Nice one! 
Leaving out the delicacies, there are euphemisms the KJV uses, along with finding out the meaning of the Hebrew words that shed more light on what may have really happened, but still they stop short of telling.
“Uncovering their nakedness” is usually a euphemism for sexual intercourse. The Hebrew words used also indicate this. There is a good possibility that Ham butt-slammed Noah into the next tent. Either that or he was castrated. Hey, I can relate to Noah’s anger, but why take it out on Canaan. Such is typical of biblical justice.
In Gene Kasmar’s book he lists The Interpreters Bible, Rashi’s Commentary, and a few other sources which specify that either sodomy, castration, or incest took place between Noah and Ham. All I know for certain, is something more happened than just Ham seeing his father naked in a drunken state.
Well, the Bible is famous for it’s use of “knowing” as a euphamism.
All I know for certain is that the World is about 6000 years old. :eek:
It must have been really hard explaining to guys about to go on dates that “when a girl says ‘No/Know’ she means No/Know”.
Though my understanding is that the vast majority of times when the word ‘know’ or ‘knew’ is used it meant ‘know’ or ‘knew’ (yada yada ;)). To me it always seemed more logical that when the paranoid inhabitants of a walled city like Sodom see two men enter who are
1- complete strangers
2- chummy with one of the most recently arrived residents
3- don’t look… ‘right’ (other times an angel appears their first words are often ‘don’t be afraid’, there’s obviously something not altogether human about their appearance)
Add to this that the recently arrived resident who is hosting them is (as the men of Sodom know well) the beloved nephew of a very powerful bedouin chief who has already proven himself in battle against larger foes (he allied with Sodom against five armies and slaughtered them). It makes a lot more sense that when they go to Lot and say “we want to know these men” that they’re saying “we want to KNOW these men” (as in ‘meet and greet’ teambuilder and find out what they’re up to) more than “we hear you have two guests in your house, mind if we have sex with them?” Lot offering up of his virgin daughters is less a way of saying “you can’t have sex with my guests but if it’s just sex you want, here, take a turn with my daughters” than “these men are very important honored guests in my house, I’ll give you my daughters before I’ll let you harm them”, which of course only makes the men of Sodom say “Okay, now we really want to know who’s in there, and by know we mean ‘gain knowledge of but not necessarily in the carnal sense (and sorry for any misunderstanding’)’”.
I’m not near my dictionaries etc, and I’m hoping that one of our Hebrew experts will comment, but my recollection is that the Hebrew word used (Yod-Daled-Ayin or Y-D-') is better translated as “know intimately” or “know deeply.” As such, it’s different from the words for “know casually” as in “meet” someone, or “know intellectually” as in “understand” some topic superficially.
The KJV et al don’t make that distinction, and just translate Y-D-H as “know.” I think that modern Hebrew has somewhat dropped that distinction as well.
True enough, but other times (such as the three angels approaching Abraham’s tent), they are indeed mistaken for people. Angelology (I presume) would say that these were different kinds of angels. If you saw a wheel with many eyes, four faces (lion, ox, eagle, and man), four wings, and horses’ hooves… well, yeah, you’d need to be told not to be afraid, and you wouldn’t think it was human. However, the messenger angels were often mistaken for humans. See Staff report: What’s the deal with angels?, a brilliant work. 
Sampiro said:
That’s what chaperons were for.
Doesn’t matter what the historical or word origins were. I was talking about something that has entered the common parlance. When someone says “He knew her in the Biblical sense”, everyone understands that means sex.
As for Sodom, why would the guy think his guests were threatened if the crowd was just asking to meet and make friends with his guests? Clearly they were posing a threat. Whether that was a threat of anal rapage or a threat of some other kind, you have to assume hostility if your first reaction is, “No, you can’t meet these people, and I would rather have you screw my daughters in the street than let you meet them.”
The sensible and natural response to a crowd saying “We’d like to meet your guests” is to say, “Sure, but only 5 at a time so it isn’t too crowded, and let’s do it tomorrow so they can rest up.” Or “I’ll throw a party on Friday.” Or “I’m sorry, but they’re shy. But how about we throw a concert on Friday, and they’ll perform their greatest hits live on stage?”*
Maybe they’re Michael Jackson.
MODERATOR COMMENTS:
I’ve been guilty of side-tracking here as well, so I’m slapping my own wrist (as poster) along with everyone else’s… but this thread is about Noah, and specifically about the episode of the drunken Noah and the Staff Report related thereunto.
Comments about angels, Sodom, etc are out of place. So, yeah, I didn’t think of this when I made my last post, but let’s get back on track, OK?
Can we talk about how Noah might have used words if he showed up in Sodom drunk?
Speaking of “uncovering the nakedness” of somebody- and this is relevant to the OP- most of Leviticus 18 is one long list of people who’s nekkidness thou shalt not uncover (sandwiched between God’s “I am the Lord I am the Lord” battle with Tourettes and before the “don’t do it with dudes like you would chicks” [i.e. don’t worry about buying them dinner first]):
Henry VIII sought divorce from Katharine of Aragon based on Leviticus 18:16, which led to all manner of hair splitting even then. (Yeah, but is it really your brother’s wife if it wasn’t consummated? Is it still your brother’s ‘nakedness’ if he’s dead when you uncover it? What about the Levirate since your brother had no child?", etc…). I presume they were using the Vulgate Latin O.T. for their debate but I have read “thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife” in documents about the divorce that long predated the KJV.
What’s interesting to me though (and I completely confess my ignorance of Hebrew, Greek, and really in-depth study of Genesis) is that Lev. 18:20 changes the phrase. From the KJV again:
Why does it make such a far more specific reference to the sexual act with the neighbor’s wife than in the previous verses unless “uncover the nakedness of” literally means “to look at while they’re naked”?
I remember reading an interview with Osama bin Ladin’s westernized sister-in-law in which she discussed her one meeting with him. It was in Saudi Arabia at her husband/his brother’s house (i.e. not in a public place), but when she entered the room in her own house she was not veiled. (She was Arab by ancestry and Muslim by religion and even kept her hair covered in public but at home or when traveling in non-Muslim countries she didn’t hide her face or do anything else not specifically required by the Quran.) She said Osama’s reaction was to blush with embarassment and rage and put his hands over his eyes, the same we would do if our brother’s wife [or some other relative’s significant other] walked into a room stark naked and completely unembarassed by it.
There was also a story told by Sir Richard Burton while on the Haj: he was the guest and traveling companion of a very traditionalist bedouin sheikh and his family whose women were all concealed behind heavy veils. When one of his wives (or concubines or daughters- one of his womenfolk anyway) dismounted a wind gust that blew her dress over her head and showed everything she had from throat down. Burton was mortified and was afraid the sheikh would be at very least mortally embarassed and at worst would feel honor bound to kill either the woman or even possibly him since he had seen her “nakedness”. Instead the sheikh was completely unconcerned, even though there was no way he couldn’t have noticed it. When Burton later felt comfortable enough to ask him why it didn’t bother him he replied “because one, it was an accident, and two, you never saw her face”.
In any case, nakedness is evidently a very serious deal, at least to the very conservative, even today in the near East. Was it in ancient times? (David watched Bathsheba bathing on her roof after all.) Is there any legal definition of nakedness though that may have applied in ancient times? (I can’t imagine that breastfeeding was an uncommon sight for instance, but would it have been considered nakedness?)
This is the interpretation I’ve also heard from Bible scholars, whose guess is as good as anybody else’s… We’ll never know, but the logic suggests that some sort of sexual impropriety happened. The shorthand of the scripture may have meant “Ham’s son” not Ham himself, hence the curse on Canaan.
Of course, there’s no indication of ages here, so it ispossible that Ham is guilty for procurring, and Canaan, since there is no age of consent issues back then, for being the tool of his father’s attempt to gain influence by pimping his kid. Or Ham is guilty for not stoppping his son taking advantage of drunken grandpa?
I wonder at the pre-history of gay behaviour… I’m guessing there were probably even less opportunities for partners or privacy than regular for illicit sex, in a semi-nomadic culture where the community was very small and it was hard to get away from anyone else. (And presumably, based on the Bible, the social norms were even more harsh than recent times…)
One can speculate on who was actually responsible for what, but this is a book that has God condemning peoples’ descendants for 10 generations, so it really is within the same frame of mind to punish Canaan for Ham’s actions.
My understanding is that sex between members of the same gender wasn’t that uncommon, but there wouldn’t have been much long term pair-bonding between them. One reason was probably the incredible amount of work that was necessary combined with how rigidly divided into gender roles it would have been-it required a man and a woman just to get things done in day to day living.
But it’s only in recent times in North America that the children move out (or move into the basement). I suspect most households were multigenerational and large, so a matching pair (man and woman) was not as necessary as you might think. After all, a lot of people died of diseases at odd times in life, so there were plenty of unpaired family members at any one time.
They didn’t appear to have adopted the East Indian process of disposing of the surplus widows at the same time that the husband’s body was burned.
Rather, I suspect a society that was so anal and rigid (?) that they thought eating fish without scales was wrong, probably did not allow for other behaviours that went against the logic of the “natural order”. Besides, you are onto the “slippery slope” argument. “If Shep can fornicate liberally with Ham, why can’t he do so with Sally or Jane?” In true authoritarian puritan parental tradition, it makes more sense to forbid any “fun” at all.
One could suppose that it was not unheard of, or else nobody would have thought to write down a rule against it.
This is really another tangent, but one that needs to be answered. The actual quote is punishing the children for ten generations “of those who [continue to] hate me.” The concept is that when parents teach their children to do evil, the scorecard accumulates. Similarly, the descendents are rewarded for a thousand generations “of those who [continue to] love me.” The sociology is all around continuity and family, and trying to get people to stay within the rules: one way to enforce that is by threatening that your children will be punished not only for their own wrong-doing, but for all the wrong-doing that you teach them. So spare your children, don’t teach them wrong-doing.
I’ve always remarked that “the sins of the father should not be visited upon the child”, but in the case of both Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, they both did such an abysmal slimey job running Canada that I think I’ll make an expcetion for their sons who are both trying to grab the limelight in recent years.
When I was a kid we were taught in school (a private religious academy but one that generally had strong academics) that because of Canaan McHam laughing at his butt nekkid grandpa (they didn’t go into the potential explanation of rape) that he and his descendants turned black. Even when I was little this didn’t quite make sense, and it wasn’t just me- other kids in the class asked questions as well. That was also an early lesson to all of us in the “when grown ups don’t know they say ‘God did it and he doesn’t like questions’”, a theological variant of “because I said so and I’m bigger than you” that we could relate to. Unfortunately many of them probably still do.
My own grandfather was tall and skinny and I did see him naked once when I went into the bathroom not knowing he was in there, and I laughed. True story: I really did worry that something majorly bad of a divine and punitive nature was going to happen to me (though I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to turn black since He’d already done that one, though on the other hand I’ve never had kids so this might be why- a subconscious knowledge that they’d be African tribesmen and I’d never be able to speak their language).