A Jewish midrashic claim that Ishmael invented idols entered Christian encyclopedic tradition

Evidence

“The Jews say that it was Ishmael who first made an idol (simulacrum) of clay. The Gentiles however say that Prometheus first presented an idol he had made out of clay and that with him was born the art making idols and statues.” Here, too, Isidore is combining the classical scholarship of Lactantius with the biblical exegesis of Jerome. Jerome, in turn, probably relied on Jewish exegetes for some of whom Ishmael made the first idols and for this was expelled from the house of his father Abraham. Paganism, for Isidore, is idolatry, the worship of images; these images are inhabited by demons, and the devil himself encourages this pagan worship so as to turn men away from the worship of the divine name. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 130

Categorization

• XREF: Direct genealogical root for the later Christian trope of Muslims as idolaters/descendants of Ishmael the idol-maker — grounds the Anidjar/Aziz claims that Islam was framed as the archetypal other religion by Christian genealogy, not merely later polemic.
• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘gateway’ article framing: an anti-Ishmael slur (Ishmael made the first idol) carries through Jerome into Isidore, prefiguring medieval Christian readings of Muhammad and Muslims.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did this ‘Ishmael the idol-maker’ traditio n that Jerome got from Jewish exegetes persist and mutate down into later anti-Islamic polemic (e.g., in Byzantine or crusade-era texts)?