ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the ancient origins of the Jewish people, as recounted in the Bible, and addresses the question of how they came to occupy a pariah social status in the course of world history. It considers the emergence of Christianity and Christian anti-Semitism and the paradox of the Enlightenment's emancipation of the Jews, reserving coverage of the Church's response to and complicity in the Holocaust. The chapter examines the emergence of biological racism and racial anti-Semitism, including the rise of the eugenics movement and the manner in which eugenics was applied by the Nazis. It provides a distinction between religion as a theological system of thought and action, and social science as a secular examination of religion as a social institution and ritualistic practice. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the historical legacy of Christian anti-Semitism was given a new foundation through anti-Semitic interpretations of modern biological and anthropological research.
