| Christianity and Judaism developed robust, parallel traditions of magic-use accusations as a means of discrediting or otherwise criticizing one another. Yet far from creating a new dynamic in their employment of magic-use accusations, they in fact adopted and adapted two pre-existing dynamics. The ancient pagan peoples of the Mediterranean had a vibrant tradition of criticizing -- even slandering -- the Jewish people long before Christianity came into existence. Likewise, the ancient Mediterranean pagans developed their own tradition of polemics against Christianity per se, arguably before Christianity really had become a religion distinct from its Jewish origin. Christian anti-Jewish and Jewish anti-Christian rhetoric had their roots in pagan anti-Jewish and anti-Christian rhetoric, especially when it came to accusations of magic use. Such accusations abounded in the ancient Mediterranean, so common that they were incorporated into the most famous writings of Plato and the foundational tables of Roman law. The word "magic" had its roots in the military conflict between two ancient Mediterranean military powers, almost every synonym of "magic" seems to have carried a deeply negative connotation, and whole peoples were written off as inherently dangerous because they were perceived to be inherently sorcerous. Just as the Christian anti-Jewish blood libel has lived on into the 21st century C.E. among modern Muslims, the very accusations lobbed by Jews at Christians, and by Christians at Jews, were all-too-often mere restatements of or elaborations on those already being made by Hellenistic and Roman accusers, first against foreigners in general, then against supposedly-untrustworthy locals, then against Jews and Christians in particular. |
