I said-As far as Christianity is concerned, it was obviously born in the Levant, but the Catholic Church was born precisely in opposition to Judaism and Islam, which are religions that can be considered "Levantine "-In any case, this is not the subject of this thread.
1-Islam began with the preaching of Muhammad in 622 A.D. in Mecca
2-Christianity entered Iberia during Roman times,
3-In 587, the Gothic king Recaredo I converted to Catholicism, which, after the III Council of Toledo in 589, became the state religion and freedom of worship was not tolerated. At that time most of the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula were pagans, especially in the north, Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias, north of Castile, and had constant wars with the Goths.
4-The Muslim invasion of 711 made the northern kingdoms adopt Catholicism as one more of their signs of identity. This means that at least in Iberia, Catholicism was adopted by the majority of the population as a national reaction to Islam.
Then I should have been more precise in my sentence and should have said-“As far as Christianity is concerned, it was obviously born in the Levant, but the Catholic Church was adopted as national religion in Iberia in opposition to Judaism and Islam, which are religions that can be considered "Levantine "-In any case, this is not the subject of this thread.
Regarding the comments about the Jews, I don't think that the rest of the European countries have been more tolerant than the Spaniards (maybe the Portuguese, Italians and Greeks). In Spain the history is more complicated because not only were they always considered responsible for the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, but also because they betrayed the Goths by handing over important cities to the Muslims and when the Reconquista advanced, they became usurious lenders (they not only lent to the Christian farmers, they also collected taxes for the nobles, financed wars and lent to the kings). The interest rates were onerous, and pride prevented them from recognizing the hatred people had against them. The result was the expulsion of 1,492, although racist acts against them have been documented since the 11th century (in fact, they always lived in separate neighborhoods and had their own laws).I particularly think that the expulsion took place for economic (the Catholic kings were ruined after centuries of fighting against the Moors, in fact some Jews financed the voyage of discovery of America) and social reasons (mainly envy for the wealth accumulated by the Jews) - In my village lived 22 Jewish families, their property was confiscated and sold (at very low prices, demonstrating the greediness of Christian ***ers) and all of them went to Portugal within the period stipulated in the decree of expulsion
Despite the attempts of many leftist politicians to make us believe that Spain was an example of coexistence of the three great cultures, the truth is that relations were never good or exemplary. It has been a long time since the Spaniards have asked forgiveness to the Jews for the expulsion, their descendants can opt for the Spanish nationality and in many cities of Spain there are monuments of great philosophers, writers, doctors, mathematicians etc... (Jews and Muslims) who are considered as our countrymen in spite of the racial and religious differences.
And regarding genetics, the truth is that the Jewish/Levantine contribution to Iberian genetics is close to zero in terms of both uniparental markers and autosomal DNA. Before the "genetic boom" we Spaniards thought we were very similar to Italians, now it has been demonstrated that this is only partially true because we are very similar to northern Italians and southern French, but the genetic distances with southern Italians (and Greeks and Balkanites in general are very evident). In spite of being all Mediterranean peoples we have very different genetic histories.