The voluminous commentaries of the tenth-century Yefet ben Eli and of the 11th- century Yeshu a ben Yehuda ostensibly limit their discussions to the textual content of the Bible, yet their technique is decidedly that of the kalam, and their research of the biblical textual content is punctiliously imbued with the theology of the kalam. the interior clash in the Jewish group among Rabbanites and Karaites contributed to a heightening of the impor- tance of sure theological concerns. Rabbanite and Karaite authors used an identical dialectical arguments to turn out their respective posi- tions. either events agreed at the epistemological worth of the genuine culture. however the Karaites rejected the validity of the talmudic tra- dition, which the Rabbanites considered as “the oral Law,” the single authoritative interpretation of Scripture. for this reason, the discus- sion of culture in Jewish kalam has a different facet. It not seeks just to turn out the authenticity of the prophet or to vindicate the Scripture he introduced, but in addition seeks to set up the authority of the right, unadulterated interpretation of those writings. it's been prompt that the Karaites have been the hyperlink that allowed Saadya to introduce new genres into the Jewish literary vocabulary. in accordance with Rina Drory, the Karaites, as sectarians who broke away from rabbinic culture, weren't restricted through loyalty to past conventional genres. The literary vacuum from which they suffered allowed them the required flexibility to be receptive to new gen- res, reminiscent of systematic exegetical literature and theology. in accordance to this recommendation, it was once the war of words with the Karaites that compelled the Rabbanites to enterprise into new fields. Saadya, himself an outsider to the area of the geonate, used to be versatile sufficient to shoulder this job. 18 there's, even if, no facts for the life of this compre- hensive Karaite literary job sooner than the tip of the 9th century. there's therefore no cause to imagine that the Karaites have been the bridge among Islamic kalam and Saadya. it truly is much more likely that the ex- posure of Jews to “external knowledge” occurred progressively via the unfold of the Arabic language and tradition, which facilitated con- tacts among Jews and their gentile associates. it appears either Karaite and Rabbanite intellectuals have been uncovered to Christian and Muslim impacts kind of even as. The predominance Cambridge partners on-line © Cambridge college Press, 2006 88 Medieval Jewish philosophy of Mu tazilite kalam during this formative interval, in addition to the nonetheless imperative function performed via Christian intellectuals, dictated the tenor of Jewish idea. within the debate among Muslim orthodoxy and Muslim rational- ist theologians, the latter have been at the protecting. except rela- tively brief sessions while it won the higher hand (as through the reign of al-Ma mun), rational theology was once strongly curbed by means of the everyday traditionalist orthodox developments. by way of Islamic re- ligious inspiration, the Mu tazila is perceived as extremist and for that reason liminal.