I am speaking of this resource: McDonald, Lee Martin. The Formation of the Biblical Canon. Vol. I & II. London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017.
I seriously considered not naming the offending source because McDonald is a very serious and usually reliable source of information on the formation of the canon of the Bible. But after considerable thought, I decided it was important to name the resource so you won't think "I don't need to double check N because we all know he is careful".
The beginning of the story: It started innocently enough. I ran into two sources that disagreed as to what canon the Sadducees accepted. One source said that they accepted only the first five books of the Torah, placing them with the Samaritans on the canon question. The other source said that the Early Church Fathers were erroneous in limiting the canon to five books. The Sadducees accepted the standard Masoretic canon -- what they rejected was the Oral Torah i.e. the Mishnah, Talmud ..., placing them with the Karaites on the canon question.
Act II: I discovered that some sources said that the Karaites accepted only the first five books and others said they accepted the entire Masoretic canon but rejected the Oral Torah.
On the trail to the truth: Fortunately unlike the Sadducees, the Karaites are still around ... in fact, there is a congregation in the Bay Area (San Francisco Bay for foreigners). I quickly ascertained:
- Karaites claim that their canon was set at about the same time as the Jewish lectionary of Torah readings was set (okay, this is irrelevant but you know I have to follow a lectionary rabbit trail).
- Karaites reject the Oral Torah
“Karaite Judaism or Karaism (also spelt Qaraite Judaism or Qaraism), is a Jewish religious movement characterized by the recognition of the Tanakh alone as its supreme authority in Halakha (Jewish religious law) and theology. It is distinct from mainstream Rabbinic Judaism, which considers the Oral Torah, as codified in the Talmud and subsequent works, to be authoritative interpretations of the 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.[1]
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Karaites were active in pointing the Masoretic text and preserving a canon of the Tanakh
“Because of this, a proper reading of the text depended on the oral tradition passed down from generation to generation. The origins of vocalization reflect differences between Babylon and Palestine. The Tiberian Masoretes (scholars working in Tiberias in Palestine) provided the most complete and exact system of vocalization. The earliest dated manuscript from that tradition is a codex of the Prophets from the Karaite synagogue of Cairo dated A.D. 896.” [2]
I could find no Rabbinic Jewish or Karaite Jewish site that gave the canon as a matter of division. There are disputes on the interpretation of the written law, the rejection of the oral law, the literal interpretation of Scripture etc. But absolutely nothing than even implied that the Karaites use anything other than the standard Masoretic text ...
The Crescendo: Unfortunately, McDonald, in the book referenced, four separate times refer to the Karaites as rejecting the prophets, like the Samaritans, disagreeing on canon ... Even when acknowledging that the Codex Cairensis by Moses ben Asher and pointed by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher was in the possession of a Karaite congregation, he ignores the debate among scholars that Aaron ben Moses ben Asher may have been a Karaite. McDonald gives as his source Abreham Wasserstein and David J. Wasserstein, The Legend of the Septuagint: From Classical Antiquity to Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 217-37 which says:
"For reasons which remain obscure, the Karaites separated themselves from the bulk of Jewry, probably in the ninth century. Somewhat like the Samaritans, they claimed that they followed only the sacred texts of Scripture and rejected such later writings as the Mishnah and the Talmuds."
IE. his reference does not support his statement. No, there is no absolute proof that McDonald is in error ... but there is plenty of proof that I can't take his word as trustworthy. He is still one of the best in the field ... and an object lesson in why you must always double and triple check. To not do so, is to set yourself up to believing and spreading that which is false.
[1] “Jewish Concepts” in Jewish Virtual Library: a Project of AICE. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/karaites accessed February 23, 2020
[2] Philip Wesley Comfort, ed., The Origin of the Bible (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2004), 175.