The Hebrew Bible never mentions Carthage, though the Septuagint translated the toponym Tarshish at Isaiah 23:1 as Karkhēdōn, the Greek term Josephus used in his Against Apion to denote Carthage. The term Tarshish also figures in the Book of Jonah, where Jonah, to evade God's mission that he preach in Nineveh, boards ship in Jaffa, and sails towards a city of that name. This led some to suggest that there too Carthage was his objective. Much modern research tends to the view, however, that the Tarshish here denotes the IberianTartessos.
Jewish settlement
A tradition conserved among the Jews of Djerba nearby states that the community was built of exiles after the destruction of the First Temple who had joined earlier Jews living there, that their El Ghriba synagogue has an equally ancient date, and that some of this community assisted the Phoenicians in establishing Carthage. One theory has espoused the idea that, with the destruction of Tyre and Sidon, and their daughter-city Carthage, there was created an orphaned Phoenician diaspora not unlike that of the Jews and that the puzzling disappearance of Phoenicians may have been due to the attraction they might have felt for a similarly dispersed people, leading to conversion to Judaism. A late source from the 10th century, Josippon, states that Titus had settled some 50,000 Jews in North Africa, and Ibn Khaldun, who himself came from Tunisia stated that a number of Berber tribes he had encountered had converted to Judaism. The Talmudim conserve the names of four rabbis of Carthage, with the Talmud Yerushalmi, mentioning Abba/Ba 4 times, and Hinena twice, though there is some dispute over the interpretation of these references, with one hypothesis suggesting the references must refer to the flourishing Jewish community in Cartagena in Spain. The French archaeologist A. L. Delattre uncovered a large Jewish necropolis, dating to the early 3rd century CE, at Gammarthconsisting of 105 chambers, each with roughly 15 loculi, which would have allowed burial for 1,500 people. The Jewishness of the site is proven by symbols of the menorah, shofar, lulav and etrog. The epigraphic evidence is predominantly in Latin, with one name, Tibereius, indicating a possible Israeli origin. The pagan funerary sign Dis manibus, elsewhere disliked by Jews, occurs in one inscription. The overall impression gained from this evidence is that Jews in and around Carthage shared with gentiles a common language, funerary formulae and ornamentation, differing only in theior recourse to synagogues, occasional use of Hebraic symbols and their separation at death by interment in a separate cemetery. Tertullian though at times venting his ire at Jews, stating that synagogues were 'fountains of persecution' and that Jews harassed Christians,- a suggestion for which there is no evidence from North Africa at that time- nonetheless in his remarks on the community at Carthage, also shows that they earned his grudging respect. Some accounts state that after Gaiseric sacked Rome, he took the holy vessels which Titus had looted from the Temple in Jerusalem with him to the new Vandal capital in Carthage, where the Byzantine generalBelisarius retrieved them when he won the city back in 533 C.E., and had them transported to Constantinople. When a wise Jew pointed out the danger of harbouring these vessels, which had brought downfall to Rome and Carthage. Justinian, it is said, was so unnerved he had them sent to Jerusalem where they were stored in a Christian church.
Quotation attributed to the Carthaginian rabbi Abba b.Isaac">Abba of Carthage">Abba b.Isaac
″From Tyre to Carthage, the nations know Israel and their Father Who is in heaven; but from Tyre westwards and from Carthage eastwards the nations know neither Israel nor their Father Who is in heaven″
