Concept in Definition ABC

The word Semite is used to designate those peoples who formerly occupied the regions known as the Near East and Middle East, corresponding to Western asia, but they are called that way because they are the closest to the West, to the Mediterranean. Currently this territory corresponds to countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Qatar, Iran, Armenia, Turkey, Egypt, Cyprus, Yemen and Syria, to name some of the most recognized.

It should be noted that this denomination has afstrong relationship with the Jewish people since the name is taken precisely from a character in the Bible: Shem, son of the popular Noah. Shem was one of his three sons.
In the Judaism he is considered one of its heroes and also one of the most outstanding ancestors in its history. Even the Jews are often referred to generically as Semites because of this family link with Shem.

In the Bible, the direct descent that the Jews have with respect to Shem and that the ancient Semitic peoples as

Assyrians, Phoenicians, Syrians, Babylonians, among others, also descended from Shem.

And also the Arabic culture takes him as one of the characters from whom they are descended.

The Semitic peoples communicated through the Semitic languages that belong to the family from Afro-Asian languages, by the geographical origin that they have of course. They were developed and established in the Middle East and in the eastern and northern part of the continent African. Among the most widely spoken Semitic languages ​​of the present Hebrew and Arabic are of course counted.

With the to run of time and as a consequence of this close connection between Shem and Jewish origin is that towards the end of the 19th century and In the twentieth century, the concept was used to designate the whole of the Jewish people especially and the term was granted a connotation strictly racial.
Along with this and as a consequence of the hostility that would be generated at that time with the Jewish community in the world, especially promoted by the Nazism, a linked concept appeared, that of antisemitism, to generally refer to that current that despised the Jews.

Themes in Semita