Antisemitism History: Elephantine, Blood Libel & Christian Anti-Judaism

Elephantine attack (410 BCE)

Egyptian priests of Khnum, cooperating with Persian governor Vidranga, destroyed the Jewish temple of YHW.

Functionalist theory of antisemitism

Antisemitism serves a purpose for those expressing it, such as scapegoating a minority or strengthening power.

Functionalist explanation of the Elephantine attack

Jews became scapegoats for frustration with Persian rule, while destroying their temple strengthened Khnum priests and removed a rival cult.

Historicist theory of antisemitism

Antisemitism changes across time and place and must be explained through specific political, religious, economic, and social contexts.

Historicist explanation of the Elephantine attack

Egypt was under Persian rule, Jews were allied with Persia, and local resentment plus the governor's absence and bribery helped enable the attack.

Essentialist theory of antisemitism

Jews are hated because of something inherent in them.

Essentialist explanation of the Elephantine attack

Some Egyptians viewed Jewish Passover sacrifices of rams or lambs as offensive because the ram was sacred to Khnum.

Eternalist theory of antisemitism

Hatred of Jews is constant and ahistorical, appearing in every time and place.

Limitation of eternalism in explaining Elephantine

Eternalism may place Elephantine in a long history of anti-Jewish violence but cannot explain why the attack happened specifically in 410 BCE.

Inverted Exodus narrative

A non-Jewish retelling of Exodus that portrays Jews as a diseased, impure group expelled from Egypt rather than people freed by God.

Origin of inverted Exodus narratives

Egypt during the Hellenistic/Ptolemaic period, beginning around the 3rd century BCE.

Authors of inverted Exodus narratives

Egyptian and Greek-speaking Egyptian writers, including Manetho, Lysimachus, Chaeremon, and Apion.

Josephus's account of inverted Exodus narratives

Against Apion.

Stereotypes in inverted Exodus narratives

Jews were accused of disease or leprosy, impurity, impiety, temple desecration, mocking Egyptian gods, hatred of outsiders, rebellion, and threatening the state.

Osarseph

A renegade priest identified with Moses who supposedly led the Jews out of Egypt in an inverted Exodus story.

Blood libel

The false accusation that Jews secretly murder non-Jews, later often Christian children, and use their blood for rituals or other religious purposes.

Earliest blood libel in the study guide

Apion's 1st-century CE accusation in Alexandria, preserved by Josephus in Against Apion.

Apion's blood libel accusation

Jews supposedly kidnapped a Greek stranger, fattened him in the Jerusalem Temple for a year, sacrificed him, ate his entrails, and swore hatred toward Greeks.

Apion

An Egyptian-Greek grammarian and anti-Jewish writer active in 1st-century CE Alexandria.

Vertical alliance

An alliance between a Jewish community and a ruler or elite, exchanging protection and privileges for services such as taxes, finance, administration, or military service.

Jewish communities and vertical alliances

Many Jewish communities had no alliance or only a weak one.

Benefits and risks of vertical alliances

Vertical alliances offered protection but could make Jews targets of resentment when rulers were unpopular, weak, or no longer needed them.

Risks created by vertical alliances

Jews could be blamed as agents of rulers and then attacked, heavily taxed, abandoned, or expelled.

Jewish influence on Christianity through scripture

Christians adopted the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament and interpreted it as prophesying Jesus.

Jewish influence on Christian beliefs

Christianity inherited Jewish monotheism, covenant, prophetic ethics, and messianic expectation; Jesus and his earliest followers were Jews.

New Israel

The Christian belief that the church had taken the place of the Jewish people in God's plan.

Negative images of Jews in the New Testament

Jews were portrayed as stubborn, rebellious against God, killers of prophets, hypocritical legalists, spiritually blind, separate from others, and hostile to non-Jews.

Deicide

The killing of God; Christians accused Jews of killing Jesus, whom Christians believed was God.

Deicide accusation in Christian tradition

The accusation that Jews were responsible for Jesus' death, often associated with Matthew 27:25: "his blood be upon us and upon our children."

Supersessionism

The belief that Jews rejected Jesus and were rejected by God, with the Christian church replacing them.

Satanic portrayals of Jews in early Christian writings

Jews were described in some writings as children of the Devil (John 8:44) or associated with a "synagogue of Satan" in Revelation.

Judas as a symbol

Greed and treachery because Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

Date and location of the Gospels

Around 70-100 CE in the Roman Empire and outside Judea, in places such as Syria and Asia Minor.

Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 CE)

Rome destroyed the Jerusalem Temple after the failed Jewish revolt, before the Gospels were written.

Political power during the writing of the Gospels

Rome held political power; Jesus had been crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

Reasons Gospel authors may have shifted blame for Jesus' death

Early Christians sought Roman tolerance and wanted to avoid appearing rebellious; conflict with other Jews also shaped their writing.

St. Augustine

A Christian theologian and bishop of Hippo in Roman North Africa who lived from 354 to 430 CE.

Augustine's justification for Jewish survival

Jewish scriptures and continued existence served as witnesses to Christian interpretations of prophecy; Jewish subordination represented the consequences of rejecting Christ.

Augustine's belief about the future of Jews

Jews would eventually convert at the end of time and therefore should not be killed.

1096 as a turning point in anti-Judaism

The First Crusade massacres of Jewish communities in the Rhineland, marking a major escalation of organized anti-Jewish violence.

Crusades

Papal-authorized military campaigns intended to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslims, with spiritual rewards for participants.

Deicide and First Crusade violence

Crusaders viewed themselves as avengers of Christ and treated Jews accused of killing Christ as enemies who should convert or be killed.

Apion's blood libel versus medieval blood libels

Apion's supposed victim was a Greek and the motive was hatred of Greeks; medieval versions usually involved Christian children and echoed the Crucifixion.

Christianity as the state religion and blood libel

The accusation shifted from Jews supposedly hating non-Jews to Jews supposedly repeating Christ's killing through violence against Christians.

Hostility to non-Jews in anti-Jewish stories

Jews were portrayed as hating or harming outsiders; Apion claimed they killed a Greek and swore hatred of Greeks.

Religious pollution or threat in anti-Jewish stories

Jews were depicted as impure, impious, or dangerous to the dominant religion; inverted Exodus stories accused them of desecrating Egyptian temples.

Social anxieties reflected in anti-Jewish stories

Anti-Jewish stories reflected authors' anxieties about their societies, including concerns about money, wealth, and Christian financial practices.

Stereotypes of Jewish men's bodies in medieval Christian Europe

Jewish men were falsely said to bleed or menstruate, smell foul, be diseased or deformed, and sometimes have horns or tails.

Alleged Jewish bleeding and deicide

Alleged Jewish bleeding was portrayed as punishment for killing Christ and was used to claim Jews needed Christian blood to cure their bleeding.

Purpose of medieval depictions of Jewish men

To portray Jews as inferior, spiritually blind, wicked, allied with the Devil, guilty of deicide, and untrustworthy.

Anti-Jewish ideas in medieval Christian art

Caricature, exaggerated features, special hats or badges, devilish symbols, and images of Christians triumphant and Jews humiliated.

Synagoga

A blindfolded figure with a broken staff symbolizing Judaism as blind to truth and superseded by the Church, often represented by triumphant Ecclesia.

Judensau

A medieval image showing Jews with a pig, used to demean and stigmatize Jews.

Hooked nose in medieval art

Initially used to signify ugliness, evil, and sin in figures such as devils, Pharaoh, Herod, and Christ's tormentors; artists later applied it to Jews portrayed as evil.

Jewish participation in the medieval European economy

Most Jews were not moneylenders; many were poor or worked other jobs, Jews were under 1% of the population, and Christians controlled land, trade, and major financial institutions.

Restrictions on medieval Jewish economic opportunities

Jews were excluded from landowning, many guilds, and public office; rulers could heavily tax Jewish lenders or seize their property.

Christian resentment of Jewish moneylending

Church rules banned interest among Christians, while Jewish lending was more visible and Jews were treated as outsiders supposedly exploiting Christians.

Christian rulers' financial benefit from Jewish moneylending

Rulers taxed profits and borrowed money from Jewish lenders, making lending part of a vertical alliance.

Historical reasons for the association between Jews and moneylending

Christian lending at interest was prohibited, Jews were excluded from many other occupations, Jewish law permitted lending to non-Jews, and rulers encouraged and taxed it.

Greed stereotype

The stereotype that Jews were naturally greedy; the association with lending resulted from specific religious rules, occupational restrictions, and economic conditions rather than an inherent trait.

Judas

greed, and moneylending, Judas symbolized greed and treachery because he betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver; his name was associated with Jews, and the stereotype was reinforced by moneylending associations.

Conversos

Jews in Spain and Portugal who converted to Christianity voluntarily or under pressure, and their descendants; also called New Christians.

Conversos after the 1391 riots

Many Jews in Iberia were pressured or forced to convert following anti-Jewish riots in 1391.

Doctrine of Purity of Blood (limpieza de sangre)

The belief that Christian status depended on ancestry, so descendants of Jews or Muslims had tainted blood even after baptism.

First purity-of-blood statute

Enacted in Toledo, Spain, in 1449.

Other groups considered to have tainted blood in 15th-century Spain

Muslims (Moors) and descendants of Muslim converts (Moriscos), in addition to Jews and Conversos.

Methods for determining "pure" blood

Genealogy, baptism and Church records, witness testimony, neighbors' accounts, gossip, and rumor rather than scientific testing.

Consequences of being labeled as having impure blood

Exclusion from offices, universities, military orders, guilds, and professions; stigma, suspicion from the Inquisition, and reduced marriage and social opportunities.

Racial anti-Judaism in 15th-century Spain

Ancestry-based discrimination that treated Jewishness as inherited and permanent even after conversion, written into law and enforced through genealogy.

Expulsion of Jews from Spain (1492)

The expulsion of Jews who refused to convert to Christianity under the Alhambra Decree issued by Ferdinand and Isabella.

Justification for the 1492 Spanish expulsion

Ferdinand and Isabella claimed Jews were leading Conversos back to Judaism and that contact with Jews threatened the Christian faith of New Christians.

Historicist theory (reflection)

Antisemitism takes different forms in different times and places and must be explained through specific political, religious, economic, and social conditions.

Historicist explanation of purity-of-blood laws

Mass conversion made religious difference less useful as a distinction, so ancestry became a basis for discrimination amid resentment, suspicion of Conversos, and the goal of religious unity.

Historicist explanation of the medieval moneylender stereotype

Church bans on Christian interest lending, Jewish exclusion from other occupations, and rulers' financial interests helped associate Jews with moneylending.

Historicism versus essentialism

Historicism explains antisemitism through specific historical circumstances; essentialism claims Jews are hated because of something inherent in them.

Historicism versus eternalism

Historicism explains how antisemitism changes by context; eternalism treats anti-Jewish hatred as constant and ahistorical.