Islamic Influences on the Emergence of Historical Sensibilities among the Karaites: The Story of the Tower of Babel

Traditional Jewish interpretations of the story of the tower of Babel, as preserved in various midrashic collections, concentrated on sins committed by the builders on account of which they deserved divine punishment. The main purpose of such an approach was to draw from the scriptural account a moral lesson, regardless of the historicity of the narrated events, their dating, chronology, etc. In contrast, medieval Karaites living in the lands of medieval Islam shifted the main focus of their exegetical interest in this text to history, including the history of the text. Exploring historicizing tendencies in medieval Karaite commentaries on this biblical narrative, this essay ponders the seemingly simple question of what made the Karaite exegetes of the time discover history and read biblical stories as true histories. It demonstrates how the exegetes' novel approach to Scripture may have resulted from their engagement with the surrounding Muslim culture, which was concerned with establishing the historical context of the qur'anic revelation and investigating the reasons and circumstances of revelation (asbāb al-nuzūl). Tracing specific Islamic influences on the Karaites' reading of the story of the tower of Babel, the essay argues that they can be detected not in direct borrowings of specific interpretations, but on a meta level, owing to differences between Muslim and Jewish conceptualizations of revelation, which engendered diverging exegetical responses to Scripture in the two religions. Finally, the essay addresses the question of the Karaites' contribution to the history of Jewish exegesis of this chapter.