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"The State of Israel considers them Jews, and Karaites are eligible under the law of return, but they are listed as Karaites on their ID cards."

I would think this statement by ChicagoHebrew is either true or not true, and could somewhat easily be researched to find out, Cinnamon Girl. Chicago's point is that the Karaites have a direct lineage to the ancient Israelites, and therefore aren't some group that just out of the clear blue sky to call themselves Karaites and consider themselves Jews. Their beliefs come from a distinct history that like the Orthodox Eastern Christians as vs. the Western Roman Christians, ended up in schism with other of their religious heritage at some point in history. However, both consider themselves either as Jews or as Christians.

Whether Orthodox Jews consider Karaites to be Jews or not is somewhat beside the point. How does the State of Israel treat them and consider them as to being Jewish? How do they consider themselves? Do they have a direct historical basis for their beliefs that, as far as I can see from what I've read here, pre-dates the need for belief in the oral tradition (Talmud) part of Judaism which ended up being the predominant belief system of most Jews. That doesn't negate what was the belief of those that came before the split between Jewish sects.

There are a lot of Christians that want to make a direct split between Judaism and Christianity, basically denying there is any connection between the two, even though there is a direct lineage of one flowing out of the other. I've been in quite a few verbal debates about this recently, with some friends who are basically pre-Vatican II types, and who believe that Paul took Christianity in an entirely different direction from Judaism, and therefore there was a split of such magnitude between the two, that they are now totally unrelated. Also usually thrown into the mix is the Jews killed Christ line of thought.

My own beliefs are that there is a direct flow from Judaism to Christianity, and from reading here, that there is a direct flow from the Karaites' beliefs to the current Judaic beliefs. Each religion chose different stopping points though in their beliefs. Karaites chose as their stopping point the validity of only the 5 books of the Old Testament. Jews add the oral tradition but chose as their stopping point the denial that Christ is the Messiah, so Judaism stops and Christianity starts. Christians use Christ's martyrdom (and, among some say his murder by Jews) as their same stopping point for the end of Judaism and the beginning of Christianity as a separate and distinct religion. Muslims take a bit from both, mix it up and bastardize it to make it their own, and say their stopping point is when all Christians and Jews are either dead or dhimmi's. It's all pretty interesting and is a good example of why religion has been argued over from whenever it was man was capable of doing so. And we haven't even touched other world religions and their beliefs, have we? So many religions, so little time.