Semitic people

“ Please do not think this is a joke; it only seems a joke, and behind it there lurks a gigantic truth, and it is this, that all latter-day ideas and movements have originally sprung from a Jewish source, for the simple reason, that the Semitic idea has finally conquered and entirely subdued this only apparently irreligious universe of ours.
. . . . There is no doubt that the Jews regularly go one better or worse than the Gentile in whatever they do, there is no further doubt that their influence today justifies a very careful scrutiny, and cannot possibly be viewed without serious alarm. ”

“ But still there is a danger of assuming that the most important characteristics of particular Semitic peoples, especially of the Israelites and of the Arabs, are common to all Semites, and of ascribing to the influence of race certain striking features which are the result of the external conditions of life, and which, under similar circumstances, are also developed among non-Semitic races. ”

“ When we remember, however, that the Israelites were of the same Semitic stock as the population they conquered and professed to despise,454 and that the practice of human sacrifice is attested for many branches of the Semitic race, we shall, perhaps, incline to surmise that the chosen people may have brought with them into Palestine the seeds which afterwards sprang up and bore such ghastly fruit in the valley of Hinnom. ”

“ No, you are not a vulgar, you are a very enlightened, critic of our Race. For there is an anti-Semitism, I hope and trust, which does the Jews more justice than any blind philo-Semitism, than does that merely sentimental “Let-them-all-come Liberalism” which in itself is nothing but the Semitic Ideology over again. ”

“ It appeals strongly to the English mind, because it is the holy language, bringing the Divine Word and coming from the sanctuary of that ancient covenant, whose faithful guardians are the people of Israel. The Semitic word has within historic times exercised on the civilisation of the whole human race an influence to which no parallel can be found, and which, if the future may be measured by the past, is destined triumphantly to extend, for the incalculable benefit of mankind, to the uttermost bounds of the earth. ”

“ But the civilised life of the Semites proved to be as lacking in the instinct for progress, whether material, moral or intellectual, as in its simpler way the original pastoral existence has been. Life in Semitic towns became richer and more complex up to a certain point, but there ambition faded, and the ingrained habit of acquiescence in existing circumstances prevailed, hindering and preventing further growth. Thus, politically, this eastern civilisation was characterised by the mass of the people seeking no share in their own government. ”

“ The peoples of the different states were for the most part of the same race, no doubt, just like the Semitic peoples in Syria and Palestine. But they differed from each other in their customs and their ways of government far more than the Semites did. They were very often fighting among themselves and, again like the Semites, found it very difficult to let their jealousy of each other die down and to unite together for defence against a foreign foe. ”

“ The Semitic peoples, we may point out here, are to this day counting peoples strong in their sense of equivalents and reparation. The moral teaching of the Hebrews was saturated by such ideas. “With what measure ye mete, the same shall be meted unto you.” Other races and peoples have imagined diverse and fitful and marvellous gods, but it was the trading Semites who first began to think of God as a Righteous Dealer, whose promises were kept, who failed not the humblest creditor, and called to account every spurious act. ”

“ This Conference, while fully aware of the difficulties that must arise from the presence in certain districts of large populations of people of other religious beliefs and social habits, asserts that the Jew and the Christian are equal children of God, and therefore calls upon all Christians to stand firm against any and every attempt to arouse anti-Semitic feeling for political or any other needs. ”

“ They are in truth a 'peculiar people,' practical yet mystical, strongly of the world yet finding their chief solace in those things which are not of the world.
The materials for a complete inquiry into the history of Semitic religion are lacking, and we must perforce fill up the gaps which are many by comparative methods. But in this we are greatly assisted by the numerous manifestations of Semitic faith which, including as it does Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaanitish, Phœnician, Arabian, and Mohammedan cults, provides us with rich comparative material. ”

“ In every country where the chosen people has been spread, it has always preserved the moral Semitic character, while it has sometimes modified its physical characteristics, as when becoming fair where formerly dark-skinned; the religion of the God of Abraham is the only bond which now unites its scattered members. This strong influence of race obliges one to proceed cautiously in attributing to the Mosaic religion the little tendency of Jews toward suicide. ”

“ Robertson Smith in his valuable work, The Religion of the Semites, mentions that in his view Semitic religion does not differ so fundamentally from the other types of world religion as many writers on the subject appear to think. But the longer one considers it the greater do the barriers between Semitic and other religions appear and the more clearly marked their lines of demarcation. The prolonged isolation to which the Semitic peoples seem to have been subjected appears to have greatly affected their manner of religious thought. ”

“ The race from which the Bible came was despised in ancient times and it is despised to-day. How comes it then that a product of that race has been granted such boundless influence? How comes it that the barriers which have always separated Jew from Gentile, Semite from Aryan, have at one point been broken through, so that the current of Semitic life has been allowed to flow unchecked over the rich fields of our modern civilization? ”

“ To apply the term to a person who is merely antagonistic to that fraction of the Semitic race known as the Jews is therefore absurd, and leads to the ridiculous situation that one may be described as "anti-Semitic and pro-Arabian." ”

“ Among them there is a fraction, and that fraction again scattered over vast areas, in various states of civilization, and under diversified kinds of governments, enjoying liberty and rights of citizenship in the one, and groaning under relentless oppression in the other,—are they still none other than Semites? Are they so permeated with Semitic features that they can never amalgamate with their surroundings and become full-weighted citizens of the state where they pitch their tents,—offer them what inducements you may,—but must be kept at [50] arms length and treated as suspects? ”

“ Thus we find the impression of awe preponderating among the Semitic races generally; and as in their political relations, so in their religious conceptions, we find them prone to prostrate themselves before despotic power. ”

“ The materials for the study of their institutions and population are abundant, but lend themselves to discussion rather than to a summary of admitted facts. In the early history of south-western Asia the Semites form the most important ethnic group, which is primarily linguistic but also shares other remarkable characteristics. Two of the greatest religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, are Semitic in origin, as well as Judaism. ”

“ Hardness easily becomes cruelty, and purely Semitic empires, such as Assyria, developed a barbarous cruelty, the story of which is told on their inscriptions and in the denunciations of the Hebrew Prophets. There is something in the Semitic character that is disliked by Western nations, and21 the Jews have been subjects of relentless persecution in mediæval times, and are still capable of arousing bitter hostility, as may be seen from those violent eruptions of anti-Semitism which occasionally burst through the cosmopolitanism of Western Europe. ”

“ The Jews contend that anti-Semitism is a mere atavistic revival of the Jew-hatred of the middle ages. The extreme section of the anti-Semites, who have given the movement its quasi-scientific name, declare that it is a racial struggle—an incident of the eternal conflict between Europe and Asia—and that the anti-Semites are engaged in an effort to prevent what is called the Aryan race from being subjugated by a Semitic immigration, and to save Aryan ideals from being modified by an alien and demoralizing oriental Anschauung. ”

“ Of late, however, not only have the limits of the Semitic family been considerably extended, so as to embrace several nations notorious for their idolatrous worship, but the history of the Jewish and Arab tribes has been explored so much more fully, that even there traces of a wide-spread tendency to polytheism have come to light. ”

“ How is the fact to be explained, he might ask, that the three great religions of the world in which the unity of the Deity forms the key-note, are of Semitic origin, and that the Aryan nations, wherever they have been brought to a worship of the One God, invoke Him with names borrowed from the Semitic languages?
But let us look more closely at the facts before we venture on theories. Mohammedanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion, and its very core is monotheism. ”

“ The new and higher culture had thoroughly asserted itself as predominant in both its great provinces, and in nothing as much as in the national religion, which, coming in contact with the conceptions of the Semites, was affected by a certain nobler spiritual strain, a purer moral feeling, which seems to have been more peculiarly Semitic, though destined to be carried to its highest perfection only in the Hebrew branch of the race. ”

“ Pitted against Judas and his followers were apostates of his own race, who knew the land, were able to spy out the movements of the Jews, and were inspired by the bitterest hatred. The few advantages on the side of Judas were: first, his followers were aroused to heroic deeds by the peril of the situation. In the second place they were inspired by an intense religious zeal. The one force throughout Semitic history that has bound together tribes and nations and made the Semite an almost invincible fighting power has been religion. ”

“ If we leave out of consideration those vague and varying forms of faith and worship which 239 we find among uncivilized and unsettled races, among races ignorant of reading and writing, who have neither a literature nor laws, nor even hymns and prayers handed down by oral teaching from father to son, from mother to daughter, we see that the number of the real historical religions of mankind amounts to no more than eight. The Semitic races have produced three—the Jewish, the Christian, the Mohammedan ”

“ The Jews belonged to what has been called the Semitic race. This family, the only historic rival of the Japhetic (or Aryan) race, is ethnologically composed of the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews and other Syrian tribes, the Arabs and the Carthaginians. It is a race which has been great on land and at sea. In the valley of the Euphrates and that of the Tigris its sons carried all the arts of social life to the highest perfection, and became mighty conquerors and warlike soldiers. ”

“ In writing the history of the Semitic race it is necessary to lay down certain general characteristics [342] common to all the members of that race, before we can speak of nations so widely separated from each other as the Jews, the Babylonians, Phenicians, Carthaginians, and Arabs, as one race or family. The most important bond which binds these scattered tribes together into one ideal whole is to be found in their language. ”

“ It was natural that under a dynasty of Semites, Semitic blood should flow freely into the lower region, Semitic usages and modes of thought become prevalent, and the spoken language of the country pass from a Turanian or Turano-Cushite to a Semitic type. ”

“ Moreover, as we approach the Near East, cradle of the masonic system, we find the Semitic influence not only of the Jews but of other Semite races directing the lodges. In Turkey, in Egypt, in Syria now, as a thousand years ago, the same secret societies which inspired the Templars have never ceased to exist, and in this mingling of the East and West it is possible that the Grand Orient may draw reinforcement from those sources whence it drew its system and its name. ”

“ We should be left facing a mystery which no other rationalism has ever come so near to providing within rational cause and cure. Whatever we do, we shall not return to that insular innocence and comfortable unconsciousness of Christendom, in which the Victorian agnostics could suppose that the Semitic problem was a brief medieval insanity. ”

“ One of the greatest of English Jews, honored and respected by Jew and Christian alike for his learning, his philanthropy and his godly piety, says of this racial-political Zionism that it has broken his heart, and set the clock backward for his people a hundred years. The Christian lover of his country and his fellow-men may well express a similar feeling on his side. ”

“ THE SEMITIC RACES
The Hebrew nation forms a branch of that group of the human family known as the Semites. Their relation to the other great racial divisions of mankind is far beyond the reach of our enquiry, and we cannot even penetrate to a period when the Semites formed an unbroken family. At the remotest date to which history can take us we find the family already widely dispersed, with distinct national characteristics well developed, and their common ancestry quite forgotten in their violent hatreds of their unrecognised kinsmen. ”

“ It is a sad fact that perhaps ninety-nine out of every hundred " Christian " readers of this vile production in Germany and Austria are so ignorant of Bible history that they are taken in by these parodies of Jewish characters as if they were actual history. I may mention that my first acquaintance with this " Antisemiten- Katechismus" was in the drawing-room of a Christian Hospitz in Berlin, where it was evidently kept for the enlightenment of benighted Christian travellers. But is there no ground for the accusations of anti-Semites ? I am not one to hide up the sins of my people. ”