The Semites category was fundamentally theological despite its racial framing.

Evidence

Yet it would be a mistake to see the Semites as an Enlightenment invention, an idea summoned ex nihilo by European scholars. As James Renton argues in his chapter in this book on the end of the Semites, this category was, for all of the racial language that attended it, at base a theological construct. Ernest Renan, the ‘Orientalist’ most associated with the Semite concept, was ultimately concerned with writing the history of Jesus and Christianity; Jews and Arabs were, in his assessment, bound by their origins in the desert landscape of prophecy—the home of Abrahamic monotheism. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 82

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the common assumption that racial categories like the Semites are purely secular Enlightenment constructs; echoes Renton’s chapter.