The wandering Jew was actually a myth derived from an earlier myth about a doorkeeper who struck Jesus and who later became a clergyman. During a period of rising anti Semitic ideology in the 1600s, they believe the story of the Wandering Jew originated, or was at least popularized. It spread most salient lay via a pamphlet about a minister who claimed to have met a Jew who taunted Jesus on his way to die and who was thereby cursed to never die.