The term Semitic people or Semitic cultures was a term for people or cultures who speak or spoke the ...
Semitic people
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
The term
Semitic people or
Semitic cultures (from the
biblical "
Shem",
Hebrew:
שם) was a term for people or cultures who speak or spoke the
Semitic languages. The term, together with the parallel terms
Hamitic and
Japhetic, is now
obsolete.
[4]
Various scholars have stated that the concept of Semitic ethnicity, culture or Proto-Semites should be avoided
[6][7] or does not exist.
[8]
In archaeology, the term is sometimes used
informally as "a kind of shorthand" for
ancient Semitic-speaking peoples.
[4]
Ethnicity and race
In the
racialist classifications of
Carleton S. Coon, the Semitic peoples were considered to be members of the
Caucasian race, not dissimilar in appearance to the neighbouring
Indo-European,
Northwest Caucasian,
Berber and
Kartvelian-speaking peoples of the region.
[9] As language studies are interwoven with
cultural studies, the term also came to describe the religions (
ancient Semitic and
Abrahamic) and Semitic-speaking
ethnicities as well as the history of these varied cultures as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution.
[10]
Some recent genetic studies have found (by analysis of the DNA of
Semitic-speaking peoples) that they have some common ancestry. Although
no significant common
mitochondrial results have been found,
Y-chromosomal links between modern Semitic-speaking peoples of the
Middle East
like Arabs, Hebrews, Mandaeans, Syriacs-Arameans, Samaritans and
Assyrians have proved fruitful, despite differences contributed from
other groups (
see Y-chromosomal Aaron).
A DNA study of Jews and Palestinian Arabs (including Bedouins) found
that these were more closely related to each other than to people of the
Arabian Peninsula,
Ethiopian Semitic-speaking people (
Amharas,
Tigre people and
Tigrayans), and the Arabic speakers of North Africa.
[11][12]
Genetic studies indicate that modern Jews (Ashkenazi, Sephardic and
Mizrahi specifically), Levantine Arabs, Assyrians, Samaritans,
Syriacs-Arameans, Maronites,
Druze,
Mandaeans, and Mhallami, all have an ancient indigenous common Near
Eastern heritage which can be genetically mapped back to the ancient
Fertile Crescent, but often also display genetic profiles distinct from
one another, indicating the different histories of these peoples.
[13]
Antisemitism and Semiticisation
1879 statute of the Antisemitic League, the organization which first popularized the term
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.
[14]
Anthropologists 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 Steinthal[15]
criticising Renan's article "New Considerations on the General
Character of the Semitic Peoples, In Particular Their Tendency to
Monotheism".
[16]
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".
[17]
In 1879 the German journalist
Wilhelm Marr, in a pamphlet called
Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum
("The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism"), began the
politicisation of the term by speaking of a struggle between Jews and
Germans. He accused them of being liberals, a people without roots who
had Judaized Germans beyond salvation. In 1879 Marr's adherents founded
the "League for Anti-Semitism"
[18] which concerned itself entirely with anti-Jewish political action.
Objections to the usage of the term, such as the obsolete nature of
the term Semitic as a racial term and the exclusion of discrimination
against non-Jewish Semitic peoples, have been raised since at least the
1930s.
[19][20]
See also
References
The term Semitic people or Semitic cultures (from the biblical "Shem", Hebrew: שם) was a term for people or cultures who speak or spoke the Semitic languages. The term, together with the parallel terms Hamitic and Japhetic, is now obsolete.[2][3][4]
In the racialist classifications of Carleton S. Coon, the Semitic peoples were considered to be members of the Caucasian race, not dissimilar in appearance to the neighbouring Indo-European, Northwest Caucasian, Berber and Kartvelian-speaking peoples of the region.[9] As language studies are interwoven with cultural studies, the term also came to describe the religions (ancient Semitic and Abrahamic) and Semitic-speaking ethnicities as well as the history of these varied cultures as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution.[10]This T and O map, from the first printed version of Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, identifies the three known continents as populated by descendants of Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth) and Cham (Ham).
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.[14]1879 statute of the Antisemitic League, the organization which first popularized the term
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