Commentary: On Deuteronomy

Yefet’s commentaries on the Hebrew Bible, written in Judeo-Arabic (or Arabic), combine rationalist theology, linguistic exegesis, and anti-Rabbanite polemic. Citing the biblical statement that the Torah was an inheritance for the entire congregation of Jacob (Deuteronomy 33:4), here Yefet challenges the rabbinic view that there was a second revelation, the Oral Torah, that only a select few originally knew. Karaites argued that the Oral Torah was not unanimously accepted by the Jewish people; that by writing it down, Rabbanites violated God’s alleged command to keep it unwritten; and that the rabbinic tradition is full of contradictions. Yefet concludes by arguing that, contrary to the position of Se‘adya Ga’on, the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud in fact engaged in jurisprudential reasoning, using their intellects to produce law. Yefet argues that early Karaites acted in the same way, portraying them—and not the geonim—as the true successors of the ancient rabbis.