Time to go back to the drawing board on your theories of the origins of anti-Semitism. For one thing (and I don’t have time right now to get into it very deeply), anti-Semitism was alive and well WAY before the time you specify.

Also, I missed the part where people developed anti-Italian/Lombardian-merchant-patriarchstism as a result of their involvement in the slave trade (and it’s a common assertion that Jews were over-involved in various slave trades, including the Atlantic one; the assertions are not true).

From my research, it goes back to Islamic slave raids, where Italian/Lombardian merchant patriarchs and Jews in Europe and the ME, helped in the selling of European slaves to Islamic Caliphs and harems.

Islam had a direct market for slaves, they would go raid for them directly. Then there was a secondary market, economic, where slaves in general were sold, to the highest bidder.

Europe’s DNA was built upon hatred and fear of Islam, and to a lesser extent the Vikings. The Vikings mellowed out pretty soon in Normandy, and converted to Christianity soon afterwards, by around 1000 AD.

Islam was significantly more virulent and aggressive in expansion.

Humans tend to fear foreign enemies, and begin hating them. But it was easier to develop a genetic hatred of Jews, who they could touch and kill, than to take on the Islamic war machine, which they could not even touch. They could only huddle in their fortified baronies and pray.

That’s my theory and research results, at least. Some of it is explained by epigenetics as well.

But it’s something he needed to hear. Preferably right before his head separates from his body.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/t08/t0814.htm#page_265

neo-neocon Says:
January 21st, 2016 at 3:00 pm

DNW:

Are you aware that there are many sites online that have fake Talmud quotes, designed to foster anti-Semitism? Unless you’ve studied actual Talmud with a bona fide Jewish Talmud scholar, be very very wary of what you read.”

No, I was not aware of that.

I am referring to material such as the texts used in class by adjunct professor Richard Hertz, then of Temple Beth El.

These were generally about the Talmud, rather than systematic studies from the inside, so to speak.

The aim of course was not training us to be Jews or Rabbinical students, (though as I recall all but two of the ten or so of us identified as Jews when the Prof queried) but only to familiarize us with the origin, foundation, and the overall character and tenor of the supposition framework, as illustrated by certain supposedly paradigm cases or excerpts.

We had a number of texts. One of the texts I happen to remember was a slim volume called “The World of the Talmud”, by Morris Adler. The title of the other, a large thick light blue paperback, escapes me at the moment.

These were viewed as mere supplemental materials. The lectures which were read, were primary.

Are you aware that there are many sites online that have fake Talmud quotes, designed to foster anti-Semitism? Unless you’ve studied actual Talmud with a bona fide Jewish Talmud scholar, be very very wary of what you read.

In general.”

I’d go to Tacitus on that.

I’d bracket Apion. The Alexandrian polemics are too fantastic, and based it seems to me on a program of envy.

And I think that he saw Jews as being identifiable in biological as well as cultural and social terms.

The Karaites, extensively commented on here, make an interesting case.

It illustrates, I think, the muddle; as well as how we non-Jews underestimate the centrality of the Talmud to what at present is considered more or less official Jewish identity and outlook. Most of us have not read it, and are staggered and somewhat dismayed when we are taken through it and some of the related literature.