Toward the middle of the eighth century a dissenting sect—still in existence to-day—called Karaites, arose in Judaism. In order to give a philosophical tinge to their polemics with their opponents, they borrowed the dialectic forms of the Motekallamin, and even adopted their name (Mas'udi, in "Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Royale," viii. 349-351), and thus transplanted the Kalam gradually to Jewish soil, to undergo the same transformations there as among the Arabs. Saadia Gaon One of the most important early Jewish philosophers influenced by Islamic philosophy is Saadia Gaon (892-942). His most important work is Emunoth ve-Deoth (Book of Beliefs and Opinions). In this work Saadia treats of the questions that interested the Motekallamin so deeply—such as the creation of matter, the unity of God, the divine attributes, the soul, etc. — and he criticizes the philosophers severely. For Saadia creation is not problematic: God created the world ex nihilo, just as Scripture attests; and he contests the theory of the Motekallamin in reference to atoms, which theory, he declares, is just as contrary to reason and religion as the theory of the philosophers professing the eternity of matter. To prove the unity of God, Saadia uses the demonstrations of the Motekallamin. Only the attributes of essence (sifat-al-datiat) can be ascribed to God, but not the attributes of action (sifat-al-af'aliyat). The soul is a substance more delicate even than that of the celestial spheres. Here Saadia contradicts the Motekallamin, who considered the soul an "accident" (compare "Moreh," i. 74), and employs the following one of their premises to justify his position: "Only a substance can be the substratum of an accident" (that is, of a non-essential property of things). Saadia argues: "If the soul be an accident only, it can itself have no such accidents as wisdom, joy, love," etc. Saadia was thus in every way a supporter of the Kalam; and if at times he deviated from its doctrines, it was owing to his religious views; just as the Jewish and Muslim Peripatetics stopped short in their respective Aristotelianism whenever there was danger of wounding orthodox religion. Neoplatonic philosophy Jewish philosophy entered upon a new period in the eleventh century. The works of the Peripatetics —Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna)—on the one side, and the "Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity"—a transformed Kalam founded on Neoplatonic theories—on the other side, exercised considerable influence upon Jewish thinkers