Le rôle de la littérature karaïte dans l'histoire de la littérature juive au Xe siècle

When and where did Arabic interference with Jewish literature under Muslim rule first occur ? Against a received view which, based on a narrow definition of "literature", places the earliest Jewish contacts with Arabic literature in Spain, it is argued here that these contacts began in fact in the Muslim East. A consideration of the overall Jewish literary output in the first half of the tenth century shows that Rab-banite literature was governed by strongly entrenched models for text production. No new literary material could be admitted in a Rabbanite text unless it be molded after the classical models and make use of items from the traditional repertoire. Rabbanite literature thus displayed definite symptoms of stagnation. The Karaites, in contrast, motivated by a complete negation of Rabbanite ideology and a desire to supplant its entire literary institution, were in search of new models of writing. The quest for fresh, unused models led them to the large repertoire of Arabic literature, which was readily accessible in their culture. Sa'adya Gaon fought to refute Karaite ideology, using the very same writing models as the Karaites themselves. In so doing he offered Rabbanite literature the option of using reworked writing models appropriated from the Arabic, an option that had been closed to the Rabbanites as long as these models had been associated exclusively with the Karaites. Yet the significance of Sa'adya Gaon' s literary activity must be assessed against that background of the Karaite literary activity. The introduction of this option for change and renewal into Jewish literature was the first major contribution of Karaite literature to the Jewish culture of the early tenth century. The second was that whereas formerly Rabbanite literature had been constituted mostly through writing down oral teachings, Karaite literature introduced writing as an official mode of text production. The third contribution of Karaite writing was the preparation of a language-setting for the new literary models, that is, the establishment of a division of functions between Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic as the languages of writing for Jewish literature

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