Renan injected race into the old religious East-West dichotomy

Evidence

In the mid-nineteenth century, the public probably considered the French orientalist scholar Ernest Renan as the foremost authority on the Semites. Renan was instrumental in recharging the old East versus West / Muslim versus Christian dichotomy with the new content of race. The biblical Jew, who had previously been seen as the religious Other, now came to be understood also as Other by race. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 192