The Etymology of Semitism: Test Your Knowledge of Genesis!

Oh, must you people always be so uppity about your diet?

And so after Ishmael was cast out into the desert and Isaac, renamed Israel, had a son named Judah

It wasn't Isaac who was renamed Israel; it was Isaac's son Jacob. "Israel means "strove with God", because Jacob is given the name by a 'man' (widely assumed to be an angel by Biblical scholars) with whom he wrestles at the ford of Jabbok. The man asks him his name and then says, "your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, since you strove with God and man and survived".

spares me the curse of Ham

I'm not sure what the curse of Ham is. Please enlighten me

"Gypsies" or "Romanies" is another example of words for groups of ppl purporting to describe their origin. The words are derived from "Egypt" and "Romania" respectively, even tho many of the travelling folks in Europe are believed to have travelled across Asia from India. I think we need to appreciate how poorly educated most ppl were prior to the 20th century and how little most ppl travelled. The arrival of a group of travellers with strange customs, clothes and language in a town might set ppl talking about their origins, but with so little education they would make wild guesses as to where these ppl might come from. The terms we used to describe groups of ppl were fixed in this kind of time and environment and we have been loath to revise them in the light of more accurate information.

Ham fetched his brothers to laugh at their drunken dad, but they admonished him and covered Noah taking care not to view his nakedness.

When Noah sobered up he was annoyed by Ham, and said "Henceforth he shall serve his brethren".

All inferior races are descended from Ham.

as is The Seduction of Lot - which also features drunkenness. And seduction.

Maybe Onan was being punished for just doing it all wrong, parthenogenesis apparently being the norm.

The Indo-European language family is the biggest in the world, and includes the Germanic languages (German, Nordic languages, English, etc.) as well as some eastern languages like Farsi (Iranian) and Hindi/Urdu (descended from Sanskrit). The interrelationships between these languages have led linguists to postulate the existence of a single ancestor language (and consequently a single ancestor culture/people) for all of them. Since this idea was first suggested in the 19th century, there has been a lot of speculation about who the speakers of this language were and what they looked like and where they lived. Scientists at the time (it always starts with some spin-off of legitimate science, doesn't it?) came to refer to these people as Aryans and to their language as the original Aryan language.

Based on some linguistic rules (having to do with the way that hard consonants are generally "traded down" over centuries for softer consonants), a lot of people felt that modern German was the closest of all the surviving languages to the original Aryan language. As research progressed on the composition of the original language (the vocabulary of which was deduced by finding common root words present in all the different Indo-European "Aryan" languages), vocabulary clues seemed to suggest that the ancient Aryan homeland would have been in Central Europe. This was because the ancient language apparently had words for some flora and fauna that only existed in Central Europe at that time.

Anyway, the main idea is that in the first half of the 20th century, a lot of people -- not just Nazis -- thought that the major Indo- European progenitor culture arose originally in Germany, then migrated into Central Asia, where it split into two groups. The eastern group went south into Persia and India and Greece. The western group returned to Europe and repopulated what is now Germany, England and Scandinavia.

The Nazis seized on this commonly accepted science of the day and used it to build their racial ideology -- claiming that those with Nordic features were the most perfectly preserved descendants of the ancient Aryans, who they claimed were a race of superhumans.

Anyway, new theories have arisen today. It turns out that there is a lot more linguistic evidence (again, words for specific flora and fauna, mountains, etc.) that would place the original "Aryans" -- if we can even use that word anymore without sounding like Nazis -- in the Caucusus. From there, they migrated east, south, west, etc. At least that's the prevailing theory these days.

But as with all theories, there is just enough room for dissension that anyone can pretty much believe whatever they want.

Which are the Hametic races according to american christians? Do they generally consider themselves to be semites?

What's the deal with that Phil Collins?

Most American Christians don't give two flops on the issue of who's Hametic and who's Semitic.

Genesis is basically a big incest-fetishist's spank book.

Oh, so it's that kind of invisible touch.