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Misconception, Racism and Slavery

In the past, some people have claimed the "curse of Ham" as a biblical justification for imposing slavery or racism on black people, although this concept is essentially an ideologically driven misconception. Regarding this matter, the Christian leader Martin Luther King Jr. called such attempt "a blasphemy" that "is against everything that the Christian religion stands for."

Nonetheless, elite intellectuals were "successful" in establishing the Hamitic misconception as a valid justification for slavery and racism within a wide sphere of public thought. For Southern slave owners faced with the abolitionist movement to end slavery, the Curse of Ham was among the only grounds upon which Christian slave owners could formulate an ideological defense of slavery. Even before slavery, in order to promote economic motivations within Europe associated with colonialism, the Curse of Ham was used to shift the common Aristotelian belief that phenotypic differentiation among humans was a result of climatic difference, to a racialist perspective that phenotypic differentiation among the species was due to there being different racial types. This latter effort started in England.  Englishmen were widely afraid to further the colonial efforts of The Crown and begin a new life in lower latitude colonies for fear of becoming black. In 1578, George Best, a sea captain who was a member of the Elizabethan court, first popularized the myth of racial differences within what would be a widely read book on the search for a Northwest passage to Asia. Best uses careful ethnographic descriptions to portray the indigenous peoples of the North West as being sophisticated hunters and gatherers, not different in spirit than the white Englishmen, at the same time he presents a scathing account of Africans, saying of them that they are a “black and loathsome” people on account of being descendants of the “cursed chus.” Interestingly, Best doesn’t mention the curse as lying upon Ham, but rather Chus.  The fact is is that there is no indication in genesis proper to justify racism and slavery, but the vagueness of genesis 9-11 coupled with a damning curse from an important biblical patriarch could be used as propaganda to influence popular belief by cunning intellectuals trying to further particular agendas. The historian David Whiteford writes of a “curse matrix” being derived from the vagueness of genesis 9 such that it didn’t matter who was cursed or what people they were suppose to have been the originators of, all that mattered was that there was a vague reference to a generational curse that could be exploited any which way by agenda driven intellectuals like George Best.

Pro-slavery intellectuals were hard pressed to find any justification for slavery and racism within Christian Theology which taught that all humans were descendants of Adam and therefore one race, possessed of equal salvation potential and deserving of being treated as kin. The Curse of Ham was used to drive a wedge in the mythology of a single human race, as elite intellectuals were able to convince people that the three sons of Noah represented the three sects of Man and their respective hierarchy of different fates. Leading intellectuals in the south, like Benjamin M. Palmer, claimed that White Europeans were decedent from Japhet who was prophesied by Noah to cultivate civilization and the powers of the intellect, while Africans, being descendants of the cursed Ham, were destined to be possessed by a slavish nature ruled by base appetites. The Curse of Ham, as construed by agenda driven, pro-slavery intellectuals like Palmer, gave a biblical depth to the justification of slavery that couldn't be found anywhere else within the Christian Framework. Palmer cited the Germanic philosophical position put forth by thinkers like Friedrich Von Schlegel, that there are different "historic peoples," with different roles to play in the unfoldment of history. These philosophies gave the common pro-slaver their only sense of a profound justifications for their behavior. As Palmer liked to preach, the southern slave owners were just continuing the pattern set forth by the great biblical patriarch Noah. Palmer taught that slave owners should appraise their own actions for that they were planters of the land as was Noah, and that the enslavement of the Africans was making good upon the great patriarch’s righteous curse. Pro-Slavers could make connections between the ancient rabbinical tradition that interpreted the mysterious wrong doings of Ham as being sexually deviant in nature with their own racialized, hyper-sexualized conception of Africans. Thus southern slave owners could convince themselves of a perverse natural order that set them at the top. The Curse of Ham itself doesn't give any grounds for such gross misuse, and misinterpretation, as the majority of Christian Theologians have always argued, yet agenda driven intellectuals found ways to exploit the vagueness and mystery of genesis 9-11 to further their own ends.

Early Judaism and Islam

Noah curses Ham by Gustave Dore

While Genesis 9 never says that Ham was black, he became associated with black skin, through folk etymology deriving his name from a similar, but actually unconnected, word meaning "dark" or "brown". The next stage are certain fables according to ancient Jewish traditions. According to one legend preserved in the Babylonian Talmud, God cursed Ham because he broke a prohibition on sex aboard the ark and "was smitten in his skin"; according to another, Noah cursed him because he castrated his father. Although the Talmud refers only to Ham, the version brought in a midrash goes on further to say "Ham, that Cush came from him" in reference to the blackness, that the curse did not apply to all of Ham but only to his eldest son Cush, Cush being a sub-Saharan African. Thus, two distinct traditions existed, one explaining dark skin as the result of a curse on Ham, the other explaining slavery by the separate curse on Canaan.

The concepts were introduced into Islam during the Arab expansion of the 7th century, due to cross-pollination of Jewish and Christian parables and theology into Islam, called "Isra'iliyyat". Some medieval Muslim writers—including Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Ibn Khaldun, and even the later Book of the Zanj—asserted the view that the effects of Noah's curse on Ham's descendants included blackness, slavery, and a requirement not to let the hair grow past the ears, despite the fact that this contradicted the teachings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad regarding skin color and racial equality, most notably in his last sermon. This is also in spite of the fact that the account of the drunkenness of Noah and curse of Ham are not present within the text of the Qur'an, the Islamic holy book, and not consistent with Islamic teachings that Noah is a prophet, and prophets do not drink alcohol. Islam holds prophets of God in very high esteem, and some Muslims suggest the prophets are infallible.

An independent interpretation of the curse being imposed on all of the descendants of Ham persisted in Judaism, especially since the other children of Ham were situated in the African continent; i.e., Mizraim fathered the Egyptians, Cush the Cushites, and Phut the Libyans.

Medieval serfdom and "Pseudo-Berossus"

In medieval Christian exegesis, Ham's sin was regarded as laughter (for mocking his father and doing nothing to rectify his condition).

Elsewhere in Medieval Europe, the "Curse of Ham" also became used as a justification for serfdom. Honorius Augustodunensis (c. 1100) was the first recorded to propose a caste system associating Ham with serfdom, writing that serfs were descended from Ham, nobles from Japheth, and free men from Shem. However, he also followed the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:21 by Ambrosiaster (late 4th century), which held that as servants in the temporal world, these "Hamites" were likely to receive a far greater reward in the next world than would the Japhetic nobility.

The idea that serfs were the descendants of Ham soon became widely promoted in Europe. An example is Dame Juliana Berners (c. 1388), who, in a treatise on hawks, claimed that the "churlish" descendants of Ham had settled in Europe, those of the temperate Shem in Africa, and those of the noble Japheth in Asia (a departure from normal arrangements, which placed Shem in Asia, Japheth in Europe, and Ham in Africa), because she considered Europe to be the "country of churls", Asia of gentility, and Africa of temperance. As serfdom waned in the late medieval era, the interpretation of serfs being descendants of Ham decreased as well.

Ham also figured in an immensely influential work called Commentaria super opera diversorum auctorum de antiquitatibus (Commentaries on the Works of Various Authors Discussing Antiquity). In 1498, Annius of Viterbo claimed to have translated records of Berossus, an ancient Babylonian priest and scholar; which are today usually considered an elaborate forgery. However, they gained great influence over Renaissance ways of thinking about population and migration, filling a historical gap following the biblical account of the flood. According to this account, Ham studied the evil arts that had been practiced before the flood, and thus became known as "Cam Esenus" (Ham the Licentious), as well as the original Zoroaster and Saturn (Cronus). He became jealous of Noah's additional children born after the deluge, and began to view his father with enmity, and one day, when Noah lay drunk and naked in his tent, Ham saw him and sang a mocking incantation that rendered Noah temporarily sterile, as if castrated. This account contains several other parallels connecting Ham with Greek myths of the castration of Uranus by Cronus, as well as Italian legends of Saturn and/or Camesis ruling over the Golden Age and fighting the Titanomachy. Ham in this version also abandoned his wife who had been aboard the ark and had mothered the African peoples, and instead married his sister Rhea, daughter of Noah, producing a race of giants in Sicily.

European/American slavery, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

The explanation that black Africans, as the "sons of Ham", were cursed, possibly "blackened" by their sins, was advanced only sporadically during the Middle Ages, but it became increasingly common during the slave trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The justification of slavery itself through the sins of Ham was well suited to the ideological interests of the elite; with the emergence of the slave trade, its racialized version justified the exploitation of African labour.

A Redenção de Cam (Redemption of Ham), Modesto Brocos, 1895, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes. The painting depicts a black grandmother, mulatta mother, white father and their quadroon child, hence three generations of racial hypergamy though whitening.

In the parts of Africa where Christianity flourished in the early days, while it was still illegal in Rome, this idea never took hold, and its interpretation of scripture was never adopted by the African Coptic Churches. A modern Amharic commentary on Genesis notes the nineteenth century and earlier European theory that blacks were subject to whites as a result of the "curse of Ham", but calls this a false teaching unsupported by the text of the Bible, emphatically pointing out that Noah's curse fell not upon all descendants of Ham, but only on the descendants of Canaan, and asserting that it was fulfilled when Canaan was occupied by both Semites (Israel) and Japhetites. The commentary further notes that Canaanites ceased to exist politically after the Third Punic War (149 BC), and that their current descendants are thus unknown and scattered among all peoples.

Robert Boyle—a seventeenth-century scientist who also was a theologian and a devout Christian—refuted the idea that blackness was a Curse of Ham, in his book Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664). There, Boyle explains that the Curse of Ham used as an explanation of the complexion of coloured people was but a misinterpretation embraced by "vulgar writers", travelers, critics, and also "men of note" of his time. In his work, he challenges that vision, explaining:

A number of other scholars also support the claim that the racialized version of the Curse of Ham was devised at that time because it suited ideological and economical interests of the European elite and slave traders who wanted to justify exploitation of African labour. While Robinson (2007) claims that such version was non-existent before, historian David Brion Davis argues, as well, that contrary to the claims of many reputable historians, neither the Talmud nor any early post-biblical Jewish writing relates blackness of the skin to a curse whatsoever.

Latter Day Saint movement

Main articles: Black people and Mormonism, Mormonism and slavery, and Black people and priesthood (LDS)

In 1835, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, produced a work called the Book of Abraham. It explicitly denotes that an Egyptian king by the name of Pharaoh was a descendant of Ham and the Canaanites, who were black,(Moses 7:8) that Noah had cursed his lineage so they did not have the right to the priesthood, and that all Egyptians descended from him. It was later considered scripture by the LDS Church. This passage is the only one found in any Mormon scripture that bars a particular lineage of people from holding the priesthood, and, while nothing in the Book of Abraham explicitly denotes Noah's curse was the same curse mentioned in the Bible or that the Egyptians were related to other black Africans, it later became the foundation of church policy in regards to the priesthood ban. The 2002 Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual points to Abraham 1:21–27 as the reasoning behind the not giving black people the priesthood until 1978.

In the following year, Smith taught that the Curse of Ham came from God, and that blacks were cursed with servitude. He warned those who tried to interfere with slavery that God could do his own work. Without reversing his opinion on the Curse of Ham, Smith started expressing more anti-slavery positions starting in 1842. After Smith's death, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) continued to teach that black Africans were under the curse of Ham and that those who tried to abolish slavery were going against the decrees of God, although the day would come when the curse would be nullified through the saving powers of Jesus Christ. In addition, based on his interpretation of the Book of Abraham, Brigham Young believed that, as a result of this curse, negroes were banned from the Mormon priesthood.

In 1978, LDS Church president Spencer W. Kimball said he received a revelation that extended the priesthood to all worthy male members of the church without regard to race or color. In 2013, The LDS church denounced the curse of Ham explanation for withholding the priesthood from black Africans. However, the essays have not been well publicized, and many members remain unaware of the essays and hold to racist beliefs that had been taught in the past. The Book of Abraham is still considered scripture in the LDS church. The Old Testament student manual, which is published by the Church and is the manual currently used to teach the Old Testament in LDS Institutes, teaches that Canaan could not hold the priesthood because of his ancestral lineage but mentions nothing of race or skin color: