez, et al., Madrid: Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones
Culturales, 2007), 311–325.
24 Yefet’s additions are underlined, and his omissions marked between
brackets. The same passage is quoted in a manuscript of The chain of
tradition, after a description of the content of the Mishneh Torah, without
any variant reading except for the initial ‫( כל ואחד וואחד כתב‬Y.-A. 2994,
f. 3v). Yefet’s familiarity with rabbinical writings appears elsewhere as
well, particularly in the fifth paragraph of this third chapter, regarding
the mourning for Moses and the forgetting of laws, as cited in our textual
edition below.
25 Cf. also Y.-A. 1.317, f. 1v: ‫כל ואחד מנהם ידעי אן אלחק מע אצחאבהם‬.