Historiography and Historical Memory of Medieval Jews

Abstract

Based on historical documents and Jewish scholars’ textual researches, this paper attempts to demonstrate how Medieval Jews understood and recorded their own as well as world history, thus arguing for unconventional but continuous and contextualized historiographic activities that should not be belittled from the time of Josephus up to the sixteenth century. That very fact about Medieval Jews offers a natural and inherent reason for the abundant modern Jewish historiography that suddenly appeared after the sixteenth century and even the historical criticism of the Holy Scriptures that Spinoza proposed shortly after. Besides historiography, other channels of historical memory among Medieval Jews are also covered, which prove equally if not more important to their historical consciousness and national identity.