What is the relation between traditional anti-Judaism, whose roots reach back very deep in history, and modern antisemitism? Whereas Hannah Arendt sought to avoid any confusion between these two historical phenomena, the present article aims to show some continuities between the two, without adopting a teleological vision which obscuscates the differences. When it posits that the reconciliation of society or even the redemption of the entire social body requires the overcoming and exclusion of Jews, antisemitism betrays a deep continuity with the kind of anti-Judaism which Luther, like many other Christian thinkers, promoted. Modernity inherits and transforms older themes which remain quite powerful and influential. An effort is thus needed to consider these threads which are present in our culture.