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   From: brachypodium@ntlworld.com   
      
   "GodFriendly"  wrote in message   
   news:a5440818.0412212137.4c79e721@posting.google.com...   
   > Hi! Quick question: I've heard some people say Blacks suffer from the   
   > curse of Ham and this somehow explain why they have difficulties   
   > achieving, etc.   
   >   
   > This thought is very common even though when I checked the Bible it   
   > wasn't Ham who was cursed but his son, Canaan and Canaan's descendants   
   > who were probably more mid-brown skinned, not Black?!   
   >   
   > Your views and comments please folks.<   
      
   The name Canaan means 'subjected' or even 'humiliated'; we can therefore   
   take this man's name as Subjected in this, the first passage that mentions   
   him, that meaning being what Israelite readers and hearers would have read   
   and heard.   
      
   Ham had called one of his four sons by this name, and thus we may presume   
   that he firmly intended that this son would be subject to him, if not the   
   others too. Before relating the incident, Genesis twice tells us that   
   Subjected (Canaan) was Ham's son, without mention of any of the others, as   
   if to emphasise that Ham indeed expected obedience and respect from this son   
   at least. Despite this apparent expectation, Ham dreadfully humiliated his   
   own father, and we may suppose that he fully deserved punishment   
   for expecting from his son what he did not give his father. Ham was indeed   
   punished and humiliated, as the existence and prosperity of a man's   
   descendents was of very great importance to the ancients. With poetic   
   justice, Canaan became a curse to his father just as Ham had shown himself   
   unfit as a son. It is true of course that the descendants of Subjected   
   (Canaan) were indeed put under subjection and the sword by the descendants   
   of Shem, and the remnant humiliated (Joshua 9:27). It is also perhaps   
   noteworthy that, via another son, Ham was progenitor of the Philistines, who   
   were much more difficult for the Israelites to oppose than the Canaanites.   
      
   The awful irony of Ham and the naming of his son provide an object lesson in   
   the consequences of evils we are all prone to, i.e. hypocrisy and double   
   standards, and is intended as the chief purpose of the incident, imv. We   
   also see here the link between honouring of parents and long term   
   prosperity, a connexion that was later to be made more explicit in the fifth   
   commandment to the Israelites.   
      
   The introduction of racial significance in interpreting this passage is   
   entirely misplaced and even bizarre. It was in any case one of Ham's other   
   sons who was called Black (Cush), and he was not cursed. If we read on, we   
   see that one of the most able of Ham's descendents, Nimrod, was a son of   
   Black, and had no 'difficulties achieving'.   
      
   'Black (Cush) was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on   
   the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; that is why it is said,   
   "Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord." The first centres of his   
   kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh, in Shinar. From that land he   
   went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which   
   is between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city' (Gen 10:8-12).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)