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Notes -
They're not just any tribe that refused to convert. They're the tribe(s). They had the books first. Both Christians and Muslims appeal to the antiquity of Jewish religion to justify theirs (Muslims claim that Allah sends a prophet to all people and yet most all of the "canon" examples cited in the Qur'an are Jewish or draw from Jewish myth)
If you truly are God's chosen prophet/Messiah and you were spoken of in past Scriptures, why do the people who've held those scriptures for centuries reject you? The gentiles will ask.
It's simply a theological and political problem that requires an answer and the easiest answer is to discredit and attack the Jews themselves. As they themselves did to their less monotheistic/faithful brethren.
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