A Calvinist Heritage to the “Curse of Ham”: Assessing the Accuracy of a Claim about Racial Subordination

This essay examines the antebellum history of interpretation surrounding the curse of Ham in Gen 9:18–29. It explores how modern notions of scientific racism were read into the story as a de facto justification for the transatlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery in the antebellum South. However, more than simply being used as a prooftext for racist agendas, the curse of Ham provided a biblical foil for circumscribing a racial hierarchy where whiteness was positioned as superior in the figure of Japheth. By considering key features of the racist antebellum interpretation, I argue that the proslavery rationalization of Christian antebellum writers is rooted in a deracialized whiteness that was biblically produced and blessed with divine authority.

According to the “Curse of Ham” narrative in the book of Genesis (Gen 9:20– 27), Ham gazed at his sleeping father Noah’s nakedness and did not cover him. When Noah awoke he cursed Canaan, Ham’s fourth and youngest son, and his offspring with slavery. Why did Noah curse Canaan and not Ham, the one who stared at his nakedness? And why did Noah curse Ham for the seemingly trivial act of not covering him? This article links Ham’s doing to Noah and Noah’s cursing of Canaan to a motive for land, the land of Canaan for Israel, Yahweh’s landless people. The curse of Canaan justified casting the Canaanites out of the land. It argues that Ham’s deed and Noah’s curse were invented by the Yahwist (J) author of the narrative to realise this motive of land for Israel.

For 2010 the bibliography continues its customary coverage of secondary writings published since 1900 in western European languages on slavery or the slave trade anywhere in the world: monographs, ...