Christian and Jewish polemics both delegitimized rivals by branding their miracles as black magic.

Evidence

The Toledoth makes no attempt to deny Christian claims that Jesus performed miracles; rather, it illegitimizes them by branding them as sorcery, black magic. As Mary Douglas has noted, many societies draw the distinction between beneficial magic, performed by and for the authorities of the “in” group, and harmful, black magic, performed by outsiders in an attempt to disrupt order and authority. In this the Toledoth Yeshu bears striking parallels to the Christian legends of Simon Magus—and to twelfth-century Christian portrayals of Muhammad (see chapter 6). — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 153

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing Islamophobia-genealogy vault — the magic-vs-miraculous accusation pattern here later recurs directly in Christian portrayals of Muhammad.
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the genealogical grounding goal: the black-magic delegitimization frame is a cousin mechanism to the complaints about the other’s religion as fraud explored in the vault.