ABSTRACT
Although the term 'orthodoxy' is attached today to a current, or group of currents, within Judaism, it does not have a long history in Jewish usage. The issue between Orthodoxy and the various progressive currents has often come to focus less on specific questions of practice than on the whole theological issue of 'Torah from Heaven', the divine origin of the Bible and, for the Orthodox, the oral traditions embodied in the Talmudic literature too. In Britain, where an established state church co-exists with a variety of minority churches, a form of Orthodoxy enjoys a measure of establishment while a variety of minority groupings also thrive. The origins of Karaism have been traced back to various movements of protest against the consolidation of Rabbinic Judaism in Iraq after the canonisation of the Babylonian Talmud and the Arab conquest.
