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> The word ‘Semite’ is a product of the abhorrent ‘race science’ of the time in Europe that purported to divide up peoples according to pseudo-scientific fashio
by joecool1029 5y ago
> The word ‘Semite’ is a product of the abhorrent ‘race science’ of the time in Europe that purported to divide up peoples according to pseudo-scientific fashion of the time.
Nope. The word Semite was coined in 1771 by August Ludwig von Schlözer to refer to a family of languages and their people. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/18229/summary https://muse.jhu.edu/article/18229/summary
- vogon_laureate 5y ago‘And their people…’ Schlözer was a member of the Göttingen School of History which is credited with “two fundamental groups of terminologies of scientific racism” one of which is the biblical terminology for race (eg. Semitic, Hamitic, etc). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göttingen_school_of_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göttingen_school_of_history
- elliekelly 5y agoI think a lot of linguistic terms were stolen and repurposed as a way to lend credence and legitimacy to racist ideology. The same is true of the term “Aryan” which originally referred to people who spoke Indo-European languages:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_race https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_race From the wikipedia article, the gentleman who first used the term “Aryan race” (in the context of language, not ethnicity) later said: > These two sciences, the Science of Language and the Science of Man, cannot, at least for the present, be kept too much asunder; [...] I must repeat, what I have said many times before, it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar.
- joshuamorton 5y agoYes, and the word antisemite was later coined to only refer to Jews. Both statements are true. Language is often weird like that.