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of the world separated into the biblical sons of Noah: Semites, Hamites and Japhetites. Gatterer's Einleitung in die Synchronistische Universalhistorie (1771) explains his view that modern history has shown the truth of the biblical prediction of Japhetite supremacy (). Einleitung in die synchronistische universalhistorie, Gatterer, 1771. Described first ethnic use of the term Semitic by: (1) A note on the history of 'Semitic', 2003, by Martin Baasten; and (2) Taal-, land- en volkenkunde in de achttiende eeuw, 1994, by Han Vermeulen (in Dutch). Click the image for a transcription of the text.]]
Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group On the use of the terms “(anti-)Semitic” and “(anti-) Zionist” in modern Middle Eastern discourse, Orientalia Suecana LXI Suppl. (2012) by Lutz Eberhard Edzard: "In linguistics context, the term "Semitic" is generally speaking non-controversial... As an ethnic term, "Semitic" should best be avoided these days, in spite of ongoing genetic research (which also is supported by the Israeli scholarly community itself) that tries to scientifically underpin such a concept." Review of "The Canaanites" (1964) by Marvin H. Pope: "The term "Semitic," coined by Schlozer in 1781, should be strictly limited to linguistic matters since this is the only area in which a degree of objectivity is attainable. The Semitic languages comprise a fairly distinct linguistic family, a fact appreciated long before the relationship of the Indo-European languages was recognized. The ethnography and ethnology of the various peoples who spoke or still speak Semitic languages or dialects is a much more mixed and confused matter and one over which we have little scientific control." associated with people of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, including Akkadian Empire (Assyrian people and ), Arabs, Arameans, Canaanites (, Edomites, Israelites, Moabites, , and Philistines) and Habesha peoples peoples. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics. First used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen school of history, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem (שֵׁם), one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, together with the parallel terms Hamites and Japhetites.
In archaeology, the term is sometimes used colloquialism as "a kind of shorthand" for ancient Semitic-speaking peoples. Identification of pro-Caucasian racism has either partially or completely devalued the use of the term as a racial category, with the caveat that an inverse assessment would still be considered scientifically obsolete.
The transmission of the "color terminology" for race from antiquity to early anthropology in 17th century Europe took place via rabbinical literature, where the term "Semite" in a racial sense was coined. Specifically, Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer (a medieval rabbinical text dated roughly to between the 7th to 12th centuries) contains the division of mankind into three groups based on the three sons of Noah, viz. Shem, Ham and Japheth:
Jews were identified as a belonging to a subrace of the Semite greater race in this division of mankind. In Rabbi Eliezer and other rabbinical texts was it then received by Georgius Hornius (1666). In Hornius' scheme, Semites are "brownish-yellow" (flavos), and almost all Jews being neither black nor white but "light brown" (buxus, the color of boxwood), following Mishnah Sanhedrin, they accordingly are classified as Semites. Arca Noae, sive historia imperiorum et regnorum ̀condito orbe ad nostra tempora. Officina Hackiana, Leiden 1666, p. 37. Alias pro colorum diversitate commode quoque distinxeris posteros Noachi in albos , qui sunt Scythae & Japhetaei, nigros , qui sunt Aethiopes & Chamae, flavos , qui sunt Indi & Semaei. Ita Iudaei in Glossea Misnae tractatu Sanhedrin. fol. 18. dicuntur ut buxus, nec nigri nec albi, quales fere sunt omnes a Semo orti.
The term "Semitic" in a racial sense was coined by members of the Göttingen school of history in the early 1770s. Other members of the Göttingen school of history coined the separate term Caucasian race in the 1780s. These terms were used and developed by numerous other scholars over the next century. In the early 20th century, the pseudo-science classifications of Carleton S. Coon included the Semitic peoples in the Caucasian race, as similar in appearance to the Indo-European, Northwest Caucasian, and Kartvelian-speaking peoples.The Races of Europe by Carleton Stevens Coon. From Chapter XI: The Mediterranean World – Introduction: "This third racial zone stretches from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco, and thence along the southern Mediterranean shores into Arabia, East Africa, Mesopotamia, and the Persian highlands; and across Afghanistan into India." Due to the interweaving of language studies and cultural studies, the term also came to be applied to the religions (ancient Semitic and Abrahamic) and ethnic group of various cultures associated by geographic and linguistic distribution."Semite". Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.
In part he resented the French Revolution for leading to French Jewish emancipation and threatening the Germans' supposed rightful place in a racial hierarchy in which they were assessed as superior in all domains due to inheriting naturally-occurring higher purity of blood from their ancestors, yet already degenerating through indulgence in civilization's luxuries. Using a "bundle of notions" led to creations of purported subraces on a continental and state basis with implied decreased respective scientific weight. In 1772 he became extraordinary professor, and in 1775 full professor, of Weltweisheit, also at the University of Göttingen, when over the course of tenures he had the opportunity to join the Göttingen school of history of which he was a member.
The terms "anti-Semite" or "antisemitism" came by a circuitous route to refer more narrowly to anyone who was hostile or discriminatory towards Jews in particular.
of the 19th century such as Ernest Renan readily aligned linguistic groupings with ethnicity and culture, appealing to anecdote, science and folklore in their efforts to define racial character. Moritz Steinschneider, in his periodical of Jewish letters Hamaskir (3 (Berlin 1860), 16), discusses an article by Heymann SteinthalReprinted G. Karpeles (ed.), Steinthal H., Ueber Juden und Judentum, Berlin 1918, pp. 91 ff. criticising Renan's article "New Considerations on the General Character of the Semitic Peoples, In Particular Their Tendency to Monotheism".Published in the Journal Asiatique, 1859 Renan had acknowledged the importance of the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Israel etc. but called the Semitic races inferior to the Aryan for their monotheism, which he held to arise from their supposed lustful, violent, unscrupulous and selfish racial instincts. Steinthal summed up these predispositions as "Semitism", and so Steinschneider characterised Renan's ideas as "anti-Semitic prejudice".Alex Bein, The Jewish Question: Biography of a World Problem, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, p. 594, – quoting the Hebrew Encyclopaedia Ozar Ysrael, (edited Jehuda Eisenstadt, London 1924, 2: 130ff)
In 1879, the German journalist Wilhelm Marr began the politicisation of the term by speaking of a struggle between Jews and Germans in a pamphlet called Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum ("The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism"). He accused the Jews of being liberals, a people without roots who had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879, Marr's adherents founded the "League for Anti-Semitism",Moshe Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism, Oxford University Press, USA, 1987 which concerned itself entirely with anti-Jewish political action.
Characterizations of "Semite" as having little to no value on the socially constructed racial spectrum
Ethnicity and race
Categorization of racial groups by reference to skin color was common in classical antiquity."Among the Greeks and Romans who have provided the fullest description of blacks, the Africans' color was regarded as their most characteristic and most unusual feature. In this respect the ancients were not unlike whites of later generations who used color terms as a kind of shorthand to denote Africans and those of African descent." Frank M. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks, Harvard University Press, 1991, p. 7. For example, it is found in e.g. Physiognomica, a Greek treatise dated to c. 300 BC.
Antisemitism
German historian Christoph Meiners, supporter of the polygenist theory of human origins, became favorite intellectual ancestor of the Nazis. In his " binary greater racial scheme" of superior Caucasian race and inferior Mongoloids, Meiners did not include Jews as Caucasians and ascribed them a " permanently degenerate nature".Eigen, Sara. The German Invention of Race. Suny Press:New York, 2006. p.205 Other members of the Göttingen school of history would make the addition of Negroids.
(2025). 9780309700658, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. . ISBN 9780309700658 combined with its overuse due to popularization stemming from pro-Caucasian racism, as identification with antisemitism and as an antisemite was politically advantageous in Europe at least during the late 19th century—for example, Karl Lueger, the popular mayor of fin de siècle Vienna, skillfully exploited antisemitism as a way of channeling public discontent to his political advantage—thereby diluting anti-Judaism, have been made since at least the 1930s.
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