in the ecclesiastical history of the Jews, a religious sect among that people, who adhere closely to the text and letter of the Scriptures, rejecting the rabbinical interpretations and the cabbala. The Caraites pass for the most learned of the Jewish doctors. They are chiefly to be met with in Poland, Muscovy, and the East; and are but few in comparison of the bulk of the Jews who are of the party of the rabbins. The latter have so great an aversion to the Caraites, that they will have no alliance or even conversation with them: they treat them as bastards; and would a Caraita turn rabbinist, the other Jews would not receive him.