Semites

The term Semite (Shemite), forming the adjective Semitic (Shemitic), is derived from the patriarch Shem, who in the Bk. of Genesis is named as the ancestor of most of the peoples known to ethnologists and now pores designated as ‘Semites.’ The account of Shem and his descend- ants in Gn 10 is partly genealogical and partly geographical, and does not exactly correspond to a scientific classification.

Hence we take the family tree of Genesis as the starting-point of our inquiry rather than as an exhaustive summary. None the less, any description or discussion of the Semites as a whole must have chiefly a biblical interest, and that for two main reasons. In the first place, the actors in and makers of Bible :his- tory were Semites, who did their deeds and said their say within the Semitic realm.

Further, the truth of God, as it is revealed in the Bible, was not merely conveyed to the world through an out- ward Semitic channel; it was moulded in Semitic minds, coloured by the genius of Semitic speech, and put to the proof for the education of the world in Semitic hearts and lives. It is ees: enough in this connexion to remind the reader that Moses, David, Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, St John, St. Paul, and the Son of Man Himself, were Semites.

The religious and moral significance of the race thus indicated may be further illustrated by citing the fact that Tiglath-pileser, Nebuchad- rezzar, and Hannibal are the only Semites of the 84 SEMITES SEMITES pre-Christian time whose names stand for world- moving achievements outside the realm of religion and morals. The principal list of the descendants of Shem appearsin Gn 107-9, This whole table proceeds from one source, J, except that, according to the critics, v.

, which gives a list of the sons of Shem, belongs to P. These immediate descendants are Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, and Aram. Of these names the third and fourth are unfortunately obscure, and it’ would be unprofitable to discuss here the various explanations that have been offered. Lud is generally supposed to stand for Lydia; but the reason for such an enormous interval of separation from the other Semitic peoples is far to seek.

Possibly this brief word (n> from 15) very early underwent some change, and does not represent the original. It is almost certain that this is the case with Arpachshad, since the latter half of the word is the stem of Kasdim (but see p. 82%), the Heb. word for Chaldeans, who lived in Lower Babylonia. The whole word, thus assumed to be modified in MT, would natur- ally stand for a portion of the territory to the NW, of the Persian Gulf.

* The first in the list, Elam, though historically non-Semitic, must have had many Semitic immigrants. Asshwr is the well-known people and country of Assyria. The last named of the sons of Shem is Aram, that is, the Aramzeans. The sons of Aram are next enumerated (v.%). Thereafter the interest is con- centrated upon the progeny of Arpachshad. His grandson is £der, who is not only the ancestor of the Hebrews, as is fully detailed by P in ch.

11, but also of the Arabs (10**°°), We may now attempt a present-day view of the descendants of Shem, referring to any of the lists of Genesis as occasion demands, and thus working back from the known facts of modern research instead of attempting to work downward from the indistinct hints of tradition. i. CLASSIFICATION OF THE SEMITES.—The surest token of racial affinity is ordinarily the possession of a common language or of closely related idioms.

It is not an infallible test ; for it may happen that through inherent weakness or stress of fortune a tribe or a nation may be absorbed by another, and lose ite own form of speech. On the other hand, it very rarely happens that a race predominant in numbers or political influence loses its language and adopts that of an inferior or degenerating race.

Hence, while even the exclusive use, by a large community, of a given language or dialect does not necessarily indicate that the race is unmixed, it may be reasonably held that the predominating racial element in that community originally spoke the current language.

Again, as regards the de- grees of relationship between kindred peoples, it should be remembered that the most valid kind of linguistic evidence is that afforded by the com- mon possession of grammatical or structural ele- ments, and of terms for the most fundamental ideas and the most indispensable or rudimentary arts and appliances of life.

These simple and elementary working principles are far-reaching in their appli- cation, and will need to be taken into account in all that is said, either as to the original Semitic race and its language, or as to any of the deriva- tive races and their languages or dialects. On the evidence of language and of historical * Some such people seems necessary here, since Arpachshad is indicated as the ancestor of Arammans and Arabs alike, and the region in question is their natural dividing-point.

Moreover, it was peopled also by Semites from the earliest known period. Confirmation of this view is afforded by the fact that, according to v.25, Peleg, ‘in whose days the earth was divided,’ was a descendant of Arpachshad, while the reference to the dividing of the earth points to Babylonia as the place of his residence, according to 1129, which is also the production of J. distribution combined, these peoples are made te fall into two great divisions, the Northern and the Southern Semites.

Roughly speaking, the Southern branch of the family had its permanent and proper home in the peninsula of Asebia ; while the Northern division was included in the region bounded on the N. by the modern Kurdistan, on the W. by the Mediterranean, and on the E. by modern Persia.

We have, however, except from linguistic induction, no indication of a time when either the Northern or the Southern division formed by itself a homogeneous whole, much less of the presumptive earlier stage when all Semitas together were comprised in a single community. On the contrary, our earliest archeological evidence reveals to us these regions as occupied by several families or groups more or less nearly related.

Thus, while Arabia has long been known as the home of a single people, though of many tribes, speaking a common pe bee the earlier record is of peoples speaking and writing distinct though closely related languages. Similarly, the Northern division, as far back as we can see through the mists of antiquity, is found to be made up of dis- tinct families. A tentative comprehensive group- ing may be made as follows :— ‘ Northern Arabians. SouTHEERN SEMITES j abeans, Abyssinians).

Baty ieee and Assyrians. ranean, NORTHERN SEMITES Canakattaal (Hebrews). The above classification would describe the distri- bution of the Semites as a race during that period of ancient history when they were the ruling power of the world, roughly speaking from B.C. 2000 to B.c. 500.

It should be added that the hypotheris of a Southern branch is surer than that of a distinct Northern group, and that some scholars (as Hommel and Zimmern) prefer to assume an East-Semitic division—Assyro-Babylonian, and a West-Semitic —Aramean, donanaiees Arabo-Abyssinian.

It is, indeed, so difficult to 7 the Assyrian, the Aramaic, and the Canaanitic languages, that if we were to use linguistic data alone, it would, for working purposes, be allowable to assume these four separate units: Assyro-Babylonian, Aramean, Canaanite, and Arabo-Abyssinian. (A) SouTHERN SEMITES.—(a) Northern Arabi- ans.—The term ‘ Arab,’ which at present connotes the only survivors on any large scale of the Semitic races, was originally of very restricted significance.

Ancient usage confines it to a comparatively small district in the north of the peninsula E. of Palestine, extending sometimes over the centre of the Syro-Arabian desert. In this sense the word is used in the Assyr. inscriptions, in OT (e.g. 2 Ch 1737 2118 9901 967, Is 137 218s Jersea-, Ezk 277), as well as in the lately discovered Minzean inscriptions. It was not till shortly before the Christian era that it was enlarged so far as to include the whole of the peninsula.

* Besides the ‘Arabs,’ there were several other important ancient communities in N. Arabia. Most of these are embraced under the names of the descendants of Keturah (‘ the incense-bearer’), and of Ishmael, in Gn 25 and 1 Ch 1°, We may cite as of his- torical fame Midian, the northern Sheba (cf. Job 115), Dedan, Asshur (Gn 25% 18), Nebaioth, Kedar, Dumah, Massa (cf. Pr 30! 311), Tema, and Jetur.

The general distinction between Keturah and Ishmael is that the latter stretched farther to the * This extension came about largely through the fact that the original ‘Arabs’ were the most important tribe living in the neighbourhood of the Greek and Roman possessions in Syria and Mesopotamia. The classical writers use the name not only in the narrower but also in the wider sense, e.g. Herod. iii. 107. eh 2)9. SEMITES east and south.

According to Gn 2518, the tents of Ishmael were pitched as far east as Havilah on the south-west border of Babylonia (Gn 2"). In the west, however, their several routes intersected and their jpasture-grounds were contiguous. Dumah (Is 214) and Massa, Ishmaelites, lay in the path of the Keturites, Midian, Dedan, and Asshur, But these by no means exhaust the category of N. Arabians. We must fairly include those of the ‘Edomites’ who are historically and locally Arabs.

Thus not only Teman but Amalek is reckoned to Edom in Gn 36-8, Furthermore, towards the east side of the desert is the great tribe or country of Mash, which with Uz, the home of Job in the west, is allotted to the Arameans in Gn 10%, though, according to Gn 36%, the latter is given to the Horite Edomites.

The explanation of the anomaly comes from the important fact that the Aramezans, who, as a rule, did not wander in ancient times far from the valley of the Euphrates, stretched out im certain regions favourable to pasturage, to mix and mingle with the more purely nomadic tribes of the desert. (0) Sabeans.—We call the ancient inhabitants of S.W. Arabia Sabzeans, because this people created the most powerful and extensive kingdom of all that region.

Many other tribes, however, sometimes their subjects, also flourished. Among these were the Katabanians, directly north of Aden, and the Himyarites to the east. The latter were so important that scholars formerly called the ancient §8.W. Arabians generally by their name.

Recent researches, however, which have disclosed elaborate architectural remains, and brouvlit to Europe hundreds of inscriptions, the work of abzeans, more than confirm the ancient fame of heba, and vindicate its claim, not only to a wide commerce and a productive soil, but to an in- fluential empire as, well.* A branch of the same eople formed a less known nation, whose recently ound inscriptions have suddenly brought it into great prominence—the Minzans.

Tlie proper home of this people was the west coast of Arabia between Yemen and Mecca. That they were not identical with the Sabseans proper is abundantly proved. Their language is, in fact, a distinct dialect of the S. Arabian or ‘Sabean.’ Their inscriptions are found over a very wide range of the west country, from the heart of Yemen itself to the very borders of Palestine. Their abundance, as well as the con- tents of some of them, show that both regions alike were then subject to them.

‘That was, however, before the rise of the Sabsean power, and there- fore long before the Christian era. They are possibly alluded to in 1 Ch 4#!, 2 Ch 267, where the word employed (o’ny>) reminds us of the original name Main. See, further, art. SHEBA in vol. iv. (c) Abyssinians.—This term is more appropriate than the current ‘Ethiopians,’ since that is the proper designation of the people of the Nile Valley above the First Cataract, in other words the bibli- cal Cushites.

That is to say, the Ethiopians are an African race, while the Abyssinians are funda- mentally Semitic. At a very early date, far earlier than is generally supposed, a migration from 8S. W. Arabia, of a people closely akin to the Sabieans and Minzeans, was made over the narrow sea to the cooler and healthier region of the Abyss. highlands. Here they developed a community which long remained uninfluenced by African elements, and cherished close relations with the Arabian mother-land.

Its principal seat was Aksum, the centre of a powerful monarchy, which *TIts ancient capital was Ma’rib, though San’a, three days’ journey to the west, wasa city of greater renown, and is the present capital of Yemen. Thus the Sabwan kingdom long comprised the whole of Tihama, the S.W. coastland of Arabia. It also extended itself far both to the east and north. SEMITES 85 at length, in the 4th cent. A.D., conquered, and for a time held, Yemen and W. Arabia.

* The Abyssinians have long since ceased to be a pure Semitic race or to speak a pure Semitic idiom; though ‘ Ethiopic,’ as their language is called, is still their sacred tongue; and the Semitic type is still unmistakable in a large section of the popula- tion. The attempt thus made to bring the Southern Semites under distinct groupings is only approxim- ately successful. Besides the tribes already enumer- ated, many others are found, particularly in the S.E. and E.

of Arabia, which, though Semites, have at least no permanent historical association with any of the groups. Very interesting, however, is the tabulation in Gn 10°°*°, which brings the most prominent of these remaining communities under one category. Thus, among the sons of Joktan son of Eber, we find, along with Hazarmaveth, the modern Hadramaut, or the coastland east of Yemen, also Sheba and, to our surprise, OPHIR and HAViLAH.

Unfortunately, the remaining nine tribes or localities cannot as yet be absolutely iden- tified. But inasmuch as Ophir is almost certain] to be found on the E. coast of Arabia, and Havil S.W. of Babylonia (but see above, p. 81°), the pre- sumption is that they represent families interme- diate between these remotely separated districts. In brief, the summation seems to point to a close connexion between the N.E., E., S., and S.W. inhabitants of ancient Arabia.

Furthermore, the brotherhood of Joktan and Eber, the father of Peleg and grandson of Arpachshad, points to a tradition of kinship between the ancient Baby- lonians and the remotest S. Arabians. These are matters deserving serious attention. (B) THE NORTHERN SEMITES.—Of far more importance to the Bible student than the Arabians and Abyssinians is the Northern branch of the Semitic family.

Fortunately, it is also not very difficult to indicate the several divisions of the Northern Semites, and their local distribution. Taking them up in the order of their primary settlements from east to west, we have first to do with those dwelling by the lower waters of the Euphrates and Tigris. (a) Babylonians and Assyrians.

—In that region which Gn 2 describes as the cradle of the human race, lived a people whose history, traced not simply in their language, but also in their archi- tectural remains, and even in their literary monu- ments, goes back to a period far beyond any other known to men. We call this pide summarily Babylonian, from the name of the great historical capital. But Babylon or Babel did not come into prominence till about B.c. 2250.

We have to regard the whole surrounding country as having been, for centuries and even millenniums before that era, divided up among a number of city-States, having a longer or shorter history of narrower or wider dominion. These communities we have also to consider essentially Semitic.

The hypothesis of a so-called ‘Sumerian’ civilization and ‘Sumer- ian’ language, preceding the rise of the Semites, is in its current form the result of hasty and superficial theorizing, and the present writer is convinced that it will have to be essentially modi- fied.

As neighbours to the Semites, and more or less mingling with them from time to time, were a foreign people, probably more than one people, who contributed some important elements to their mythology and civic life, with corresponding terms to their language.

Who they were and whence * That they were separated from the Mineans and Sabeans at a very remote period is proved by the fact that their lan- guage, though more akin to the Sabwan than is the Arabic, is yet quite distinct from the former, whose written characters it borrowed, while it is also much less closely related to the Sabwan than is the Minwan dialect. 86 SEMITES SEMITES they came cannot as yet be said.

Possibly they were of a race akin to the Elamites across the Tigris, or to the Kassites of the highlands to the north of Elam. The name ‘Sumerian’ as applied to them is, in any case, a misnomer ; and the supposed Sumerian language is possibly only the Semitic Babylonian, or ‘Assyrian,’ written according to a system developed alongside of the popular syllabic from the original ideographic, and preserving the essential features of the latter.

There are, it is true, many phenomena of this peculiar idiom which such an hypothesis does not explain. On the other hand, no one has yet suc- ceeded in constructing a reasonable or consistent grammar of the supposed language, though good material is abundant. Until this is done, the Semitic has a right of possession, precarious though it may be.

Many invasions of Babylonian terri- tory were made by non-Semitic peoples from the most ancient times, especially Elamites and Kass- ites, but the language, the religion, both State and popular, and the civilization as a whole, remained al- ways essentially Semitic down to the time of Cyrus and the Persians. Distinctive of the Babylonians, although adopted by other people, was their mode of writing in wedge-like characters, which, how- ever, is far from representing the original ideo- graphs.

Distinctive of them especially were their culture, their inventive genius, their intellectual enterprise and love of knowledge. They were thus not only prominent among the Semites, but were also the most influential of all the peoples of antiquity, except the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. indeed: when we consider their early development among the races of men, and the indirect influence of their genuine ideas, we ma regard them fairly enough as the primary intel- lectual movers of the world.

The Assyrians were of the same race as the Babylonians, and in all probability an. offshoot from them. The name is derived from the city of Asshur, which was founded at an unknown early date on the west of the Tigris just above its confluence with the Lower Zab, which formed the normal southern boundary of the kingdom of Assyria. The Assyrians used the Bab. lan- guage in its purity.

Indeed we usually call this language ‘Assyrian,’ because it was principally from the monuments of Assyria, and not from those of Babylonia, that our knowledge of it was first obtnna:. towards the middle of the 19th centry Unlike Babylonia, which contained many large cities, Assyria proper had but few, the principal being Nineveh and the surrounding fortresses. The Assyrians had virtually the same institutions as the Babylonians, with many of the same deities, and the same modes of worship.

They were inferior to them in intellectual enter- prise and culture, but superior in the military art, and in capacity for organization. They would appear, moreover, to have suffered less trom the irruptions of outsiders, and therefore to have pre- served, on the whole, a more purely Semitic racial type.

It should be remarked, however, that the biblical lists make out the Assyrians and a portion of the Babylonians to have been of Cushite descent (Gn 108%), perhaps in view of the mixture of races that had gone on in Babylonia (but cf. also p. 81°). According to the same account (v.¥), Assyria was settled from Babylonia. See, further, artt. ASSYRIA and BABYLONIA in vol. i. (6) The Arameans.

—The second great division of the Northern Semites, the biblical ‘ Aram,’ had as its proper home a much larger range of country than any of the others. Within historical times the Aramzeans had their settlements at various in Syria south as far as Palestine. Indeed it is impossible to say with certainty what was their original centre.

They seem to have been equally at home herding cattle for the markets of Babylon, driving caravans along the Euphrates, or holding bazaars in the crowded cities of Harran and Dam- ascus. A partial explanation of their ubiquity and versatility is found in their genius for trade and commerce. They were par excellence the travellers and negotiators of the ancient East. What the Phenicians achieved by sea, they with almost equal enterprise and persistence attained on the land.

To them was largely due the commercial and intellectual interchange between Babylonia and Assyria on the one hand, and the western States, particularly Pheenicia, on the other. They had their trading posts even in Asia Minor, through which the Greek cities appear to have obtained much of their knowledge of letters and the liberal arts. It is possible to make certain restrictions of the general fact of the wide extension of the Arameans. Until the 12th cent. B.c.

they are not found in large settlements west of the Euphrates, though doubtless many isolated expeditions had from time to time crossed the River. They ap- peared in great numbers, with huge herds of cattle, upon the grazing grounds within reach of the Bab. cities. They also formed numerous settle- ments on the upper middle course of the Euphrates, especially on the left bank, and between that river and the Chabor.

Here was Mesopotamia proper, the Aram-naharaim (or ‘Aram of the two Rivers’) of OT. Here also was Harran, a city of enormous antiquity, held in historical times principally by Arameans. After the fall of the Hittite dominion in Syria, Aram. immigration hither went on apace, and Carchemish, Arpad, Aas: Hamath, Zobah, and, last and greatest of all, Damascus, were colonized and enriched by them. In the time of David (c. 1000 B.C.) they are found firmly planted in Syria (2 8 8). 8th cent. B.C.

decisive importance attached to the role of the ‘ Aramzeans of Damascus’ (the ‘Syrians’ of EV). But their westward career did not end with the political decay of Damascus. By the 3rd cent. B.c. Palestine, which politically had become in succession Babylonian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and Greek, spoke popu- larly an Aram. idiom.

After the rise of Christi- anity and the complete destruction of the Jewish State, the Jewish church perpetuated one dialect of Aramaic and the Christian Semites another. The Euphrates was the general dividing-line be- tween W. and E. Aramaic, just as it had for man centuries parted the two main divisions into whic the Aram. race had fallen.

The vitality of Aram- aism is attested by the fact that, while the popular dialects of Syria and Mesopotamia soon yielded to Arabic after the establishment of Islam in the 7th cent. A.D., Syriac, the principal E. Aramaic dialect, flourished as a literary language till the 13th cent., long after all traces of Aram. political influence had completely disappeared. See, further, art. ARAM in vol. 1. (c) Canaanites.

—For want of a better term, we give this name to the pre-Hebrew inhabitants of Palestine and Phoenicia, with their descendants, We class them as Semitic by reason of their language, their civil institutions, and their religion, all of which reveal the purest type ot Semitism. Itis true that the Phenicians of the coastland differed surprisingly from the inhabit- ants of the interior in their pursuits and mental | habits.

But common to both are ‘ the language of | Canaan’ (Is 1918), and analogous forms of Baal. points on both sides of the Lower Tigris, to the} worship. As to their place of departure from the west of the Lower Euphrates, in Mesopotamia, and common camping-ground of the Semites we ara From the 10th to the {| SEMITES SEMITES 87 again left to the widest sort of inference.* Of interest is the question as to the direction from which the Canaanites came into their historical abiding-place.

The answer is: from the north or east ; for if they had come from the south the would have spoken Arabic, or some dialect of Sout Semitic nearly akin to Arabic. That they were not the primitive inhabitants of Palestine is clear from the Bible statements as well as other evidence. We may for convenience call the earlier residents ‘Amorites,’ a people whose antiquity may be inferred from the name ‘Land of the Amorites,’ given to the country in the remotest times by the Babylonians.

The Amorites were possibly not Semitic. The most significant fact about them is that there is no indication that they ever occupied the lower coastland, though they had settlements on both sides of the Jordan. They survived as a community longest in the east, where they were finally absorbed by Moabites, Ammonites, and the invading Hebrews.

The most striking feature of the civic and social life of the Canaanites was their residence in small city-States, independent of each other, and only con- federated, if at aL under stress of common danger. This tendency to mutual repulsion was exhibited even among the Phen. cities, which, however, partly on account of their foreign colonizing ex- rience, became more disposed towards voluntary ederation.

The pursuits of the two branches of the Canaanites were not more dissimilar than their fortunes. While those of the interior remained isolated, exclusive, and comparatively uncultured, those of the coastland became the most cosmo- politan, and, in a material sense, the most directly serviceable to mankind of all their race. While the one did not survive for more than a generation or two the Heb.

occupation of Canaan, the other, in the political world yet not of it, utilizing and subsidizing the great world-powers in the form of tribute-giving, following their own way to opulence and commercial supremacy, survived not only the Heb. monarchy, but the Assyr., the Bab., the Pers., and even the Macedonian empire, succumb- ing at last to the Roman alone.

t may be added that the various tribes men- tioned in the Hexateuch as inhabiting Palestine are in all probability merely local subdivisions of the Canaanites, and not co-ordinate independent races. An exception is made of the HirrirEs by those _ who hold them to have been immigrants from Syria, _ with whom the later inhabitants mingled. where they preceded the Arameans.

It is a matter of surprise that in Gn 10 the Canaanites, as well as the people of Middle Babylonia, are associated with the people of Upper and Lower Egypt (Cush and Mizraim).

The explanation, ye ably, is that the Egyptians are partly of mitic origin, and that there existed in Palestine, as well as in Babylonia, from very remote times, & population supposed to be akin to the Serene: he PHILISTINES were probably a non-Semitic people, possibly from the island of Crete, whose settle- ment in Palestine was made not earlier than the 14th or 13th cent. B.C. (d) The Hebrews.

—By this name we have to understand, not Israel alone, but all the Hebraic peoples, including as well the Edomites proper, the Moabites and Ammonites, whom the traditions of Israel with good reason claim as kindred. Their larger affiliations are not easy to make out. At least Israel and Moab spoke ‘Hebrew.’ But this was the language of Canaan; and they may have * As to their places of settlement on the west coastland it is noteworthy that the Phen.

maritime cities extend to the north of Lebanon, while the Canaanites of the interior are not found to a certainty anywhere ee south of that mountain range. i yy sea perhaps account for this The opportunities of trading local iercetion. acquired it by immigration, just as the Edomites learned Arabic.

Our best guide is the biblical record, according to which Abraham, their common ancestor, of the line of Arpachshad, Eber, and Peleg, came from Ur of the Chaldees, in the west of the Lower Euphrates. This implies Bab. kinship. But as belonging to a family of shepherds he was likely to have Aram. associations, since Aramzans abounded in all the neighbouring asture-grounds. It is in accordance with this hypothesis that we find him sojourning in Harran, the great Aram. settlement in Mesopotamia.

His kindred there were always reckoned as Aramzans; and the immediate ancestor of the Israelites, though born and reared in Canaan, is called a ‘stray Arameean’ (Dt 265), But none of the Semites show such a racial admixture as do the children of Israel. Primarily of Bab. affinity, their association with the Babylonians is attested by the common traditions of these two most highly endowed branches of the Semitic race.

The resi- dence in Egypt did not add any new elements to the ae acquired Aramzan. Nor does it seem probable that all of the Hebrews of Canaan joined in the migration to Egypt with the family of Jacob. But both before and after the permanent settlement in Canaan large accessions were made of Arab. derivation (Kenites and others), while we have also to take account of the absorption vi much of the Can. population after the conquest.

It was therefore not till shortly before the found- ing of the monarchy that the people of Israel assumed that fixity of racial type popularly known as ‘ Hebrew.’ What kept the community together through endless vicissitudes of fortune, what still gives Israel even now a bond of spiritual unity, is not purity of race, but steadfastness of faith in J”, the old-time God of Israel.

At the same time it is manifest that, so far as descent is concerned, the Hebrews must be taken only secondarily us one of the divisions of the. Northern Semites. li. HISTORY OF THE SEMITES.—It appears, there- fore, that we have to reckon with four prima branches of the Semitic stock: Arabians (an Sabzans) in the south; Babylonians, Aramzans, Canaanites in the north. rom the Southern branch the Abyssinians are a secondary offshoot ; from the Northern, the Hebrews..

When we seek for the original home of this oldest of civilized races we are pointed to a region in N. Arabia, Sete not far from the Lower Euphrates. The emitic civilization is essentially of nomadic origin. N. Arabia is the geographical centre of the race. It is much more Ticaly to have peopled the surrounding highlands than to have been peopled from them. The Arabic language is upon the whole nearest the primitive Sem.

speech, as it is by far the oldest and purest of all living tongues, and its speakers in Arabia belong to the oldest and purest of races. Again, the Egyp. language has an important Sem. admixture ; and it must have been from Arabia that this element was derived. We assume that the Northern Semites — Babylonians, Aramzans, Canaanites — lived long together apart from the Arabs, who tended always to the centre of the desert.

The order of divergence seems to have been as follows:—The ancestors of all the Semites re- mained in their desert home for an indefinitel long period before the decisive separation too place. Very early, however, apparently even before the Sem. language was ene eveloped, a section of the tribes leavened the N. African population The first of all the Semites to form fixed settlements were the Babylonians.

Since the ‘Hebrew’ language shows on the whole closer phonetic relations with the ‘ Assyrian’ than does the Aramaic, it follows that the speakers of the former, or the Canaanites, must have lived longer ees with the speakers of the latter, or the Babylonians, than the Aramsans, 88 SEMITES not yet certain whether the transit was made across the Isthmus or over the lower entrance of the Red Sea. Recent discoveries of remains of primitive Egyptians in Upper Egypt seem to point to the latter route.

Possibly there was a very early movement of Semites along E. and 8. Arabia, from which came the African migration. This must have preceded the Sabwan development. Next, the tribes representing the Northern Semites moved northwards, not yet attaining to fixed settlements, or at least not to life in cities. From these the Arameans branched off as northern nomads. The ancestors of the Babylonians and Canaanites still held together for a time, while yet civic life and government were unknown.

Next came the settlement of the Babylonians between the Lower Euphrates and Tigris, where they found an inferior alien population, which they subdued or absorbed. The Canaanites, parting from them, moved westward across the Piller till they reached the highlands of Palestine and the sea. The Phen. tradition that the fathers of the family came from the shores of the Persian Gulf, may perhaps be an authentic reminiscence of this memorable movement.

It was not till many ages later that the Hebraic clans made a similar and still more fateful migration to the Land of Pro- mise. A long residence of all the Arabian tribes upon the oases of the central desert preceded the departure of the S. Arabians and their gradual occupation of the coast of the Red Sea and the Ocean. Still another interval elapsed before a migration took place over the sea to Abyssinia. Some faint conception of the antiquity of the Sem.

race may be gained from a_ consideration of its oldest literary monuments. We now have access to specimens of the language of the Baby- lonians as it was written between 5000 and 4000 B.c. It there presents an aspect differing not at all from that which it exhibits over three millenniums later. That is to say, it is a language showin signs of advanced phonetic degeneration, rare by a decisive stage of phonological and structural change from the Heb., still more from the Aram.

, and more again by an enormous interval from the South Sem. dialects. How many thousands of years we have thus to add to what we may call the historical period, as above indicated, cannot be said. Backward beyond that period we have still to take into account the ages that intervened between the Sem. migration into Africa and the separation of the South and the North. or biblical study the history of the Southern Semites is of comparatively little significance.

The interests of the OT centre in Palestine; and it was not till long after the Christian era that the life and thought of our race were affected by any decisive movement from the south. The deat played no part in the world’s history till the time of Islam. But it would be a mistake to exclude, on that account, Arabia entirely from our histori- cal survey. In the first place, S.

Arabia was in the earliest known times a region of much greater importance than it was during the later period of Israel’s history. It would appear that wide stretches of grazing land were occupied by great tribal confederations, some of which at certain eriods at least assumed the dignity of kingdoms. n very remote times also the mineral productions of gold and precious stones were more abundant and valuable than they are now. The Bab.

in- scriptions bear testimony that in the fourth mil- lennium B.C. the liveliest intercourse was main- tained, and that by overland routes, between Babylonia and E, and W. Arabia,—and it would even epost that Arabs at one time obtained control of Babylonia. On the other hand, Gn 14 mentions SEMITES what was apparently no exceptional instance of an expedition from Babylonia in the 23rd cent. B.C. to the peninsula of Sinai.

In the next place, we learn from the recently discovered Minzan in- scriptions that this people had established a flourishing trade and even a kingdom of their own on the west coast of Arabia before the rise of the kindred kingdom of Sheba, that is to say, before the time of Solomon, and that with the aid of writing they had attained to a fairly high degree of civilization.

Lastly, it must be remembered that many Hebrews resided for a whole genera- tion in Arabia, that thence its population was perpetually recruited, and that the biblical liter- ature makes great account of the wisdom, piety, and patriarchal simplicity of various tribes of the Arabian borderland. Outwardly considered, the Bible story of the career of Israel is an episode in the history of the Northern Semitic communities. That history be- gins with the first Sem. settlements in Babylonia.

Here agriculture was first practised with large and rich results. Thereupon followed trade by river, sea, and land in days when Zidon and Tyre were still untenanted rocks, and the fertilizing waters of the Nile still flowed to the sea through an un- cultivated waste.

Cities one after another were built, cities famous in tradition and history, each the centre of a little kingdom, each with its own patron deity, its own temple and priesthood, and its own priest-king, such as were Akkad, and Sippar, and Nippur, and Erech. In these days— perhaps as early as 6000 years B.c.—Ur of the Chaldees and the no less renowned Eridu were unknown, ancient as they are; for the waters of the Persian Gulf then rolled over their future sites.

The next stage was that in which individual cities began to extend their dominion widely and to form little empires of their own. One city after another thus arose to power, until there came to be a few independent kingdoms instead of many. These, however, could not all survive in the rivalries and ambitions of that time and country, and so there came to two domin- ant centres, the one in Northern and the other in Southern Babylonia. About B.c.

4000 we find Akkad in the north aiming at dominion, not only over Southern Babylonia, but over the most productive regions of Arabia and Syria, as far as the Mediterranean. This, however, we have reason to believe, was not the first great ‘empire.’ It is only the first that is fairly well known as et. The centre of authority was also sometimes in the south, where, among the monarchies of B.C. 3000 and onwards, Ur of the Chaldees occupies a prominent place.

The term of this alternating dominion lasted very long. In the 23rd cent. B.C. the rule was broken by an invasion of the Elam- ites, of whose subsequent domination Gn 14 gives a partial record. Not long thereafter the city of Babylon came to the front, and was made the capital of a united Babylonia, a position which was never abdicated till the close of the Sem. régime. But foreign rule was not at an end.

After a lengthy period of native control, Kassites from the eastern highlands broke in upon Babylonia and held sovereign sway from the 18th to the 13th century. This is the period of the political decadence of Babylonia, due not merely to the domination of a foreign dynasty, but to the rivalry of a kindred nationality. For the result of the gradual rise of Assyria was that Babylonia played no world-moving réle till its revival under the Chaldean dynasty at the close of the 7th cen- rs B.C.

he early history of Assyria is obscure. Begin- ning very early with the growth of the city of Asshur, it gradually extended northward mainly SEMITES SEMITES 83 on the east of the Tigris, till it touched on the mountains of Kurdistan. The kingdom proper was never very large, but the race had a genius for war, and more capacity for government than any of the cther ancient Semites. Its steadily cherished purpose was to secure the dominion in W.

Asia already claimed by Babylonia, and to enlarge it till it sheuld embrace the world. It took many centu- ries to reach the summit of power; but the idea was at length in a measure realized. By far the most important incident in this process of Assyr. extension was the prolonged and bitter strife with Babylonia, ending in the total subjugation of that venerable empire.

Bible students are concerned primarily with the people of Revelation, and secondarily with the actors in the events that prepared the way for that people and determined their providential destiny. From these points of view we are able to look at the history of the N. Semites as one great connected series of events co-operating towards the making and the discipline of Israel. In this ‘increasing purpose’ each one of the great divisions of the N. Semites played an important part.

The home of Israel was to be in the West-land, more particularly in Palestine. This region from the remotest known times was of special interest to the inhabitants of the East. Thither came from the East the Can. immigrants. Thither followed them in course of time the slower-moving Ara- means, Thither came the Hebrews themselves, also from the farther East, as to a land of promise.

Thither, before and after the earliest and latest of these permanent emigrants, came the all-dominat- ing Babylonians, for conquest and still more for exploration and for self-enrichment. Normally, until the 16th cent. B.c., the whole of the West- land was under the sway of Babylonia. And when its a rake control was relinquished, its intellectual influence remained, so that near the close of the 15th cent. the Bab.

language and its cuneiform writing were the international means of communication between the remotest regions. Even letters from Mesopotamia, Syria, Pheenicia, and Palestine, not to speak of Assyria and Baby- lonia itself, were written therein to the court of Egypt, 300 miles up the Nile. This state of things at length passed away, because Babylonia and Assyria spent their force upon one another, and thus both alike lost their hold upon the est.

It was in this period, which we may fairly call exceptional in the history of ancient W. Asia, that the Bey. for independent action came to the peoples of the western coastland. It was then also that the Egyptians, who in their whole history never successfully interposed in Asia, except when the Babylonians or Assyrians were enfeebled or quiescent, essayed to conquer Pales- tine and Syria.

It was in this period, too, that the Hittites arose to power in Northern and Central Syria, and contended long and bitterly for supre- m with the invaders from over the Isthmus. Wit: the same limits of time, Israel, emerging from the obscurity and shame of Egypt, began to play its r6éle in Palestine.

Then was enacted the earlier half of its unique history, including its conquest and absorption of one branch of the Canaanite race, and its ‘brotherly covenant’ (Am 1°) with the other, and culminating in its eatest external power and splendour under avid and Solomon.

Then also were formed the settlements in Syria of the Arameans, which be- came so fateful for Israel in its ‘hundred years’ war,’ in its cruel suffering, and its moral and spiritual chastening after its own internal dis- memberment, But the Bab. idea of Western dominion, inherited by Assyria, was at length realized. Assyria was the first of Sem. nations to learn how to govern as well as to subdue the territory of its rivals.

After intermittent attempts at conquests, progress west- ward was surely made and maintained from the 9th cent. onwards till the middle of the 7th. The Arameans were crushed ; and Israel, repressed for a time, arose again to prosperity under Jeroboam Ir. and Uzziah. But its ‘day’ also came at last. N. Israel was obliterated and added to the realm of Assyria, while Judah was made an Assyr. vassal. Till near the close of the 7th cent. B.c. Assyria remained the undisputed mistress of W.

Asia, not simply controlling the other Sem. communities, but making most of them an administrative portion of her own empire. Thus it came to pass that the individuality of the various communi- ties was gradually destroyed, that one was dis- tinguished from the other less by racial con- nexion than by traditional usages and spoken language.

Ethnical terms were generalized, so that Western seafaring men and merchants came to be known as ‘Pheenicians’ or ‘Canaanites,’ inland traders and travellers as ‘ Aramzeans,’ and at a later date also learned men and astrologers as ‘Chaldeans.’ The general revolution of which this phraseology is a symptom was immensel accelerated by the irruptions of northern barbari- ans, Kimmerians, and Scythians, which took place during the later years of the Assyr. dominion.

The same influx al foreigners hastened the fall of Assyria, which was in any case inevitable, on account of the impossibility of holding together for ever a multitude of petty communities by cen- tralized force alone. But when Nineveh fell, in B.c. 607, its ruin was utilized by new exponents of the ancient Bab. spirit, the Chaldeans from the shores of the Persian Gulf.

Combined with them, and foremost in the attack upon Nineveh, were the Aryan Medes—a people new to dominion, but the precutsors of a move- ment which was to put an end to the réle of the N. Semites. In the partition which followed the conquest, the Chaldzeans retained the proper Sem. domain, while the Medes claimed the highlands to the east and north. The régime of the Chaldzans was stern and strenuous, though not so cruel as that of the Assyrians.

Egypt, which had been sub- dued and then given up by the later Assyr. empire, made a futile attempt, during the brief inter- regnum, to occupy Syria and Palestine. It was thrust out by Nebuchadrezzar the Chaldean. Egypt itself was in due time visited and dis- ciplined within its own domain. The kingdom of Judah, removed from Egyp. control, was put under bond to the Chaldeans. Repeated revolts brought about at last the destruction of Jerus. and the kingdom, and the exile of the people.

But internal decline effected a decay of the Chaldean empire almost as swift as that of the Assyrian. A round seventy years limited its dura- tion. Jts destruction also was accelerated by an Aryan power. Cyrus the Persian, beginning his career as the head of a little province of Media, had become lord of the vast Median dominion, the conqueror of Lydia, and the ruler of a territory stretching from the Indus to the Aigean Sea.

Babylon fell to him in the summer of 539, and with its transfer into Aryan hands the political sway of the N. Semites was for ever ended. The rule of Cyrus was tolerant and humane. Under it the principle of delegated power, un- known to the Semitic rulers, was put in force. Under the Sean ga genial sway of the Persians, many of the old Sem. communities, Bab., Aram., Can. (Phoen.), and Heb., continued to exist, and some of them to flourish.

The Aram, people, in small communities, survived in greatest 90 SEMITES numbers, and taught their language to most of the old N. Semitic realm. But Jerusalem and Tyre were long the most outstanding representatives of the Sem. genius. Surviving longest as centres of influence, they recalled to the world the ancient power of the Sem. mind and spirit. The one handed over to Europe the method as well as the example of a world-wide commerce.

The other, in the more potent and more enduring realm of religion, continued to verify and to publish the essential truth about God and man and duty. It was, above all, in this region of thought and feeling that the Semites did their work for humanity. In their front we place the community of Israel, with all its feebleness and insignificance.

It was under the vassalage to Assyria and Baby- lonia that the prophets and poets of Israel uttered those words which form the most precious legacy of allancient time. And it was after the national life had been finally extinguished that the ancient Church abjured false gods for ever, and first realized the idea of local and individual worship apart from the central sanctuary.

Thus was prepared the way for that final epoch, when He who was not only a Semite and a Hebrew but the Son of Man, did away with ritual, priesthood, and caste, and erected His temple in the heart of humanity. Thus a greater service was done for the world by the most potent of the forces of Semitism under olitical disability and decline, than any which had een wrought by the mightiest of Semitic empires in the days of their power and pride. iii, CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SEMITES.

—It has been stated above that the Sem. civilization is essentially of nomadic origin. We may go further, and assert that the character of the people was vitally affected by their early habitual mode of life. Probably no race in the world’s history has had such a prolonged experience of tribalism as a preparation for its wider active career among the nations.

The general sketch already given of the early history of the Semites may give some indication of the conditions of their lite in those distant ages. The inland Arabs of the present day present the nearest surviving analogy, changed though the type has been from the ancient proto- type.

A better representation, though still far from adequate, is afforded by the picture which the Arabian historians and poets have drawn of the manners and pursuits of their countrymen in the centuries before Islam : the migrations of their tribes, their alliances, their feuds, their forays and raids, their revenges, their stormy passions, their loves and hates, their swift growth and de- cline, their superstitions, their monotonous activity, their impulsive energy.

But the correct estimate, as nearly as it may be reached, can be gained only by the use of the imagination, trained in the in- ductions of prehistoric archeology. By a process of reduction and elimination we may arrive at an approximate view of primitive Semitic society e must not imagine the Semites shortly before their separation as one large community swayed by a common leader, obeying common laws, and inspired by common memories.

We have rather to think of a multitude of small com- munities, some of them scarcely more than parasitic unorganized hordes, speaking various closely re- lated dialects, constantly intermingling with and. modifying one another, and ranging over a vast extent of wilderness land. Hunting still engrossed the attention of many of the tribesmen, though immense herds of cattle were the property of others.

They had learned something of the practical uses of metals, especially of copper and iron, besides gold, silver, and several precious stones. The various tools and weapons essential to the business of hunters and shepherds are also represented by at SEMITES words common to the several derivative languages. They were close observers of animals, wild and domesticated, and of various species of plants.

They would even appear to have employed some rude form of writing, though none which was later developed into a general system. Their common vocabulary is naturally deficient in le terms; for their only law was usage and prescrip- tion, and their only court that of the family or tribal chiefs. On the other hand, the religious habit and consciousness had found copious ex- pression.

The reciprocal antagonism of a multitude of tribes, so long maintained in spite of frequent alliances and absorptions, and guarded by the tribal badges of social and religious usage, had its most marked result in the permanent political character of the later Sem. communities. Mutual pe dees even between the States most co allied by blood or common interest, was universal, and was scarcely ever overcome, even after pro- longed forcible amalgamation.

City, kingdoms became the rule in all fixed settlements—an insti- tution which was essentially tribal chiefdom made permanent and hereditary. This type of govern- ment was scarcely modified, even in the most highly organized States; there intervened no real substantial authority between the king and any of his subjects. Even Israel, which exceptionally began its settled career as a tribal confederation, reverted inevitably to the normal Sem. type of overnment.

After the establishment of the king- om, Israel was reduced to ‘ Ephraim,’ and Samaria became the synonym of either, while Jerusalem ere long became the virtual surrogate of Judah. Of absolutely immeasurable importance to the world were the intellectual and moral character and temper of the ancient Semites. Long-continued intense activity, within a wide yet monotonous and secluded territory, was the habit of this unique people.

Such a habit of necessity produces men eager, impulsive, and intense, but narrow and un- imaginative. Such were the prehistoric Semites, and such the Semites of history. Religious, for the most part, rather than moral ; patient, resolute, enduring, brave, serious ; faithful to friends, im- placable towards foes,—they have borne the stam of tribalism all through their history.

With little breadth of imagination, or range of invention, or intellectual or moral sympathy, they have given to literature scarcely anything dramatic or epic. But their ardour and passion, their religious and patriotic fervour, have inspired a lyrical poetry unequalled or unsurpassed. Intensely subjective, they have little spontaneous interest in experi- mental science and the pictorial arts.

Incapable of wide speculation, they have had no genuine philo- sophy of their own; but, wholly practical in their views and modes of life, they have attained to the highest eminence in gnomic wisdom. Their facult of surviving in strange conditions and surround- ings, and of arousing themselves from chronic in- activity to almost superhuman daring and enter- prise, seems to be the manifestation of a reserve power Lge aslo acquired through ages of un- daunted persistence under hard conditions.

Not looking far around them, they have at times seen all the farther beyond and above them. And when it has been ee them to see straight and clear, they have beheld ‘unspeakable things, which it is not possible for a man to utter.’ But they are apt to see only one thing at a time, and so in their judgments of men and things they are exclusive, partial, and extreme. When they perceive the principal part of a thing, it is conceived of and described as standing for the whole.

In their mental pictures there is but little combining of elements, or shading or perspective. In their rer ae ede Se a ey DIASPORA vocabulary there are few qualifying or restrictive terms. In their view of the universe they refer everything to direct supernatural agency. Hence they leave little scope to the individual human will, and a circumscribed choice of action to them- selves.

They know of but two types of govern- ment, the one a development of the other: the atriarchal and the absolute monarchical. They ollow but few occupations, and their work is divided among hereditary guilds. For the like fundamental reason, they are quite limited in their view of human merits and allotments ; men are to them either absolutely good or absolutely bad ; and their destiny is to be either beatific or hopelessly wretched.

ith such mental and moral qualities, they have been, according to the light which they have seen and the course to which they have been driven, the most beneficent or the most noxious of our species. There are twoconsummate forms and modes of Sem. faith and practice—Judaism and Mohammedanism. The one, with all its inevitable limitations, was incomparably the greatest gift of God to the world in ancient times.

The other, in spite of the truth which it has appropriated, is one a the greatest evils of the world’s later days, one of the most perverse and malignant, one of the most perplexing and disheartening. LiTERATURE.—On possible relations between the Semites and other races, see Benfey, Verhidlt. d. dgypt. Sprache z. semit. Sprachstamm (1844); Friedr. Delitzsch, Indogerm.-Semit. Wur- zelverwandtschaft (1878); McCurdy, Aryo-Semitic Speech (1881) ; Brugsch, Hierogl.-demot. Worterb.

(1867), Introduction. On the eens of the original seat of the Semites and their classi- cation, essays have been written by von Kremer, Guidi, and Hommel in favour of the theory of a migration from the N.E. ; by Sprenger, Schrader, and de Goeje approving of the view that Arabia was the starting-place. See the summation in favour of the latter hypothesis in Wright, Compar. Gramm. of Sem. Languages (1890), p. 6ff.; and comp. Noldeke, art. ‘Semitic Languages,’ in Encyc. Brit.

8 Hommel’s latest classification, as based on language, may be found in AH7' (1897), The genius and character of the Semites are discussed in Hommel, Die semit. Volker und Sprachen (1883), p. 21 ff., where the views of Renan, Ewald, Chwolson, Grau, and Sprenger are also cited and criticised. On the religion of the Semites, see W. R. Smith, RS; Baudissin, Studien zur sem. Religionsgeschichte; and Baethgen, Beitrdge z. sem. Religionsgeschichte.

For the history of the Semites, see Max Duncker, Hist. of ip has (tr. from the German [1879], vols. i.-iii.); Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums 884), vol. i.; Maspero, Hist. anc. des peuples de l’Orient; mormant, Hist. anc. de Orient; G. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World; Sayce, The Ancient Empires of the East; McCurdy, HPM. See also artt. Assyria and Basyonia in vol. i. andin the Encyc. Bibl.

, and the Literature there referred to; and add on the Sumerian question, Weissbach, Die sumer. Frage (1898). J. F. McCurpy.