Herder’s pioneering use of the Semitic concept served a biblical, theological agenda.

Evidence

Herder did not consider Hebrew to be humanity’s first language, the primordial Ursprache, and thus diverged from Augustinian tradition. However, he did judge Hebrew to be one of its ancient offshoots and, critically, the paradigm of all poetic expression. It is of no small significance that Herder deployed the concept of the Semitic in the service of this very particular biblical preoccupation. He might have argued that Hebrew poetry—the Hebrew Bible—was ultimately the product of human agency, but he also maintained that behind the human lay the divine creator. And, crucially, like the Semitic idea itself, Herder’s fascination with the Old Testament as a basis for human culture spoke of a marked continuity with the theological universe of pre-Enlightenment Europe. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 641