The Jews set themselves apart from the Pagan community by not acknowledging other gods, not marrying pagan women, and not being able to even eat at their neighbor's house due to the kosher laws (Praeger83, Siegel et al.124). The seed of hatred was thus planted and fed. .
Christian Anti-Semitism .
Christianity was soon conceived, giving rise to the second monotheistic religion, and a very bitter relation formed. Now, originally, Christianity was a sect of Judaism, as Jesus was Jewish, all twelve apostles were Jewish, and Jesus only preached to Jews. Christianity had enough of its own followers to break away from Judaism and create its own religion. Christians had to dissociate from Jews entirely though: they wanted to make it clear to Roman Pagans that they were a separate religion. Because Christianity trying to break away from Judaism, tensions between the religions rose. These tensions soon escalated to Anti- Semitism and those who wrote the New Testament (which was written over one hundred years after the death of Jesus) were culturally biased against the Jews. Thus accusations of "Christ Killers" and "devils offspring" were hurled at the .
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Jews. These accusations were written to appease Rome. It was Roman men who nailed Jesus to the cross, and they were in Roman territory, and the cross is the normal form of Roman execution (Sterling). The entire act of the killing Jesus was committed by Rome but changed in the New Testament to read that it was the Jews who killed Jesus, because Rome was now the main Christian state under the rule of Constantine, and the Christians were obligated to exonerate the Romans for any responsibility of the killing of Jesus (Sterling). Later in the Middle ages Jews were widely accused of starting the bubonic plague, despite the fact that the Jews also had the plague. Jews were also famous for "ritual murder". Over 150 Jewish communities were convicted of ritual murder with hundreds of innocent Jewish fatalities (Praeger et al.