Before the eighteenth century Asian scholars were called Orientalists, not Semiticists

Evidence

In the sixth century, the Spanish monk Isidore of Seville translated the Bible framework into a global cartography, in which the different branches of humanity descended from the sons of Noah were located in separate geographical zones: Japhet in Europe, Ham in Africa and Sem (Shem transliterated into Latin) in Asia. For the most part, however, medieval thinkers interested in Asia referred to Western Asia as the Orient, and judged there to be a unity of what St Jerome called Oriental languages. Hence, scholars of Asia were known as Orientalists, not Semiticists. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 633

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies why pre-modern scholars of Asia were Orientalists, not Semiticists — the term Orientalism precedes and is distinct from Semitism.