So, why Canaan? We
don’t see in the text that Canaan had anything to do with his father’s
disrespect of his grandfather. Saying something, “must be so,” that is not in
the text is not much of an argument. And why would Canaan be cursed for things
remote descendants many generations in the future would do? I see this curse as
a prophesy. The descendants of disrespectful Ham hundreds of years from now in
the land that the descendants of his son, Canaan, will inhabit, will be a
stench in God’s nostrils and thorn in the side of the Jews who are given their
land by God.
Noah didn’t curse
Canaan. He stated a prophetic fact that Ham’s descendants through Canaan would
be a cursed people and be the servant of Shem’s descendants, one strain of
which would become the Jews.
There was a myth
fostered and promoted as a justification for racial slavery in the United
States, although it had a small number of voices before, that Ham was the
father of the black, African races, thereby making the supposed curse on Canaan
really a curse on Ham and all of his descendants. This myth gained ascendancy
in Antebellum America and is still popular among racist preachers and
congregations. The most exhaustive study of this myth I have read is by Stephen
Haynes, a professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis,
Tennessee.[1]
While a literal
view of this passage reveals that Canaan was said to be cursed, a condition we
will see was literally played out as proved in the Bible narrative, we will
also soon see that Ham was not just the ancestor of African populations. In
fact, let’s make something clear. The idea that Noah walked off the Ark with
three sons; one of whom was a white guy, one a black guy, and one an Asian guy
is so patently absurd that it can only be dismissed as the raving of a lunatic
who has an agenda. Mankind would have been brownish with dark hair and eyes at
this time, with some variation possible which foundations were already in the
genetic code God had placed in man and God operated with each cell division and
each generation. Race, a social construct, that has little bearing in physical
reality, based more on politics, geography, and culture, will come about later,
over time. Some geneticists estimate that the classic white skinned, blue eyed
Caucasian came about between 5 and 6,000 years ago as, in their elongated time
frame based on their dating methods, early Europeans were dark-skinned,
brown-eyed, and dark-haired. There are a number of genetic studies confirming
this belief of the modern geneticist. Unfortunately, we are still using
classifications from the racist 19th century that alternately render
black people between being, as a group, naturally villains or fools, and
impulsive victims of their own biology. Such nonsense should not be honored in
a Christian church.
Galatians
3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek [grades
of ethnicity or race], there is neither
bond nor free [grades of social class],
there is neither male nor female [grades of gender] : for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Colossians
3:11 Where there is neither Greek nor
Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but
Christ is all, and in all.
The idea of white as a race is a
relatively new thing. In 1619 when the first black slaves were dumped off at
Jamestown by a Dutch ship there were no white people there. Or at least they
didn’t regard themselves as particularly white. They viewed themselves as
English or some other cultural tag. The process of making white a
characteristic of the ruling class and black the permanent peasant, serf, slave
class happened gradually as the English molded the way they treated the Irish,
the poor, indentured servants, etc. into an effective economic system and a
method of social control. American slavery came about as a process and
regarding Africans as an inferior race cursed from ancient times also came
about over time as one part of its justification drawing on a few scattered
commentaries from late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Noah lived for
several centuries after the Flood to see several noteworthy events, perhaps to
his further shame.
[1] Stephen R. Haynes, Noah’s
Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002).
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