Semitic languages
The similarity of the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic languages was accepted by Jewish and Islamic scholars since medieval times. The languages were familiar to Western European scholars due to historical contact with neighbouring Near Eastern countries and through Biblical studies, and a comparative analysis of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic was published in Latin in 1538 by Guillaume Postel. Almost two centuries later, Hiob Ludolf described the similarities between these three languages and the Ethiopian Semitic languages. However, neither scholar named this grouping as "Semitic".
Albert Schultens
Schultens was the chief teacher of the Arabic language in the whole of the Europe during his lifetime. In some sense, he revived Arabic studies. He differed from J. J. Reiske and Silvestre de Sacy in regarding Arabic as a handmaid to Hebrew. Reiske considered Schultens' treatment of Arabic to be of little value, also maintaining that Arabic studies should not be taught as part of theology, but as a subject matter in its own right, as was mathematics, physics, geography and medicine. Schultens vindicated the value of comparative study of the Semitic tongues against those who, like Jacques Gousset, regarded Hebrew as a sacred tongue with which comparative philology has nothing to do.