While Benjamin Nahavendi, as is generally acknowledged, deviated widely from the Jewish system with respect to religious philosophy, he approached the Rabbanites on the subject of morals; he adopted many Talmudical ordinances, and left it to the free choice of the Karaites to reject or adopt them as their standard. In order to enforce obedience to the laws, Benjamin Nahavendi introduced a species of excommunication, which differed only slightly from the excommunication of the Rabbanites. When an accused person refused to obey the summons served on him, and attempted to evade judgment, he was to be cursed on each of seven successive days, and then excommunication pronounced on him. The excommunication consisted in the prohibition of intercourse with all the members of the community, who also were forbidden to greet him, or to accept anything from him; he was to be treated in all respects like one deceased, until he submitted. If he obstinately disregarded the decree, it was lawful to hand him over to temporal justice. Although Benjamin Nahavendi inclined to Rabbanism on certain points, he adhered firmly, nevertheless, to the Karaite principle of unrestrained research in the Bible. One ought not to tie one's self down to the authorities, but to follow one's own conviction; the son may differ from the father, the disciple from the master, as soon as they have reasons for their different views. "Inquiry is a duty, and errors occasioned by inquiry do not constitute a sin." In the same manner as the orthodox Mahometan teachers of religion worked counter to the unrestrained subtlety of the Mutazilists, and, falling into the opposite extreme, conceived the divinity as possessed of a bodily form, so also did the Jewish adherents of the orthodox doctrine go astray, and, regarding the rationalistic innovation as a defection from Judaism, they conceived the most absurd ideas concerning the materiality of God. They even desired to accept in their most literal sense the Biblical expressions, "God's hand, God's foot, his sitting down, or walking about." The Agadic exposition of the Scripture, which occasionally made use of material, tangible figures, adapted to the comprehension of the people, promoted the acceptance of this anti-Jewish theory. This theory, the creation of an imbecile, gained adherents by reason of its mysterious nature. It gives a minute, corporeal description of the Deity, measures his height from head to foot by the parasang-scale, speaks in blasphemous detail of God's right and left eye, of his upper and lower lip, of his beard and of other members, which it would be sacrilegious even to mention. In order, however, not to prejudice the sublimity and majesty of God, this theory enlarges each organ to enormous proportions, and considers that justice has been done to the case when it adds that the scale by which the members are measured considerably exceeds the whole world (Shiur-Komah).