Historian Jules Isaac on Core Christian Theological anti–Semitism
“Consciously or subconsciously, anti–Semitism is profoundly rooted in Christianity….
It will be objected that anti–Semitism has always existed; but this argument has no solid historical foundation….
On the historical level there is nothing to justify the assertion that anti–Semitism was present from the beginning of Israel’s history. That a pagan anti–Semitism existed in antiquity is incontestable, but it turns out to have been much more localized in time and space than is generally believed.
The argument of “universal anti–Semitism” has no more historical foundation than that of “eternal anti–Semitism.” The Jews who were deported to Chaldea [Persian Gulf] in the sixth century BCE lived there quietly and prosperously for several centuries; Babylonia [geographic center of the Jewish Babylonian exile] became one of the principal [historic scholarly] centers of Judaism. The Jews who emigrated to China encountered no hostility….
