Obsolete term for an ethnic group in the Middle East
This article is about the racial and ethnic term popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For the history of ancient groups who spoke Semitic languages, see ancient Semitic-speaking peoples.
Semitic people or Semites is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group[2][3][4][5] associated with people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.[6][7][8] First used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen school of history, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem (Hebrew: שֵׁם), one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis,[9] together with the parallel terms Hamites and Japhetites.
In archaeology, the term is sometimes used informally as "a kind of shorthand" for ancient Semitic-speaking peoples.[8]
^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).
^Liverani1995, p. 392: "A more critical look at this complex of problems should advise employing today the term and the concept "Semites" exclusively in its linguistic sense, and, on the other hand, tracing back every cultural fact to its concrete historical environment. The use of the term "Semitic" in culture, subject as it is to arbitrary simplifications, shows methodological risks which exceed by far the possibility of positive historical analysis. In any case the Semitic character of every cultural fact is a problem which in each situation must be ascenained in its limits and in its historical setting (both in time and in the social environment), and may not be assumed as obvious or traced back to a presumed "Proto-Semitic" culture, statically conceived."
^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 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."
^Glöckner, Olaf; Fireberg, Haim (25 September 2015). Being Jewish in 21st-Century Germany. De Gruyter. p. 200. ISBN 978-3-11-035015-9. ...there is no Semitic ethnicity, only Semitic languages
^Anidjar 2008, p. (Foreword): "This collection of essays explores the now mostly extinct notion of Semites. Invented in the nineteenth century and essential to the making of modern conceptions of religion and race, the strange unity of Jew and Arab under one term, Semite (the opposing term was Aryan), and the circumstances that brought about its disappearance constitute the subject of this volume."
^Anidjar 2008, p. 6: "To a large extent, or rather, to a quite complete extent, Semites were, like their ever so distant relatives – the Aryans – a concrete figment of the Western imagination, the peculiar imagination that concerns me in the chapters that follow. And just as the witches (the simultaneous efficacy and deep unreliability of "spectral evidence"), Semites were – I write in the past tense because Semites are a thing of the past, ephemeral beings long vanished as such – Semites were, then, something of a hypothesis (Chapter 1), contemporary with, and constitutive of, that other powerfully incarnate fiction named "secularism" (Chapter 2). Again, and as underscored by Edward Said, who raised anew the "Semitic question", the role of the imagination can hardly be downplayed."
^ abLewis, Bernard (1987). Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice. W W Norton & Co Inc. ISBN 978-0393304206. The confusion between race and language goes back a long way, and was compounded by the rapidly changing content of the word "race" in European and later in American usage. Serious scholars have pointed out–repeatedly and ineffectually-‑that "Semitic" is a linguistic and cultural classification, denoting certain languages and in some contexts the literatures and civilizations expressed in those languages. As a kind of shorthand, it was sometimes retained to designate the speakers of those languages. At one time it might thus have had a connotation of race, when that word itself was used to designate national and cultural entities. It has nothing whatever to do with race in the anthropological sense that is now common usage. A glance at the present‑day speakers of Arabic, from Khartoum to Aleppo and from Mauritania to Mosul, or even of Hebrew speakers in the modern state of Israel, will suffice to show the enormous diversity of racial types.
^Baasten, Martin (2003). "A Note on the History of 'Semitic'". Hamlet on a Hill: Semitic and Greek Studies Presented to Professor T. Muraoka on the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday. Peeters Publishers. pp. 57–73. ISBN 9789042912151.
Semiticpeople or Semites is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews...
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern...
Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Ancient Semitic-speaking peoplesSemiticpeople, an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural...
Ancient Semitic religion encompasses the polytheistic religions of the Semiticpeoples from the ancient Near East and Northeast Africa. Since the term...
may also refer to: Ancient Semitic religion, polytheistic pre-Abrahamic religions practiced by Ancient SemiticpeoplesSemitic neopaganism, religions based...
Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early...
who incorrectly assert that it refers to racist hatred directed at "Semiticpeople" in spite of the fact that this grouping is an obsolete historical race...
reveals that the influence of a Semitic language is present Judaism Philosemitism Semiticpeople Antisemitism Semitic (disambiguation) This disambiguation...
Chaldean people may refer to: Ancient Chaldeans, ancient Semiticpeople in southern Mesopotamia Modern Chaldeans, modern self-identification of Chaldean...
eastern Sudan. The Tigre speak the Tigre language, which belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. They are not ethnically homogeneous;...
languages (or Afro-Asiatic, sometimes Afrasian), also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic, are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages...
dictionary. The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semiticpeople who migrated from Phoenicia...
Semitic studies, or Semitology, is the academic field dedicated to the studies of Semitic languages and literatures and the history of the Semitic-speaking...
people Khas people Kho people Konkani people Kumaoni people Kutchi people Maithili people Maldivian people Marathi people Magahi people Meena people Nagpuria...
The Modern South Arabian languages (MSALs), also known as Eastern South Semitic languages, are a group of endangered languages spoken by small populations...
the alphabet goes back to the consonantal writing system used to write Semitic languages in the Levant during the 2nd millennium BCE. Nearly all alphabetic...
Suteans (Akkadian: Sutī’ū, possibly from Amorite: Šetī’u) were a nomadic Semiticpeople who lived throughout the Levant, Canaan and Mesopotamia, specifically...
The Harari people (Harari: ጌይ ኡሱኣች Gēy Usuach, "People of the City") are a Semitic-speaking ethnic group which inhabits the Horn of Africa. Members of...
The Maltese (Maltese: Maltin) people are an ethnic group native to Malta who speak Maltese, a Semitic language and share a common culture and Maltese...
been historically employed to refer to Semitic-speaking and predominantly Oriental Orthodox Christian peoples found in the highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea...
the three classical continents: the Semiticpeoples of Asia, the Hamitic peoples of Africa, and the Japhetic peoples of Europe. The term has been used in...
Semitic neopaganism is a group of religions based on or attempting to reconstruct the ancient Semitic religions, mostly practiced among Jews in the United...
Jews (understood in Nazi racial theory as a Semiticpeople of Levantine origins), Romani (an Indo-Aryan people originating from the Indian subcontinent,...
script, a variant of the Syriac alphabet Ancient Chaldeans, ancient Semiticpeople in southern Mesopotamia Modern Chaldeans, modern self-identification...
Tunisia was inhabited by the indigenous Berbers. The Phoenicians, a Semiticpeople, began to arrive in the 12th century BC, settling on the coast and establishing...
family of scripts classified as "West Semitic". Similar to other Semitic languages such as Phoenician, Hebrew and Semitic proto-alphabets: specifically, aleph...