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-Jewish sentiment, further complicating the understood meaning and boundaries of the term. Such usage, as well 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.

Origin

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 the Arabian Peninsula. Other theories place proto-Semitic in the Ethiopian Highlands and Eritrea.

Language

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.

Geography

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.

Religion

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.

Ethnicity and race

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.

External links

Semitic genetics
Semitic language family tree included under "Afro-Asiatic" in SIL's Ethnologue.

African culture | Race (historical definitions)