Thus the Semitic race is to be recognized almost entirely by negative characteristics. It has neither mythology, nor epic, nor science, nor philosophy, nor fiction, nor plastic arts, nor civil life; in everything there is a complete absence of complexity, subtlety or feeling, except for unity. It has no variety in its monotheism.
source
Renan, E. (1855). Histoire générale et système composée des langues sémitiques. Paris. , quoted in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization Vol. I, published in 1987, by Martin Bernal