Semitic people
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Semitic people or Semites is a term for an ethnic, cultural or racial groupTemplate:Sfn<ref name=Lutz>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."</ref><ref name=Pope>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."</ref><ref name="GlöcknerFireberg2015">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn<ref name=Lewis>Template:Cite book</ref> First used in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen school of history, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem (Template:Lang), one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name=Lewis/> The use of the term as a racial category is considered obsolete.
Ethnicity and race
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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 in the 1780s. These terms were used and developed by numerous other scholars over the next century. In the early 20th century, the pseudo-scientific 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.<ref>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."</ref> 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 ethnicities of various cultures associated by geographic and linguistic distribution.<ref>"Semite". Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.</ref>
Antisemitism
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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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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<ref>Reprinted G. Karpeles (ed.), Steinthal H., Ueber Juden und Judentum, Berlin 1918, pp. 91 ff.</ref> criticising Renan's article "New Considerations on the General Character of the Semitic Peoples, In Particular Their Tendency to Monotheism".<ref>Published in the Journal Asiatique, 1859</ref> 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".<ref>Alex Bein, The Jewish Question: Biography of a World Problem, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, p. 594, Template:ISBN – quoting the Hebrew Encyclopaedia Ozar Ysrael, (edited Jehuda Eisenstadt, London 1924, 2: 130ff)</ref>
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",<ref>Moshe Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism, Oxford University Press, USA, 1987</ref> 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, have been raised since at least the 1930s.<ref name="Sevenster1975">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="MZ1987">Template:Cite book</ref>
See also
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[edit]Bibliography
[edit]External links
[edit]Template:NIE Poster Template:Commons category
- Semitic language family tree included under "Afro-Asiatic" in SIL's Ethnologue.
- The south Arabian origin of ancient Arabs
- The Edomite Hyksos connection Template:Webarchive
- The perished Arabs
- The Midianites of the north
Template:Sons of Noah Template:Historical definitions of race Template:Authority control