Curse of Ham

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(Undo revision 243422 by Human (Talk) I liked it. But then, I loathe Ham and wish to destroy it.)
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The '''Curse of Ham''' refers to an incident in the [[Bible]], in the book of [[Genesis]].
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The '''Curse of Ham''' refers to an incident in the [[Bible]], in the book of [[Genesis]], not a bad luncheon meat.
  
 
:20 [[Noah]], a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard.  
 
:20 [[Noah]], a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard.  

Revision as of 08:06, 6 October 2008

Icon fun.svg For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about Curse of Ham.

The Curse of Ham refers to an incident in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, not a bad luncheon meat.

20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard.
21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. And the Bible says Noah was a virtuous man.
22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside.
23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him,
25 he said,"Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers."
26 He also said, "Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
27 May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave."

Some white supremacists, including those at Stormfront, have claimed that because of this curse on Ham's descendants (not Ham himself), Africans (the supposed descendants of Ham) are intended to be slaves of the other peoples, ie "Aryans". During 2008, various ultra-conservative and racist blogs and websites invoked the Curse of Ham as an argument against Barack Obama's campaign for the United States Presidency.

Strange Elements

There are a number of curious points about this "curse":

  • Why weren't any of Ham's other sons cursed? Nowhere do we see mention of Cush, Egypt or Libya.[1]
  • How come Canaan is being punished for Ham's misdeeds, when Deutronomy clearly states that children should not be punished for parents' misdeeds?[2]
  • Shem and Japheth acted as equal partners in covering their father, but Japheth's reward seems to be greater.
  • The whole idea that every black person in the world is permanently cursed because some far distant and almost certainly mythical ancestor saw his father drunk and naked, aside from being appalling racist, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense at all.

See also

Footnotes

  1. Genesis 10:6.
  2. Deut 24:16. Note that this counters Deut 5:9 and some other Old Testament extracts which stipulate that God punishes "children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generations". Some have interpreted this as indicating God's hatred of entire families or races descended from sinners.
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