The Karaite movement of Judaism was founded by ‘Anan
ben David in Mesopotamia in the middle of the eighth century
A.O. Its tenets were rejection of the Talmudic oral tradition,
a return to the Bible, the Old Testament, as the sole
source of Divine Law, and repudiation of the authority of
the exilarchic and Gaonic leadership. The Karaite reformation
was able to appeal also to other antinomian, “sectarian”
groups which had existed on the fringes of Judaism through
the ages and which possibly had connections with the Second
Temple period...