Semitic people

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.

In his 1771 book Introduction to Synchronic Universal History (German: Einleitung in die Synchronistische Universalhistorie) Johann Christoph Gatterer depicts the first historical ethnology of the world separated into the biblical sons of Noah: Semites, Hamites, and Japhetites. Gatterer's view is that modern history has shown the truth of the biblical prediction of Japhetite supremacy (Genesis 9:25–27). Click the image for a transcription of the text.

Semitic people or Semites is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group formerly used in connection with ancient and modern peoples of the Middle East including Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Arabs, Ammonites, Arameans, Canaanites, Edomites, Israelites, Jews, Judahites, Moabites, Phoenicians, Samaritans, and others. Use of the terminology is now largely confined to the field of linguistics in reference to "Semitic languages". However, the term is sometimes still used colloquially as a shorthand for Semitic-speaking peoples.

Coined in the 1770s by members of the Göttingen school of history, this biblical terminology for race was derived from Shem (שֵׁם), one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, and roughly corresponded to the Hebrews and related groups. In this worldview, the other two sons of Noah corresponded to the remaining races; Hamites referred to dark-skinned African peoples, and Japhetites referred to the Medes, Persians, Greeks, and other peoples who were later called Aryans.