this particular matter with the jurist So-and-so,’ and they call that voice (1) “Bath Qol.”

When the Qara’ites saw through this impossible lie they declared, “These people are flagrant sinners; it is not permissible to accept the report (2) or the legal opinion of a transgressor.” They therefore rejected everything those rabbis had established that is not expressly stated in the Torah’s text.

As for the inanities their jurists—whom they call the hakhamim—had composed about the rules of slaughter, systematized, and attributed to God, the Qara’ites discarded them all and annulled them. Consequently they do not pronounce anything they themselves slaughter to be unlawful. They, too, have jurists with written works, yet they go to extremes in lying about God; they are mere literalists, whereas the earlier group rely on deduction and analogy.

The second faction are called the Rabbanites. They are the more numerous, and among them are the hakhamim (3) who fabricate lies about God, claiming that He addresses all of them on every issue with the voice they term “Bath Qol.”

This group is the most hostile of the Jews toward other peoples, for the hakhamim have convinced them that only meat slaughtered according to the special conditions they have laid down is lawful—conditions unknown to the rest of mankind and peculiar to them, a distinction they are told God granted them as an honor. As a result, each of them looks upon anyone outside his sect the way one looks at a beast, and views that person’s slaughtered animals as if they were carrion.