The Semitic concept emerged from biblical philology rather than secular linguistics.

Evidence

The concept of the Semite was born when this tradition collided with the Enlightenment; specifically, it was the product of the development of comparative philology. Crucially, however, the aim and the context remained the Bible. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 636 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The legacy of these first-generation philologists was, to Renan, of the highest importance, higher even than the work done by Sacy. Whenever he discussed language and philology, whether at the beginning, middle, or end of his long career, he repeated the lessons of the new philology, of which the antidynastic, anticontinuous tenets of a technical (as opposed to a divine) linguistic practice are the major pillar. For the linguist, language cannot be pictured as the result of force emanating unilaterally from God. As Coleridge put it, “Language is the armory of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.” The idea of a first Edenic language gives way to the heuristic notion of a protolanguage (Indo-European, Semitic) whose existence is never a subject of debate, since it is acknowledged that such a language cannot be recaptured but can only be reconstituted in the philological process. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 361 (#complicates, via linked claim)

On all sides, and in many different ways, what William Jones stated in his Anniversary Discourses (1785–1792), or what Franz Bopp put forward in his Vergleichende Grammatik (1832), is that the divine dynasty of language was ruptured definitively and discredited as an idea. A new historical conception, in short, was needed, since Christianity seemed unable to survive the empirical evidence that reduced the divine status of its major text. For some, as Chateaubriand put it, faith was unshakable despite new knowledge of how Sanskrit outdated Hebrew: “Hélas! il est arrivé qu’une connaissance plus approfondie de la langue savante de l’Inde a fait rentrer ces siècles innombrables dans le cercle étroit de la Bible. Bien m’en a pris d’être redevenue croyant, avant d’avoir éprouvé cette mortification.” (Alas! it has happened that a deeper knowledge of the learned language of India has forced innumerable centuries into the narrow circle of the Bible. How lucky for me that I have become a believer again before having had to experience this mortification.) For others, especially philologists like the pioneering Bopp himself, the study of language entailed its own history, philosophy, and learning, all of which did away with any notion of a primal language given by the Godhead to man in Eden. As the study of Sanskrit and the expansive mood of the later eighteenth century seemed to have moved the earliest beginnings of civilization very far east of the Biblical lands, so too language became less of a continuity between an outside power and the human speaker than an internal field created and accomplished by language users among themselves. There was no first language, just as—except by a method I shall discuss presently—there was no simple language. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 360 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The rise of secular sciences displaced the Bible as the basis for describing Jews; The term Semitic was coined in 1781 to describe one peoples’ single language.; Modern philology emerged by secularizing language from divine to human origins (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• The Semite concept arose from Enlightenment comparative philology within a biblical frame #corroborates (0.95) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 636
• New philology replaced divine language origin with heuristic protolanguages reconstructed by scholars #complicates (0.78) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 361
• Sanskrit scholarship displaced Biblical authority on the origins of civilization and language #complicates (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 360