Why did Christian Europeans hate Jews?

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There is no reasonable interpretation of the Bible that would lead Christians to attempt to exterminate the Jews.

Greco-Roman pre-Christian anti-semitism:

"The Jews belong to a dark and repulsive force. One knows how numerous this clique is, how they stick together and what power they exercise through their unions. They are a nation of rascals and deceivers." - Cicero (106-43 BC)

“among themselves they are inflexibly honest and ever ready to show compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies” - Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117)

“the Jews swear by God, the Maker of heaven, earth, and sea, to bear no good-will to any foreigner, and particularly to none of the Greeks.” - Apion (20s BC - c. 45-48 AD)

Islamic anti-semitism:

"Whoever is a friend of a Jew, belong to them, becomes one of them, God cannot tolerate this mean people. The Jews have wandered from divine religion. You must not relent in your work which must show up Jewish deceit." - The Prophet Muhammad (570-632) the Koran

Deist anti-semitism:

"You will only find in the Jews an ignorant and barbarous people, who for a long time have joined the most sordid avarice to the most detestable superstition and to the most invincible hatred of all peoples which tolerate and enrich them." - Voltaire (1694-1778)

Atheist anti-semitism:

"This whole Jewish world, comprising a single exploiting sect, a kind of blood sucking people, a kind of organic destructive collective parasite, going beyond not only the frontiers of states, but of political opinion, this world is now, at least for the most part, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild on the other... This may seem strange. What can there be in common between socialism and a leading bank? The point is that authoritarian socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralisation of the state. And where there is centralisation of the state, there must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, speculating with the Labour of the people, will be found" - Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)

It's actually pretty straightforward. The fact of the matter is that the Christians until recently in history had strong laws and stronger scruples against charging interest on loans (usury). Where it wasn't entirely forbidden, there was a cap on how much interest you could charge. The irony is that this idea originated with the Jews. They just never really took it seriously because it's stupid.

Well, as a result, various morons would borrow themselves into the hole, and they of course developed a hatred toward the people they were indebted to (Jews).

Cultures that still have laws and scruples against usury, by the way, still tend to be infested with antisemitism, a la Islam.

In addition to the aforementioned jealousy (it's human nature to hate people that are more successful and productive than yourself), for the same reason neurotypicals hate Aspies--because they were bigoted pieces of garbage that could not stand anyone different from themselves.

I have a question - is disliking Judaism alone anti-Semitism? I mean people who dislike the tenets of Christianity and Islam are generally not considered bigots. What about someone who has nothing against people of Jewish ethnicity but dislike the religion? Would that make them anti-Semitic?

It's probably just that they are different and, to the contrary of many other "different" people, have always had a strange hability not to "merge" with (or into) other groups, so they remained always different, but within the European society.

Christians (and humans) have always maintained a very global tendency not to like or tolerate difference. Proof: they also hated, without much discrimination, Muslims, Pagans, heretics and schismatics of any possible variety (Valdeans, Arians, Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists, Catholics, sub-varieties of either, etc.), and strange old women (witch-hunts), not counting the patronizing attitude of the White man's burden because colonial powers did not actually kill indigenous people for the fun of it, in general.