[330] Benjamin relates that
the doctrine was held by a Jewish sect known as the Maghariya, which
probably sprang up in the fourth or the fifth century, when sects grew
like mushrooms. The Karaite al-Kirkisani, who wrote fifty years later,
says that the Maghariya sect used in support of their doctrine the
"prolegomena of an Alexandrian sage" who gave certain remarkable
interpretations of the Bible; and in one of Dr. Schechter's Genizah
fragments, which is probably to be ascribed to Kirkisani, there are
contained examples of the Alexandrian's explanations of the Decalogue,
which occur, and occur only, in Philo's treatise on the "Ten
Commandments."
This connection between Philo and an obscure Jewish sect, or an
obscurer Persian-Jewish writer, may appear far-fetched and not worth
the making. In itself doubtless it is unimportant, but it serves to
keep Philo, however barely, within Jewish tradition. For it shows that
Alexandrian literature, though probably through the medium of a
Mohammedan source, was known to some Jews in the centuries of
transition. It may be that further examination of the great Genizah
collection, which has opened to Jewish scholarship a new world, will
reveal further and stronger ties to unite Philo with his philosophical
successors, of whom the first is Saadia Gaon (892-942 C.
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