Quranism, Karaites, and Sola Scripture

This book has analyzed the validity of Islamic hadith and concluded quite easily given the clear proof available that the hadith are not valid sources of Islamic law. In other words, only the Quran, which all Muslims agree is the Word of God, can and should be used in Sharia (Islamic religious law). People who solely follow the Quran and reject any secondary sources such as the hadith are often labeled “Quranists” who follow a sect of Islam called “Quranism”. However, followers of the Quran and only the Quran do not necessarily call themselves Quranists as, for some, doing so would be a violation of verse 6:159 which forbids dividing religion into sects.

Karaite Judaism

Unsurprisingly, secondary religious sources aren’t limited to Islam. Whereas the hadith is a compilation of man-made sayings about Prophet Muhammad, the Talmud is a man-made text to complement the Jewish Torah. The Talmud has two components:

• Mishnah (circa year 200 CE): a written compendium of Rabbinic Judaism’s Oral Torah
• Gemara (circa year 500 CE): an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible

Rabbinic tradition holds that Moses learned the whole Torah while he lived on Mount Sinai for 40 days and nights and both the oral and the written Torah were transmitted in parallel with each other. Where the Torah leaves words and concepts undefined, and mentions procedures without explanation or instructions, the reader is required to seek out the missing details from supplemental sources known as the oral law or oral Torah. This concept is similar to the beliefs of most Islamic scholars who say that, whereas the Quran leaves words and concepts undefined, the reader is required to seek out missing details from supplemental sources, e.g. the hadith.

Rabbinic writings indicate that the Oral Torah was given to Moses at Mount Sinai, which, according to the tradition of Orthodox Judaism, occurred in 1312 BC. The Orthodox rabbinic tradition holds that the Written Torah (the Torah in the Tanakh) was recorded during the following forty years, though many non-Orthodox Jewish scholars affirm the modern scholarly consensus that the Written Torah has multiple authors and was written over centuries.

Karaite Jews recognize the Tanakh (which includes the written Torah) alone as having any authority in Halakha (Jewish religious law). Rabbinic Judaism, on the other hand, believes that the Oral Torah, codified in the Talmud, to be authoritative interpretations of the written Torah. Karaites maintain that all of the divine commandments handed down to Moses by God were recorded in the written Torah without additional Oral Law or explanation. As a result, Karaite Jews do not accept as binding the written collections of the oral tradition in the Midrash or Talmud. Karaites believe they observe the original religion of Ancient Israel as prescribed by God in the Tanakh. They place the ultimate responsibility of interpreting the Tanakh on each individual. Karaite prayer books are composed almost completely of Biblical passages. Karaite Jews often practice full prostration during prayers, like Muslims, while most other Jews no longer pray in this fashion. As of 2018, there were approximately 35,000 to 50,000 Karaite Jews in the world as compared to 14.5 million Jews in total.

Karaites do not accept the existence of an Oral Law because:

1. The Mishnah quotes many conflicting opinions.
2. The Mishnah does not define in which opinion the truth lies. Rather, the Mishnah sometimes agrees with neither one nor the other, contradicting both.
3. They argue that the truth of the oral law given to Moses could only be in one opinion, not many opinions.
4. They question why the Mishnah does not solely speak in the name of Moses.
5. They say that Oral Law is not explicitly mentioned in the Tanakh.
6. When God told Moses to come up to Mount Sinai to receive the Torah He said, “Come up to me into the mountain, and be there: and I will give you tablets of stone, and a law, and commandments that I have written”; (Ex 24:12). The text states the commands are written, and no mention is made of an Oral Law.
7. The Tanakh reports that the written Torah was both lost and completely forgotten for over 50 years and only rediscovered by the Temple priests (2Ki 22:8; 2Chr 34:15). It is inconceivable that an Oral Law could have been remembered when the written Law was forgotten.
8. The words of the Mishnah and Talmud are the words of people living in the 2nd–5th centuries CE, in contrast to the Torah, which is held to be a direct revelation by God through Moses.
9. The Torah states, “You shall not add to the word that I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of YHVH, your God, which I command you.” (Deut 4:2) They argue that this excludes the possibility of later interpretation being viewed as divinely ordained.
10. Joshua 8:34–35 states:

וְאַחֲרֵי־כֵן, קָרָא אֶת־כָּל־דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה, הַבְּרָכָה, וְהַקְּלָלָה — כְּכָל־הַכָּתוּב, בְּסֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה.לֹא־הָיָה דָבָר, מִכֹּל אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּה מֹשֶׁה — אֲשֶׁר לֹא־קָרָא יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, נֶגֶד כָּל־קְהַל יִשְׂרָאֵל וְהַנָּשִׁים וְהַטַּף, וְהַגֵּר, הַהֹלֵךְ בְּקִרְבָּם.
After that, he [Joshua] read all the words of the Torah, the Blessing and the Curse, according to all that is written in the Torah scroll. There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua failed to read in the presence of the entire assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that walked among them.

Since Joshua read from the Torah every word Moses had written, this implies that Moses had not been given an Oral Law, since Joshua could not have read an Oral Law from the written Torah. Secondly, there could not have been additional commandments outside of the written Torah, since all the commandments that existed could be read from the Torah scroll.

In addition to this, Joshua 1:8 states: “This book of the law is not to depart out of your mouth, but you are to meditate on it day and night, so that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it.”

Sola Scriptura View of Protestant Christianity

Sola Scriptura means “by scripture alone”. It is a theological doctrine held by some Christian denominations that the Christian scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith and practice. Sola Scriptura rejects any original infallible authority other than the Bible. Church councils, preachers, Bible commentators, private revelation, or even a message allegedly from an angel or an apostle are not an original authority alongside the Bible in the sola scriptura approach. Sola scriptura was one of the main theological beliefs that Martin Luther proclaimed against the Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation. Catholic doctrine is based in sacred tradition, as well as scripture. Martin Luther said, “a simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it” and “The true rule is this: God’s Word shall establish articles of faith, and no one else, not even an angel can do so.” Lutheranism teaches that the Bible of the Old and New Testaments, i.e. scripture, is the only divinely inspired book and the only source of divinely revealed knowledge.