Page 212 - GQ 12

A 14th-century Karaite view of Jewish history and philosophy of religion 19*

Yefet explicitly attributes the principles to al-Qirqisānī (f. 2rb9), but the
principles listed are in fact thirty-eight. The thirty-eighth principle,19 added
by Yefet himself or excerpted from some other as yet unidentified source,
deals with the question of divine knowledge – a theological consideration
that is a relative exception among the original thirty-seven principles, which
largely focus on questions of rhetoric, narrative and verb morphology.20
Yefet presents a number of biblical quotations that seem to imply that God
is not all-knowing, and then states that despite this implication, what is
contingent is not God’s knowledge (ḥudūṯ al-‘ilm) but the actual realisation
of a given act (ḥudūṯ al-fi‘l).

This additional principle begins as follows (f. 7v):

‫פי אן פי אלכתאב מא יוהם חדו ̇ת עלם ללבארי גל ̇תנאוה וליס אלאמר כ ̇דלך לאן קד‬
‫ מגיד‬:'‫̇תבת באלדלאיל אלעקלי ̈ה ואלנצי ̈ה אן אלבארי יעלם אלאשיא קבל כונהא לקו‬

.‫ ארדה נא ואראה‬:‫מראשית אחרית פממא יוהם ̇דלך קו' פי קצ ̈ה סדום‬
Regarding the fact that Scripture contains (accounts) that imply the
incidence of new knowledge in the Creator, may His praise be great.
But this is not the case, because it has been established on the basis
of rational and Scriptural proofs that the Creator knows the [= all]
things before they come into existence, as it is said ‘Declaring the
end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not
yet done’ (Isa. 46:10). What creates the incorrect impression [of God
acquiring new knowledge] derives from statements such as that in

witness to al-Qirqisānī’s Thirty-seven Principles, to be included in his
publication of al-Qirqisānī’s Principles themselves. Following his untimely
passing, Haggai Ben-Shammai has undertaken the publication of the
Principles.
19 Numbered thirty-seven in the Günzburg ms., but thirty-eight in Y.-A. 1.553,
f. 7v.
20 The thirty-seventh is the only principle that is as theologically focused as
this additional thirty-eighth one: ‘That the promises and threats of God, the
great and mighty, are subject to conditions, so that when he promises good
things, this is dependent on His being obeyed: if He is not obeyed, then the
promise is not fulfilled; and similarly threats of evil are dependent on His
being disobeyed, and become void when men repent’ (Source: cf. n. 17).