Joseph ben Abraham (Hebrew: יוסף בן אברהם הכהן, also known by the Arabic name Yusuf al-Basir[1]) was a Karaite Jewish philosopher and theologian who flourished in Lower Mesopotamia or Persia in the first half of the eleventh century.
Of these the most important is the Muhtawi, translated from the Arabic into Hebrew, perhaps by Tobiah ben Moses, under the title Sefer ha-Ne'imot or Zikron ha-Datot.
It was translated into Hebrew, with some additions, by Tobiah ben Moses under the title Mahkimat Peti (Oxford, Leiden, Paris, St. Petersburg).
The Mahkimat Peti (xxiii) is quoted, under its Arabic title Al-Mansuri, by Joseph ibn Tzaddik about God's sufficiency; ibn Tzaddik also criticizes the Mu'tazili theory adopted by Joseph ben Abraham (xxvii) concerning the reward reserved in the next world for animals and children in return for the sufferings inflicted upon them in this world ( 'Olam Katan, ed.
They are divided into eight chapters, in which Joseph discusses the arguments used by Samuel ben Ḥofni against the Karaites regarding the neomenia and the celebration of the Feast of the Bikkurim (first fruits).
Joseph is supposed to have been the author also of: Tzidduk ha-Din, on eschatology; She'elot u-Teshubot (Arabic, Mas'ail wa-Jawa'ib), containing thirteen philosophical questions addressed to Jewish and non-Jewish scholars; and Peri Tzaddiḳ, a chapter on theodicy.
He reformed the Jewish views on incest, having protested against exaggerations of the scope of the hermeneutic rule of analogy by which the successors of the amora Anan had prohibited intermarriage between the most distant relatives.