There is probably no work in which the Halachic or legalistic side of this sect is better described than in this volume of Weiss. I regret that I am unable to enter into its details. But I cannot refrain from pointing to one of the main principles of the Caraites. This was “Search the Scriptures.” Now this does not look very dissimilar from the principle held by the Rabbis. For what else is the Talmud, but a thorough searching through the Bible for whatever was suggestive by time and circumstances? The light which the Caraites applied to the searching of the Scriptures was the same which illumined the paths of the Rabbis’ investigations. They employed most of the expository rules of the Tannaite schools. The fact is that they were only determined to find something different from what the Rabbis found in the Scriptures. They wanted to have gloomy Sabbaths and Festivals, and discovered authority for it in the Bible; they wanted to retain most of the dietary laws which had their root only in Tradition, but insisted on petty differences which they thought might be inferred from the Scriptures, and they created a new “order of inheritance,” and varied the forbidden degrees in marriage, in all which the only merit was that they were in contradiction to the interpretation of the Rabbis. They also refused to accept the Liturgy of Rabbinical Judaism, but never succeeded in producing more than a patch‐work from verses of the Bible, which, thus recast, they called a prayer‐book. There were undoubtedly among their leaders many serious and sincere men, but they give us the impression of prigs, as for instance, Moses Darai, when he reproaches the Rabbinical Jews for having an “easy religion,” or Israel Hammaarabi, when he recommended his book on the laws regarding the slaughtering of animals, as having the special advantage that his decisions were always on the more stringent side. Those who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land were by the Caraites canonised as “mourners.” The Rabbanite R. Judah Hallevi also visited the ruins of Jerusalem, but he did something more than “mourn and sigh and cry,” he became a God‐intoxicated singer, and wrote the “Zion‐ Elegy.” The novel terminology which they use in their exegetical and theological works, was only invented to spite the Rabbanites, and marks its authors as pedants. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that their opponents did not employ the best means to conciliate them. The Middle Ages knew no other remedy against schism than excommunication, and the Gaonim were the children of their time. Nor were the arguments which the latter brought forward in defence of Tradition always calculated to convince the Caraites of their error. When R. Saadiah, in his apology for the institution of the Second Day of the Festival,(154) went the length of assigning to it a Sinaitic origin, he could only succeed in making the Caraites more suspicious of the claims of Tradition than before. In a