In the early stages of the modern rewriting of medieval Jewish history, the sources most consulted and adduced were narrative. As the enterprise has matured, further source genres have been discovered and utilized, thus allowing for improved understanding of the medieval Jewish experience. Of late, the reliability of narrative sources has come under question, but at the same time these narrative sources have been utilized in new and creative ways. To be sure, both the questioning and the innovative utilization of medieval Jewish narrative sources have been profoundly influenced by similar tendencies among general medievalists, as they seek to refine their tools of historical reconstruction.
