Marina Rustow of The Jewish Theological Seminary, and the people and organizations quoted on jtsa.edu, are in no way associated with peshat.com and views expressed here.

Exhibit at the JTS Library
December 14, 2000 - April 5, 2001
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Who are the Samaritans and the Karaites? The Samaritans claim descent from the biblical Israelites of the Northern Kingdom in Samaria, while the Jews trace their origins to Judeans of the Southern Kingdom who were exiled to Babylonia. The Samaritans furthermore accept only the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, as their sacred text. The Karaites accept all twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible, and in this they agree with the Jews. But ever since their origins in eighth-century Iraq, they have rejected rabbinic law as expressed in the Talmud. They maintain instead that the Bible is the sole authentic source of Jewish law.

Deuteronomy Chapter 31
24 And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished,
25 that Moses commanded the Levites, that bore the ark of the covenant of YHWH, saying:
26 'Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of YHWH your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee.
27 For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck; behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against YHWH; and how much more after my death?
28 Assemble unto me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to witness against them.
29 For I know that after my death ye will in any wise deal corruptly, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the end of days; because ye will do that which is evil in the sight of YHWH, to provoke Him through the work of your hands.'

The Samaritans and the Karaites do not have much in common beyond their special relationship to Scripture. While the two groups had some limited contact and even influence on each other during the Middle Ages, their histories have taken completely different paths. The Samaritans have always lived within pilgimage distance of their place of worship, Mount Gerizim, near Shechem in Samaria. Although during ancient and medieval times, Samaritans lived as far away from Mount Gerizim as Cairo, Damascus, and the Greek isles, the Samaritan diaspora rarely rivaled the Shechem community in religious and cultural importance.

The Karaites, by contrast, never lived in or near one particular place. For much of their history, they maintained a group of representatives in Jerusalem. But the majority of Karaites have always lived among the rest of the Jews. In the Middle Ages, the major communities of Karaites were in Iraq, Syria-Palestine, Egypt, North Africa and Spain. From there they migrated to the Balkans and Turkey, and then to the Crimean peninsula, Russia, Poland, and Lithuania. Until the twentieth century, western Europe was the only major Jewish habitation without Karaites.

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