Case file
Anan ben David
In 2005 Wikipedia's first sentence called it “often considered to be the founder of the karaite movement”. Today it says “widely considered to be a major founder of karaite judaism”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since.
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The opening as it read in 2005
Anan Ben David is often considered to be the founder of the Karaite movement (a form of Judaism that split off from rabbinic Judaism due to its rejection of the oral law ), or at least the founder of one of the main groups forming the Karaite movement. However, later Karaite sages are highly critical of Anan, leading some to believe that he had no part in Karaism.1
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 16209631.
Today
In 2005 Wikipedia's first sentence called it “often considered to be the founder of the karaite movement”. Today it says “widely considered to be a major founder of karaite judaism”. Read the current article and compare.
| 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | Oct '23 | 2025 |
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What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2005, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
often considered to be the founder of the karaite movement
Now
widely considered to be a major founder of karaite judaism
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.