1-2023 What is semitism (or anti-semitism) ?

Semitism denotes both a race and a language family.The name Semite comes from Shem, the eldest of the three sons of Noah -- Shem, Ham, and Japheth. In the Greek and Latin versions of the Bible, Shem becomes Sem, since neither Greek nor Latin has any way of representing the initial sound of the Hebrew name. In later times, the idea was widely adopted that the three sons of Noah represented the eponymous ancestors of three major racial or linguistic groups. Ham was the ancestor of the dark-skinned peoples of Africa, Shem of the Hebrews and their various cognates, and Japheth the ancestor of the Medes, Persians, Greeks, and other peoples who, many centuries later, came to be known as Aryans. Over the years, "Anti-semitism" gradually transformed into "anti-Hebrew" or "anti-Jew".