Anti-semitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present

P REFACE TO THE
PAPERBACK E DITION
In researching and writing Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the
Present, it was our intention to discuss the evolution, nature, and meaning of
historic and contemporary antisemitic myths that have denigrated Jews and
Judaism. While relying on the best scholarship, we tried to make the book accessible
to students and the general reader. Since its publication in December
2002, Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present has received numerous
favorable reviews, none more pleasing to us than Derek H. Davis’
generous assessment in The Journal of Church and State (9/2003):
In spite of the thousands of books that one can read on antisemitism, it is
often difficult to find a book suitable for students that describes lucidly and
competently antisemitic delusions and myths as both a logical absurdity and
also a force that has shaped much of the history of the last two thousand
years. This book qualifies in these respects unlike any book I have ever seen. I
am confident that others will find it similarly useful.
Reviewers’ comments, recent literature in the field, and current outbreaks
of antisemitism, have led us to rethink sections of our work. We welcome the
opportunity in this preface to the paperback edition to provide a brief afterword
to some of the major themes treated in the book. In presenting the sensitive
topic of the relationship of Christian antisemitism with the Holocaust, we
took the position that a distinction has to be drawn between traditional Christian
antisemitism, which attributed the evilness of Jews to their religion and
sought their conversion, and racial nationalism, which claimed that Jews, even
those who had converted to Christianity, were indelibly stained by their genes.
Nevertheless, along with other scholars, we concluded that centuries of Christian
denigration and persecution of Jews had led many Europeans to accept at
face value the Nazi myth that Jews were inherently evil. In particular the two-