Contemporary Historiography of the Jews of Ancient North Africa

Abstract

This paper aims to offer a synthesis on the historiography of the Jews in Ancient North Africa, from the first study devoted to this subject published in 1818 to nowadays. A first part presents chronologically the various studies on this topic, which has mainly retained the interest of the historians between the 1880s and the 1910s and since the 1960s. A second part pays attention on the two opposite visions of the African Jews conveying by these studies. The last part presents the new research perspectives on the African Jews since the 2000s, and especially some studies which have contributed to call into question the idea that the African Jews would have practised a kind of rabbinic Judaism as early as the end of the 2nd century CE.