No. It was misinterpreted INTO some poor bible stories by people who needed to claim that Africans were inferior to Europeans.
Here are the descendants of Ham according to the King James Version, Chapter 10: Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan.
Note that while Ham is the one who committed the sin, it is only one of Ham’s sons, Canaan, who is actually cursed. There is nothing in the bible (and has never been anything in the bible) about curling hair or “increased size” of his “manhood.” So claims that Ham’s sin resulted in the curse of Africans ignores the fact that Ham was not even affected by the curse and that the three sons who had dark skin were the ones NOT cursed.
All that happened was that later, when some people were desperate to rationalize their enslavement of dark-skinned people, some clown noted that one of Ham’s sons happened to wind up associated with a specific African place (Cush to Nubia) and exclaimed (totally distorting the actual passage) “AHA! We are justified in our brutal behavior because God already cursed these people!” However, it is not in the bible and never was.
God waved his stick and lo and behold…all aboard the ark stopped feeling hungry! Problem solved.
I feel sorry for the guys who wrote those stories. Had it been me, I would have at least made sure that all questions and loopholes were covered. With God on my side to do the explaining, that would be so easy. Just one answer to all questions of whys and hows = Don’t be an idiot asking questions!! The moment a question pops in your head answer it yourself with this - “GOD WILLED IT!!!” Period. :smack:
It’s really kind of unclear: 21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness.
24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.Did Ham rape his father, or catch him in the act of jerking off, or what? We don’t know; the author leaves the point ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so, to indicate that God (via his proxy in this case) can be merciful, but only if you catch him on a good day; otherwise, he’s likely to smite you, or encourage you to throw your virgin daughters to an unruly mob, or somesuch.
New Testiment God seems to have discovered lithium and moderated the mood swings a bit. LDS God…now he’s a hoot. Overall, though, I think the Hindu gods are a lot more fun to hang with, and plus they shave and don’t walk around all day in their bedclothes like a patient in a mental institution. And they’re not nearly as uptight about the whole sex and nudity thing. A great bunch of guys, really. Anyway, assuming that Ham “had relations” with Noah, whatever infections he carried couldn’t have been too deleterious, as Noah lived for another 350 years after.
But the whole worldwide flood business is suspicious, like one of those things parents set up just to teach their children a lesson. Methinks that God just plunked Noah in the middle of a large lakebed, filled it up, and let him sit for a few months just to make him more inclined to settle up. Quite an environmental impact for little reason. Couldn’t he just find a one-armed man and have him fake losing a limb? “And that’s why we don’t yell on the boat.”
Except there is one further problem…how did the fish (that Noah et al were presumably catching) live? Oh sure, lots of dead ones right off…but after a few weeks they wouldn’t be very appealing I shouldn’t think.
The story really only would make sense to someone who didn’t realize how big the earth was, or what flooding it out would REALLY entail…or how many species are out there. If your whole world was the ME with perhaps an inkling that there was an Asia, Africa and Europe out there somewhere (probably no bigger than your little patch in the ME), then flooding it wouldn’t be such a chore…and there wouldn’t be all THAT many animals about (maybe a thousand or so species).
Well no doubt the fish were smoked, brined, or lightly salted to preserve them in some fashion. Regardless of the specific details, Occam’s Razor demands the most parsimonius explanation for the verified presence of intradiluvian teriyaki sauce.
A “clean” animal was an animal that was cloven hooved and chewed its cud. As for how the animals ate, didn’t the story say they “hibernated,” so to speak, for most of the trip?
P.S. Don’t try to guess what religion I am or whatever. Just trying to help clear some things up.
I wonder Poly,
Were the infants and little children also sinners? The innocent animals were not given any mercy either,God didn’t seem to spare them. I would say one could translate the meaning of the story any way to fit one’s thinking.
To live in such cramped quarters for nearly a year in the extremely humid conditions that would have prevailed while 20,000 feet of water evaporated would be quite a feat in it self.
There is always the problem of how many plants could survive under 29,000 feet of water for nearly a year. How did they pollenate etc…Plant eating animals would have nothing to eat for some time, and non swimming animals would have quite a trek crossing the oceans… The story is a fable not fact.
I wonder what Noah did about asexual animals. Where are you going to find the male and female of a whiptail lizard? They reproduce by parthogenesis: there are no males.
Worse, what about the parasites? The number of parasitic species dwarfs non-parasitic ones, but for them to survive into the modern day given their very specific host needs, each animal pair on the ark must have been crawling with virtually every parasite their species could still support today, including those that are quickly fatal. That includes the humans. That by itself is pretty implausible. The frogs had every species of frog liver fluke all at once, including all the other parasites they can get, and still lived through the journey and thrived afterwards? How many different tapeworms were on the ark, and in Noah in particular?
Oh sure, lots of dead ones right off…but after a few weeks they wouldn’t be very appealing I shouldn’t think.