Semitic
In
linguistics and
ethnology,
Semitic (from the
Biblical name "
Shem") was first used to refer to a
language family of largely
Middle Eastern origin, now called the
Semitic languages.This family includes the ancient and modern forms of
Amharic,
Arabic,
Aramaic,
Assyrian,
Akkadian,
Hebrew,
Maltese,
Syriac,
Tigrinya, etc.
As language studies are interwoven with
cultural studies, the term also came to describe the extended
cultures and
ethnicities, as well as the
history of these varied peoples as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution.The late 19th century term "
anti-Semitism" came to be used in reference specifically to anti- sentiment, further complicating the understood meaning and boundaries of the term.Such usage, as well as the advent of
population genetics, against which other once-useful ethnic terms show a biasing imprecision, has led to much debate about its scope and usefulness in science.
The term Semite was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to the Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn's "Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45. In his "Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIII)
The word "Semitic" is an adjective derived from
Shem, one of the three
sons of Noah in the
Bible (
Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the
Greek form of that name, namely
Σημ (Sēm); the noun form referring to a person is
Semite. The negative form of the adjective,
anti-Semitic, is almost always used as a
misnomer to mean "anti-Jewish" specifically.
The concept of a "Semitic" peoples is derived from Biblical accounts of the origins of the cultures known to the ancient
Hebrews. Those closest to them in culture and language were generally deemed to be descended from their forefather Shem. Enemies were often said to be descendants of his cursed brother
Ham. In Genesis 10:21-31
Shem is described as the father of
Aram,
Asshur, and others: the Biblical ancestors of the
Aramaeans,
Assyrians,
Babylonians,
Chaldeans,
Sabaeans, and
Hebrews, etc., all of whose languages are closely related; the
language family containing them was therefore named Semitic by linguists. However, the
Canaanites and
Amorites also spoke a language belonging to this family, and are therefore also termed Semitic in linguistics despite being described in Genesis as sons of Ham (See
Sons of Noah). Shem is also described in Genesis as the father of the
Elamites and the descendants of
Lud, whose languages were not Semitic.
The
Proto-Semitic peoples, ancestors of the Semites in the Middle East before the break-up of the hypothesized original
proto-Semitic language into various modern Semitic languages, are thought to have been originally from either the
Arabian Peninsula (particularly around
Yemen) or the
Ethiopian Highlands, i.e. from one of the locations posited also for
Sheba, but its homeland is still much debated and uncertain.
The modern linguistic meaning of "Semitic" is therefore derived from (though not identical to) Biblical usage. In a linguistic context the
Semitic languages are a subgroup of the larger
Afro-Asiatic language family (according to
Joseph Greenberg's widely accepted classification) and include, among others,
Akkadian, the ancient language of Babylon,
Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia,
Tigrinya, a language in Eritrea,
Arabic, the largest contemporary Semitic language,
Aramaic, the mother-tongue of Jesus,
Canaanite,
Ge'ez, the ancient language of the
Ethiopian Orthodox scriptures,
Hebrew,
Phoenician or
Punic, and
South Arabian, the ancient language of
Sheba/Saba, which today includes
Mehri, spoken by only tiny minorities on the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula.
Wildly successful as second languages far beyond their numbers of contemporary first-language speakers, a few Semitic languages today are the base of the sacred literature of some of the world's great religions, including
Islam (Arabic),
Judaism (Hebrew and Aramaic), and Orthodox
Christianity (Aramaic and Ge'ez). Millions learn these as a second language (or an archaic version of their modern tongues): many
Muslims learn to read and recite
Classical Arabic, the language of the
Qur'an, and
Jews all over the world outside of
Israel with other first languages speak and study Hebrew, the language of the
Torah,
Midrash, and other Jewish scriptures.
It should be noted that
Berber,
Egyptian (including
Coptic),
Hausa,
Somali, and many other related languages within the wider area of Northern Africa and the Middle East do not belong to the Semitic group, but to the larger
Afro-Asiatic language family of which the Semitic languages are also a subgroup. Other ancient and modern Middle Eastern languages —
Armenian,
Kurdish,
Persian,
Turkish, ancient
Sumerian, and
Nubian — do not belong to the larger Afro-Asiatic language family and are unrelated to it (or, to be more precise, possibly
far more remotely related). (Note, the first three of these languages are
Indo-European.)
For a complete list of Semitic and Afro-Asiatic languages, see the
Ethnologue's list.
Semitic peoples and their languages in modern and ancient historic times have covered a broad area bridging Africa, Western Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. The earliest historic (written) evidences of them are found in the
Fertile Crescent, an area encompassing the Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations along the
Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, extending northwest into southern
Asia Minor (modern
Turkey) and the
Levant along the eastern Mediterranean. (Today this same region is populated by Arabic speakers except for
Israel, where
modern Hebrew was reintroduced in the 20th century as the national language.) Early traces of Semitic speakers are found, too, in South Arabian inscriptions in
Yemen and later, in Roman times, in
Nabataean inscriptions from
Petra (modern
Jordan) south into Arabia. (Here, too, Arabic has largely won out over the original Semitic tongues.) Semitic languages and peoples are also found in the
Horn of Africa, especially
Eritrea and
Ethiopia, the last great holdout of South Semitic languages. Later expansions of Semitic languages also spread into
North Africa at two widely separated periods. The first expansion occurred with the ancient
Phoenicians, the name given by the Greeks to the Canaanites, along the southern Mediterranean Sea all the way to the
Atlantic Ocean (colonies which included ancient Rome's nemesis
Carthage). The second, a millennium later, occurred with the expansion of the Muslim armies and Arabic in the 7th-8th centuries AD, which, at their height, controlled the
Hispanic Peninsula and
Sicily. Arab Muslim expansion is also responsible for modern Arabic's presence from
Mauretania, on the Atlantic coast of
West Africa, to the
Red Sea in the northeastern corner of Africa, and its reach south along the
Nile River through traditionally non-Semitic territory, as far as the northern half of
Sudan, where, as the national language, non-Arab Sudanese even farther south must learn it. Semitic languages today are also spoken in
Malta (where an Italian-influenced dialect of North African Arabic is spoken) and on the island of
Socotra in the
Indian Ocean between
Yemen and
Somalia, where a dying vestige of South Arabian is spoken in the form of
Soqotri.
In a religious context, the term Semitic can refer to the religions associated with the speakers of these languages: thus
Judaism,
Christianity and
Islam are often described as "Semitic religions," though the term
Abrahamic religions is more commonly used today. A truly comprehensive account of "Semitic" religions would include the
polytheistic religions (such as the religions of
Adad,
Hadad) that flourished in the Middle East before the Abrahamic religions.
|
A stylised T and O map, depicting Asia as the home of the descendents of Shem (Sem). Africa is ascribed to Ham and Europe to Japheth |
In
Medieval Europe, all
Asian peoples were thought of as descendents of Shem. By the nineteenth century, the term Semitic was confined to the ethnic groups who have historically spoken Semitic languages. These peoples were often considered to be a distinct
race. However, some anti-Semitic racial theorists of the time argued that the Semitic peoples arose from the blurring of distinctions between previously separate races. This supposed process was referred to as
Semiticization by the race-theorist
Arthur de Gobineau. The notion that Semitic identity was a product of racial "confusion" was later taken up by the Nazi ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg.
Modern science, in contrast, identifies an ethnic group's common physical descent through genetic research, and analysis of the Semitic peoples suggests that they share a significant common ancestry. Though no significant common
mitochondrial results have been yielded,
Y-chromosomal links between Near-Eastern peoples like the Palestinians, Syrians and ethnic Jews have proved fruitful, despite differences contributed from other groups (
see Y-chromosomal Aaron). Although
population genetics is still a young science, it seems to indicate that a significant proportion of these peoples' ancestry comes from a common Near Eastern population to which (despite the differences with the Biblical genealogy) the term
Semitic has been applied.
*
Proto-Semitic*
Semitic genetics *
Semitic language family tree included under "Afro-Asiatic" in SIL's
Ethnologue.
