Through the study of two Arabic texts written by Palestinian Sephardic Jews in early 20th century Cairo, this paper offers a methodological discussion of the uses of Jewish apologetic literature as a source for scholarship on the Jewish-Arab encounter in the fin de siècle. The two texts, Shimon Moyal’s At-Talm?d (The Talmud) and Nissim Malul’s Asr?r al-Yah?d (Secrets of the Jews), were both directed at non-Jewish, Arabic-reading audiences and aimed to defend the Jews and, especially, Judaism against defamatory accusations. Beyond analyzing these two texts, this paper seeks to address the following broader questions: in what ways can Arabic Jewish religious apologetics be used as sources for constructing not just the intellectual history but also the social and cultural history of Jewish-Arab (or Jewish-Christian-Muslim) relations? The paper employs two points of reference: one synchronic and the other diachronic. From a synchronic perspective, the paper relates the study of these apologetic texts to the study of the those written contemporaneously in Europe. In what respects might insights from the extensive scholarship on modern Jewish apologetics in the European Christian context be applied to this literature written in a Muslim-majority land? How does the fact of the presence of not one, as in Europe, but two major religious communities—Christians and Muslims—among the target audience impact the way in which this literature is understood? (Or, to the extent that Catholics and Protestants in Europe were perceived and addressed distinctly in this literature, how does the Middle Eastern situation compare?) From a diachronic perspective, the paper considers the way in which the study of this early 20th century apologetic literature must be related to the study of medieval and early modern Jewish-Muslim apologetics and the extent to which the very different contemporary political and intellectual circumstances in which this new apologetic literature was produced—British-occupied Egypt, with Zionism in the authors’ native Palestine explicitly in mind—should affect our interpretation of the sources.