While there have been Jewish groups whose beliefs were claimed to be based on the written text of the Torah alone ( e. g., the Sadducees, and the Karaites ), most Jews believed in what they call the oral law.

There are also approximately 50, 000 adherents of Karaite Judaism, most of whom live in Israel, but exact numbers are not known, as most Karaites have not participated in any religious censuses.

Karaites were said to have attended his lectures, among them being Aaron ben Joseph the Elder, who later became one of the greatest Karaite authorities ( although Graetz writes that there is no veracity to that ).

He argued that throughout this history the Masorites did not invent the vowel points and accents, but that they were delivered to Moses by God at Sinai, citing Karaite authorities Mordechai ben Nisan Kukizov ( 1699 ) and his associates, who stated that " all our wise men with one mouth affirm and profess that the whole law was pointed and accented, as it came out of the hands of Moses, the man of God ," The argument of the Karaites shows that some copies have always been pointed and some copies were not pointed with the vowels, especially those copies in Synagogues which Gill talks about.

Their sect is believed to have become extinct sometime after the destruction of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, but it has been speculated that the later Karaites may have had some roots or connections with old Sadducee views.

The ben Asher family and the majority of the Masoretes appear to have been Karaites.

In the 10th century, the Karaites were believed to have comprised about 10 % of the world's Jewish population.

" This belief is known to have been held by Karaites.

When interpreting the Tanakh, Karaites strive to adhere to the plain or most obvious meaning (" peshat ") of the text ; this is not necessarily the literal meaning, but rather the meaning that would have been naturally understood by the ancient Israelites when the books of the Tanakh were first written.

Under this view, the Karaites would not have been significantly distinct from any other form of Judaism until the formation of the Pharisees far after the return of the exiles in Babylon.

Rabbinic scholars have traditionally held that, because the Karaites do not observe the rabbinic law on divorce, there is a strong presumption that they are mamzerim ( adulterine bastards ), so that marriage with them is forbidden even if they return to Rabbinic Judaism.

Some recent Ashekenazi Ḥaredi scholars have held that Karaites should be regarded as Gentiles in all respects, though this is not universally accepted.

The Karaites appear to have followed the same practice, and Benjamin Nahawendi, as well as Elijah Bashyazi, favored it.

Karaites had a wide following between the 9th and 12th centuries ( they claim that at one time they numbered perhaps 10 percent of Jewry ), but over the centuries their numbers have dwindled drastically.

They have historically lived in close proximity to the Crimean Karaites.

" The Karaites, have interpreted these two verses as saying that the four species were meant for building the sukkah, based upon Neh.

13-15, 37 ); A. Geiger in his Jüdische Zeitschrift ( 1865, p. 166 ), Schorr in He-Ḥaluẓ, and A. Neubauer in the Journal Asiatique ( 1862 – 63 ) and in his Aus der Petersburger Bibliothek ( Leipsic, 1866 ) have challenged the correctness of the facts and the theories based upon them which Jost, Julius Fürst, and Heinrich Grätz, in their writings on the Karaites, took from Pinsker's Liḳḳuṭe Ḳadmoniyyot, in which the data furnished by Firkovich were unhesitatingly accepted.

The name " Crimean Karaites " or " Krymkaraylar " pertains only to several hundred members of the clerical families currently living in the Crimea and is a misnomer in reference to all other branches of the Karaims and Karaylar who have long been established in other parts of Europe, Crimea being only one such location.

From such, Karaites have come to consider the most logical understanding of the Hebrew word " Mamzer " to actually speak of a nation people.

* Several Turkic peoples of Ukraine, including the Crimean Tatars, the Crimean Karaites and Krymchaks have also self-identified as indigenous peoples, i. a.

Evidently the regulations preferring male descendants came to be disregarded in some respects, as the Book of Job, which textual scholars date to the fourth century, states in its epilogue that Job's daughters were given equal inheritance rights to his sons, and the Karaites always gave daughters the same rights as sons.

The clean birds are not recognizable by certain signs, as the Rabbinites assert, but the names of the birds as found in the Pentateuch are decisive ( and as these can not always be identified, the Karaites make the class of forbidden birds very large ).

The " lost " month would be " picked up " in the next cycle when Karaites would observe a leap month while other Jews would not.

The state of Israel, along with its Chief Rabbinate, ruled that Karaites are Jews, and while critical differences between Orthodox Judaism and Karaite Judaism exist, American Orthodox rabbis ruled that Karaism is much closer to Orthodoxy than the Conservative and Reform movements, which may ease issues of formal conversion.

Within the Jewish community, particularly in Egypt and Palestine, there existed a minority of Karaites.

In 1835 there were 1, 363 Jews with 113 Karaites living in the town of Kutais ( Kutaisi ) and its surroundings: 1, 040 in Gori, 623 in Akhaltsikhe, and 61 in Tiflis ( Tbilisi ).

Even the Karaites incorporated some of them into their prayer-book ; so that there is scarcely a synagogue in which Judah's songs are not sung in the course of the service.

Karaites were at one time a significant proportion of the Jewish population, In the early 21st century, it was estimated that there were somewhat more than 50, 000 Karaites worldwide, over 40, 000 of whom had made aliyah ( emigrated to Israel ) from Arab countries such as Egypt and Iraq.

For Karaites, followers of a branch of Judaism that accepts the Written Law, but not the Oral Law, Shemini Atzeret is observed as a single day of rest, not associated with the practices of Simkhat Torah, which are a rabbinic innovation.

Putting the Karaites and Pharisees at further odds are the apparent Pharisee falsehoods regarding tzitzit and tefillin:

Philo's works became important to Medieval Christian scholars who leveraged the work of Karaites to lend credence to their claims that " these are the beliefs of Jews "-a technically correct, yet mendacious, attribution.

Karaims ( or Karaites ) are a small Turkic-speaking religious and ethnic group resettled to Trakai by Grand Duke Vytautas in 1397 and 1398 from Crimea, after one of his successful military campaigns against the Golden Horde.

There are about 4, 000 Karaites living in the United States.

There are about 80 Karaites living in Istanbul, Turkey, where the only Karaite synagogue in Turkey, the Kahal haKadosh Bene Mikra, is still functional in the Hasköy neighborhood in the European part of the city.

In Poland, Karaites are a recognized minority, represented by the Association of Polish Karaites () and the Karaite Religious Association in the Polish Republic ().

Karaites live primarily in and around Warsaw, Wrocław and Tricity, they are linguistically assimilated.

However, at the same time Maimonides holds ( Hilkhot Mamrim 3: 3 ) that most of the Karaites and others who claim to deny the " oral teachings " are not to be held accountable for their errors in the law because they are led into error by their parents and are similar to a tinoq shenishbah ( a captive baby ), or to one who was forced.

As opposed this, in 1971 Rav ‘ Ovadia Yosef, who was then the Rishon LeṢiyyon / Chief Rabbi of the Sefaradim and ‘ Edot HaMizraḥ of Israel proclaimed that Karaites are Jews " LeKhol Davar " ( literally, for all purposes ) and that it is permissible for Rabbanite Jews to marry with them.

In response to the position taken by the Karaites in regards to the authority of the Talmud, Orthodox Judaism counters first that the majority of the Oral Law codified in the Mishnah and Talmud are the legal rulings of the last Sanhedrin, a body of 71 elders that made up the highest court of jurisprudence in ancient Israel, and that not all of the Oral Law are literally " Laws given to Moses on Mount Sinai ".

Karaites, however, argue that since other passages in the Bible with similar language are read metaphorically, the verses from which the Rabbis derive the law of teffilin should also be read metaphorically.

For Karaites, in sum, the rabbinic interpretations above, as codified in oral law, are only one form of interpretation.