NOAH’S CURSE

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James F. Findlay Jr. Stephen R. Haynes
 NOAH’S CURSE
The Biblical Justification of American Slavery

 . 

1

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Copyright 䉷 2002 by Stephen R. Haynes

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haynes, Stephen R.
Noah’s curse : the biblical justification of American slavery /
Stephen R. Haynes.
p. cm.—(Religion in America series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-514279-9
1. Bible. O.T. Genesis IX–XI—Criticism, interpretation, etc.
2. Slavery—Justification. 3. Ham (Biblical figure) 4. United States—
Church history. I. Title. II. Religion in America series (Oxford University Press)
BS1235.2 .H357 2001
222'.1106—dc21 2001021800

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
 Preface

My interest in the book of Genesis as a source for American racial discourse

was piqued about 1990, when, in an informal conversation with erstwhile
colleague Valarie Ziegler, I learned that Benjamin M. Palmer (1818–1902)—
the “father” of Rhodes College—was a vociferous advocate of slavery who
relied on the so-called curse of Ham to justify the South’s peculiar institution.
When I indicated my desire to learn more about Palmer and his proslavery
worldview, Valarie suggested I consult the “Palmer Memorial Tablet” that
hangs in a dimly lit corner of Palmer Hall, the oldest and most prominent
building on the Rhodes campus. Finding the tablet, I read these dedicatory
words:
To the Glory of God
and
In Grateful Recognition
of the generosity of the peo-
ple of New Orleans by whom
this building was erected
In Memory of
Benjamin Morgan Palmer
for forty five years pastor of
The First Presbyterian Church
of New Orleans
Born in Charleston, SC 1818
Died in New Orleans 1902
The father of this institution
which was the first to place the
vi    

Bible as a required textbook in its

curriculum and which through all
the years continues to enshrine
this ideal of Christian education

A Patriot, A Scholar, An Educator

an Ecclesiastical Statesman
and a pulpit Orator unsurpassed.1

Reflecting on this tribute to Palmer’s legacy, I began to form a question: What

“ideal of Christian education” has Palmer bequeathed to my college, and to
what extent is it separable from his use of the Bible to sanction slavery, se-
cession, segregation, and genocide? Though I have not arrived at a conclusive
answer to this question, it continues to exercise my mind and soul. This book
is a public attempt to place it in larger historical, theological, and cultural
perspective.
In this sense, Benjamin Palmer occupies a central place in this study for
reasons that have much to do with the author. For the man provokes in me
complex urges of hostility and desire, just as his portrait on my office wall is
an object of awe and repulsion alike. As I have struggled to come to terms
with my own identity as a Southerner, a Presbyterian, and a clergyman, Palmer
has been my wrestling partner. For years we have grappled over the Bible he
read, the ideas he espoused, and the institutions to which he was dedicated.
One of those institutions is Rhodes College, my first and only home as a
professional academic. Founded in 1848, Rhodes was reorganized under Pal-
mer’s leadership in 1875 as Southwestern Presbyterian University. Until his
death in 1902, the institution remained extremely dear to him.
Just one document from Palmer’s hand has been preserved in the Rhodes
College archives, but it typifies his great fondness for the place. In May of
1889, Palmer wrote from New Orleans to inform Chancellor C. C. Hersman
that lingering illness would prevent him from making the trip to Clarksville,
Tennessee, to attend SPU’s commencement. Though he would live for another
thirteen years, chronically poor health and failing eyesight convinced Palmer
that the days of his association with the university were numbered. He la-
mented that he would be “compelled to decline reappointment” to the board
of directors. “In this prospective severance of my relations with the Directors,”
Palmer wrote, “permit me to say to them that, during a long life, no associ-
ation has been more pleasant or profitable than with my Brethren of the
Board . . . And the tears blind me, as I write these lines of farewell to Brethren
whom I have learned to love in Christ Jesus. . . .”2
It is not surprising that Palmer wept as he contemplated the termination
of his service to Southwestern Presbyterian University. The establishment of
a viable Presbyterian institution of higher learning in the Old Southwest had
been one of his preoccupations since he arrived in the region in 1855. This
hearty and active man had outlived his wife and all but one of his five children,
   vii

he had survived the Civil War as a refugee and fugitive, and he had bravely
ministered to victims of New Orleans’s yellow fever epidemic in 1858. His
stature as a religious leader was unsurpassed in the region. But now, through
some inscrutable movement of Providence, failing health forced him to sever
official ties with the institution he helped bring to life just as it entered its
heyday.
Given that Palmer probably composed thousands of letters during his
adult life, it is strangely appropriate that this one alone is preserved on the
campus of his beloved college. Not only does it offer a personal glimpse of
the man honored as the institution’s “father,” but its reference to sightlessness
is eerily prophetic. For in the succeeding years physical blindness would dis-
able Palmer and ultimately hasten his death. According to eyewitnesses, Pal-
mer never saw the streetcar that struck him down in 1902 while he attempted
to cross the rails near his New Orleans home. The image of blindness invoked
by Palmer in 1889 was prophetic in another way as well. A century after his
death, it is impossible to ignore Palmer’s theological myopia. In fact, any
honest reckoning of Palmer’s legacy must conclude that despite the respect
and recognition accorded him during his lifetime, he was profoundly near-
sighted in matters relating to race. Specifically, his worldview lacked utterly
the baptismal vision of Christian unity that has been the church’s ideal since
Paul proclaimed to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is
no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are
one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Even if the apostle failed to keep this goal in
sight, it marks the acme of his ascent toward Christ’s kingdom. Palmer is
guilty of ignoring the vision of unity at the heart of the gospel and of replacing
it with a myth of racial hierarchy. The infusion of Christian anthropology
with racial or national myths has always spelled apostasy, as it did in Palmer’s
case.
Graciously, Palmer was afforded a final opportunity to correct his flawed
vision. His biographer relates that after being struck by a streetcar near the
intersection of St. Charles and Palmer Avenues, a group of Negro laborers
“hurried to the scene, took up the bruised form of the venerable old man and
bore him tenderly back to his home.”3 If Palmer’s story were to be written in
the tragic vein, this episode of “reversal”—the Chosen Race’s venerable priest
is rescued by “sons of Ham” who may have been former slaves—would issue
in a scene of “recognition.” Just before his death, the black men’s humane
deed would move the white victim to an epiphany of the rainbow people of
God. But Palmer’s biographer offers no evidence of such a recognition, forcing
us to conclude that Palmer’s fate, physically and spiritually, was blindness.
The American religious and cultural forces that have obscured the Christian
ideal of community rooted in creation are the subject of this study.

Secondary literature on the religious justification for slavery is voluminous.

Two studies were particularly helpful as I began to explore the so-called curse
viii      

of Ham and its role in American racial discourse. The first is Illusions of
Innocence, in which Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen analyze the way
Noah’s curse functioned for Southern proslavery intellectuals as a “world-
defining myth” whose appeal was based in part on Noah’s traditional asso-
ciation with the invention of agriculture and his role as the patriarch of the
first postdiluvian family.4 The second work is Thomas V. Peterson’s Ham and
Japheth in America, which traces the contours of the curse in the collective
mind of the Old South and elucidates the ways it functioned to sustain the
worldview of antebellum Southerners when their peculiar institution came
under attack after 1830.5 Peterson clarifies the “mythic” quality of the curse
by carefully noting the cultural functions of Genesis 9:20–27 in the Old South.
Drawing on the work of anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Claude Lévi-
Strauss, Peterson defines myths as shared cultural symbols that uphold a social
order. According to this definition, the story of Noah and his sons functioned
mythically in the Old South inasmuch as the characters and actions it narrated
symbolized Southern cultural beliefs, institutions, and attitudes, successfully
bringing together whites’ “racial stereotypes, political theories, religious beliefs
and economic realities.”6
As will be evident in the pages that follow, I am deeply indebted to
Peterson’s fine study. By exploring the curse in the light of symbol, myth, and
sacred history, he clarifies how Noah’s malediction became a pivotal element
in the biblical argument for slavery. Peterson also cites a great many works
by proslavery intellectuals, many of which are referred to in this study. Nev-
ertheless, this project expands on Peterson’s work in important ways: by plac-
ing American readings of Genesis 9 within the long history of Western biblical
interpretation; by attending to texts dealing with Nimrod (Genesis 10:6–12)
and the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9), without which the role of Noah’s
curse in American history cannot be properly understood; and by analyzing
the way Genesis 9 and its cognate texts were employed in American racial
discourse after the demise of slavery, when white Southerners found them-
selves more in need than ever of biblical sanctions for the inferiority of blacks,
the evil of miscegenation, and the necessity—or at least permissibility—of
racial segregation.

This study is thoroughly and unapologetically interdisciplinary. It incorporates

methodologies associated with history, biblical studies, literary criticism, the
history of interpretation, theology, and anthropology. In part because aca-
demic forces at the professional and institutional levels mitigate against this
sort of interdisciplinary scholarship, I have made an effort to transgress tra-
ditional boundaries of scholarly inquiry. One of the book’s goals, in fact, is
to foster dialogue between scholars who work in separate corners of academe
and who too often are unaware of others’ labors. Our immature scholarly
understanding of Noah’s curse and its role in American history is due in part
to the disciplinary isolation that discourages students of American culture and
    ix

history from interacting with scholars of the Bible. This study seeks to over-
come this isolation by exploring the intersection between racial readings of
Genesis 9–11 and the history and cultural patterns that have influenced them.

Finally, because this book treats biblical texts that have been objects of exten-
sive historical-critical analysis, it is necessary to defend its focus on the history
of biblical interpretation—that is, on how Genesis 9–11 has been read, rather
than on how it ought to be read. Modern scholars have been keen to employ
critical tools to defuse the pernicious social influence of the Bible in Western
history. But doing so does not alter the textual forces that have encouraged
misinterpretation or the penchant of Bible readers to read in self-justifying
ways. Among the unifying themes of this study are the convictions that read-
ers—whatever their qualifications, background, or official status—make
meaning of biblical texts and that the meanings they make, however foreign
they appear to minds conditioned by biblical literalism or the historical-critical
method, are significant in their own right. They demonstrate how personal,
theological, and social forces affect every act of interpretation.
John Sawyer has recently lamented biblical criticism’s studied ignorance
of the history of interpretation: The concern of most modern biblical experts,
he notes, “has been with the original meaning of the original text: anything
later that that is rejected as at best unimportant, at worst pious rubbish. If
anything, they want their main contribution to the study of the Bible to be a
corrective one, explicitly rejecting what people believe about it: ‘Ah, but that
is not what the original Hebrew meant!’ ”7 Studies of Noah’s curse by Bible
scholars confirm Sawyer’s observation. Many seek to recover the prehistory
of Genesis 9:20–27 as a way of limiting the parameters of valid interpretation.
In opposition to this narrow interest in uncovering original meanings, how-
ever, the method of analysis employed here foregrounds postbiblical data.8 As
Sawyer argues, this approach is “no less historical or critical” than the
historical-critical method, because “there is just as much evidence for what
people believe the text means, or what they are told to believe it means, as
there is for what the original author intended, and this can be treated with
just the same degree of sensitivity and scientific rigor as a reconstructed orig-
inal Hebrew text or any other ancient near eastern text.” Sawyer adds that
“what people believe a text means has often been far more interesting and
important, theologically, politically, morally and aesthetically, . . . than what it
originally meant.”9
The focus on Bible readers will be evident throughout this study. Genesis
9–11’s history of interpretation is explored in detail in part I. Part II analyzes
the distinctive ways Noah’s curse was interpreted and expanded in antebellum
America. Part III deals with the role played by Genesis 9–11 in the theological
and social thought of influential Presbyterian divine Benjamin Morgan Pal-
mer. And part IV revisits the history of interpretation, focuses on traditions
of counterreading, and offers a redemptive interpretation of Noah’s curse.
 Acknowledgments

A variety of people and institutions have contributed to this project. Much

of the research that informs the study was conducted during a sabbatical leave
from Rhodes College during the 1995–96 academic year. Lilly Endowment Inc.
provided funding that made possible a full year’s leave from teaching. Annette
Cates of Rhodes’s Burrow Library supplied access through interlibrary loan
to many of the primary texts cited here. Timothy Huebner of the Rhodes
History Department was an important conversation partner as the project
evolved. James Vest and Lawrence de Bartolet of the Rhodes Department of
Foreign Languages and Literatures translated the French texts cited here. Their
assistance was invaluable.
Several scholars at other institutions made important contributions to the
book as well. Erskine Clarke of Columbia Theological Seminary served as my
first conversation partner an Southern religion. Danna Nolan Fewell of Drew
University deserves much credit for encouraging the project to completion.
Following my presentation on Benjamin M. Palmer at the 1996 American
Academy of Religion–Society for Biblical Literature annual meeting in New
Orleans, Danna suggested I explore the American hermeneutics of race more
generally. I began to do so, and the result is a study that is considerably
broader and more historically informed than would have been the case with-
out her input. She and Fred Burnett of Anderson University read the manu-
script at an early stage and made valuable suggestions. Eugene D. Genovese,
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, and Walter Brueggemann also read and commented
on early versions of the manuscript. Their support and guidance have been
tremendously valuable.
Benjamin Braude of Boston College became an important conversation
xii           

partner as this project developed. Working on a similar topic, Ben graciously

shared ideas and resources. Thee Smith of Emory University proved to be a
helpful interpreter of Girardian theory. Julia O’Brien of Lancaster Theological
Seminary read portions of the manuscript and made helpful suggestions. Fi-
nally, Cynthia Read of Oxford University Press is responsible for seeing prom-
ise in a rough manuscript. Her vision and support are much appreciated.
Permission is gratefully acknowledged to use material that was originally
published in two scholarly journals. A version of chapter 4 appeared in the
January 2000 issue of The Journal of Southern Religion, and a version of chap-
ter 7 appeared in the Summer 2000 issue of The Journal of Presbyterian His-
tory. All Bible quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless
otherwise noted.
While this book was in process, my personal life underwent unexpected
and difficult changes. Family members and close friends have been extraor-
dinarily supportive. I am particularly indebted to my parents, Jean and Ronald
Haynes, and to Kenny Morrell, Anne Davey, Stephanie Bussey-Spencer, Mark
Weiss, Mary Allison Cates, John Kaltner, John Carey, Harry Smith, Palmer
and John Jones, Bunny and Jeff Goldstein, Stephen and Gwen Kinney, Kim
and Eric Schaefer, and especially Alyce Waller. To these remarkable friends,
this book is lovingly dedicated.
July 2001 S. R. H.
Memphis, Tennessee
 Contents

1. Setting the Stage, 3

 .    



2. A Black Sheep in the (Second) First Family: The

Legend of Noah and His Sons, 23

3. Unauthorized Biography: The Legend of Nimrod and

His Tower, 41

 .   

4. Original Dishonor: Noah’s Curse and the Southern

Defense of Slavery, 65

5. Original Disorder: Noah’s Curse and the Southern

Defense of Slavery, 87

6. Grandson of Disorder: Nimrod Comes to America, 105

xiv   

 .  

7. Noah’s Sons in New Orleans: Genesis 9–11 and
Benjamin Morgan Palmer, 125

8. Honor, Order, and Mastery in Palmer’s Biblical

Imagination, 146

9. Beyond Slavery, Beyond Race: Noah’s Camera in the

Twentieth Century, 161

 .   

10. Challenging the Curse: Readings and
Counterreadings, 177

11. Redeeming the Curse: Ham as Victim, 201

12. Conclusion: Racism, Religion, and Responsible

Scholarship, 220

Notes, 223

Bibliography, 299

Index, 314
NOAH’S CURSE
 1
Setting the Stage

  1999, the National Broadcasting Corporation telecast its widely an-
ticipated TV version of Noah’s Ark. Commentators claimed that the produc-
tion had taken liberties with the biblical text; they were silent, however, about
aspects of the Bible’s history of interpretation that were retained in the tele-
vision miniseries. For instance, the movie linked Noah’s son Ham with Africa
(by casting a woman of African descent as his wife), with unrestrained desire
(by including scenes in which Ham makes sexual overtures toward his fian-
cée), and with rebellion (by depicting Ham as the instigator of mutiny on the
ark).
In April 1999, National Public Radio aired a report on the legal barriers
to interracial marriage that persist in a few Southern states.1 The report noted
that although residents of South Carolina had voted the previous November
to nullify that state’s antimiscegenation law, nearly 40% of votes cast were in
opposition to repeal. To illustrate the religious basis for Southern resistance
to intermarriage, the report included a sound bite in which State Represen-
tative Lanny F. Littlejohn (Rep., Spartanburg and Cherokee counties) declared
that interracial marriage was “not what God intended when he separated the
races back in the Babylonian days.” Littlejohn acknowledged that his per-
spective on the question probably stemmed from his Southern Baptist up-
bringing.2
In October 1998, James Landrith of Alexandria, Virginia, inquired of
South Carolina’s Bob Jones University concerning possible enrollment at the
institution. Because Landrith was forthright about his marriage to an African
American woman, the university’s community relations coordinator was
obliged to explain that Landrith’s marital status presented a barrier to his

3
4      

admission. In a letter from the university, Landrith was informed that “God
has separated people for His own purpose. He has erected barriers between
the nations, not only land and sea barriers, but also ethnic, cultural, and
language barriers. God has made people different one from another and in-
tends those differences to remain.” The letter went on to explain that “Bob
Jones University is opposed to intermarriage of the races because it breaks
down the barriers God has established. It mixes that which God separated
and intends to keep separate.”3 While conceding that no Bible verse “dog-
matically says that races should not intermarry,” the letter did invoke a specific
text:
The people who built the Tower of Babel were seeking a man-glorifying unity
which God has not ordained (Gen. 11:4–6). Much of the agitation for inter-
marriage among the races today is for the same reason. It is promoted by
one-worlders, and we oppose it for the same reason that we oppose religious
ecumenism, globalism, one-world economy, one-world police force, unisex,
etc. When Jesus Christ returns to the earth, He will establish world unity,
but until then, a divided earth seems to be His plan.4

In a spectator culture that is titillated by bizarre expressions of religiosity,

people briefly wonder at such stories and then push them out of their minds.
However, as this study seeks to demonstrate, these are only recent examples
of a perennial American tendency to apply stories from the postdiluvian chap-
ters of Genesis to the problem of “race” relations. In fact, each of these news
items—BJU’s defense of segregation based on the Tower of Babel, NBC’s
embellishments on the story of Noah, and Representative Littlejohn’s cryptic
reference to racial separation in “Babylonian days”—are unconscious expres-
sions of an American interpretive tradition rooted in Genesis 9–11.

Dispersion and Differentiation

What is the content of these chapters that conclude the primeval history of
Genesis? Chapter 9 completes the biblical flood narrative by relating the Lord’s
instructions to the human survivors, the establishment of a covenant with
their leader, and the tale of Noah’s drunkenness (vv. 20–27). Genesis 10 offers
a detailed genealogy of Noah’s offspring, framed by the statements “These are
the descendants of Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; children were born
to them after the flood” (v. 1), and “These are the families of Noah’s sons,
according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations
spread abroad on the earth after the flood” (v. 32). Genesis 11 relates the
cautionary tale of the tower before extending the postdiluvian genealogy to
Abram.
These folktales and genealogical lists may be viewed as literary stage props
for the entrance of Abram in Genesis 12. But a handful of crucial passages
       

have led careful Bible readers to ascribe theological and social import to this
section of scripture. These are 9:20–27 (the story of Noah’s drunkenness), 10:
8–12 (the brief description of the “mighty hunter” Nimrod), 10:25 (which
indicates a “division” of the earth in the days of Peleg), 10:32 (with its refer-
ence to the “spreading abroad” of nations), and 11:1–9 (the story of the tower,
culminating in the “scattering” of the builders). Under the influence of these
texts and the cultural forces explored in this book, readers of Genesis have
construed chapters 9–11 as a thematic whole, reflecting the themes of dispersion
and differentiation.
In modern European and American racial discourse, Genesis 9 has been
regarded primarily as a story of differentiation among Noah’s sons Shem,
Ham, and Japheth. Triggered by some transgression on the part of Ham, Noah
prophesies the distinct destinies his sons’ descendants will assume in the cor-
porate development of humankind. In part because it conforms to notions
that humanity is comprised of essential “racial” types, this passage has shown
a remarkable capacity to elucidate the nature of human difference. For in-
stance, according to a modern Christian tradition, the magi who trekked to
Bethlehem to honor the newborn messiah represented the three races (white,
red, and black) stemming from Noah’s sons. The racial motif in depictions
of the magi apparently emerged in the fifteenth century5 and survived into
the twentieth.6
But prior to the racialization of Noah’s sons in the modern period, Gen-
esis 9 was read as a prelude to the chronicle of human dispersion in chapters
10 and 11. Early Bible readers noted that the story is prefaced by the obser-
vation that “from [Shem, Ham, and Japheth] the whole earth was peopled”
(vv. 18–19). The dispersion implied in the Masoretic text became explicit in
the Septuagint (“from there they were dispersed upon the whole world”) and
Vulgate (“from them each race of man was dispersed upon the whole world”)
renderings of the passage.7 This subtle shift in emphasis between the Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin versions of Genesis 9 no doubt influenced Bible readers to
link Genesis 9 thematically with chapter 10, where dispersion is the leitmotif.
In the so-called Table of Nations in Genesis 10, Bible readers have dis-
covered both a catalog of Noah’s descendants and a description of the earth’s
repopulation following the Deluge. Readings of Genesis 10 as a divinely di-
rected dispersion are reinforced by a variety of textual prompts—“From these
the coastland peoples spread” (v. 5); “From that land [Nimrod] went into
Assyria” (v. 11); “Afterward the families of the Canaanites spread abroad” (v.
18); “To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his
days the earth was divided (v. 25)—as well as by orthodox assumptions re-
garding the historicity of Genesis.8 The familiar connection of Noah’s sons
with Europe, Asia, and Africa (the three regions of the Old World) developed
only “slowly and tentatively” in the first centuries of the common era. What
became the conventional “three son, three continent view” was elaborated by
Alcuin (732–804) and refined in the twelfth century by Peter Comester (ca.
6       

1100–1179). But these medieval associations were unstable, and the assignment
of Ham to Africa, Shem to Asia, and Japheth to Europe was not inscribed on
the European mind until the Age of Exploration.9 By the nineteenth century,
the same intellectual and social forces that contributed to the racialization of
Noah’s prophecy came to bear on Genesis 10, which was consistently read as
an account of humanity’s racial origins and as proof that “racial distinctions
and national barriers proceed from God.”10
The Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 has been read as a reiteration of
dispersion and differentiation alike; indeed, both themes are implicit in the
text. Dispersion is evident in the builders’ justification of their project as a
defense against being “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (v.
4), and the narrator’s statement that “the L scattered them abroad from
there over the face of all the earth” (v. 8). Differentiation emerges when, in
response to this brazen attempt to reach the abode of God (“Come, let us
build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens,” v. 4), the Lord
purposes to distinguish the divine and earthly realms and to divide human
beings by confusing “their language there, so that they will not understand
one another’s speech” (v. 7). Thus, whether dispersion or differentiation is
emphasized, the Tower story may be read as confirming the thematic unity
of Genesis 9–11.
Another interpretive force linking these chapters is the legend of Nimrod.
The enduring association of Nimrod with the Tower of Babel is a classic
example of what contemporary literary critics call intertextuality. References
in Genesis 10 to Babel and Shinar (“The beginning of his kingdom was Babel,
Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar,” v. 10) led early Bible
readers to cast Nimrod as the antagonist in the drama of the Tower. This
interpretive move linked a character without a narrative to a narrative without
identifiable characters11 and contributed to the reception of Genesis 9–11 as a
textual unit. Particularly when he was racialized by nineteenth-century pro-
slavery authors, this grandson of Ham came to embody the curse uttered in
Noah’s original act of postdiluvian differentiation. The chapters that follow
indicate how the perceived unity of Genesis 9–11 has affected both the history
of biblical interpretation and the logic of American racial discourse.

Noah’s Curse

The evolution of the so-called curse of Ham as a biblical justification for racial
slavery is, of course, an essential part of our story. The tale itself—related in
Genesis 9:20–27—most likely reflects conditions in the tenth century ...,
specifically the enslavement and debasement of “Canaanites” by the Israelite
monarchy. Only in the third and fourth centuries .., however, was the bib-
lical story read to emphasize a perennial curse on “Hamites.” What are the
origins of this pernicious use of Genesis 9 to connect Ham with slavery and
        

blackness? In recent years, much ink has been spilled in scholarly attempts to
answer this question; here a brief summary must suffice.
The modern association of Genesis 9 with black servitude is adumbrated
in works by church fathers and rabbis alike.12 For instance, Origen (ca. 185–
254) wrote that by “quickly sink[ing] to slavery of the vices,” Ham’s “discol-
ored posterity imitate the ignobility of the race” he fathered.13 Augustine (354–
430) saw the origins of slavery in Ham’s transgression,14 Ambrose of Milan
(339–397) opined that Noah’s malediction applied to the darker descendants
of Ham,15 and Ephrem of Nisibis (d. 373) is said to have paraphrased Noah’s
malediction with the words, “accursed be Canaan, and may God make his
face black.”16 Several notorious rabbinic glosses on the biblical text that appear
to link Ham’s descendants with dark skin and other negroid features have
been identified as wellsprings of antiblack sentiment. But these texts and their
relationship to slavery and racism are the subject of intense controversy.17
One medieval rendering of Christ’s genealogy has been interpreted as
racializing some of Ham’s descendants through Cush.18 Yet at least one
scholar who has reviewed the relevant evidence concludes that no medieval
Christian source explicitly connects Ham, sex, and blackness.19 Even if they
do adumbrate modern racism, medieval Christian and Jewish interepreta-
tions of Genesis 9 may reflect the emerging reality of racial slavery as effect
rather than cause.20 It was in the Muslim Near East world that slavery was
first closely allied with color, that black Africans first gained a “slavish rep-
utation,” and that the so-called Hamitic myth was first invoked as a justifi-
cation for human thralldom. In fact, it appears that race and slavery were
first consciously combined in readings of Genesis 9 by Muslim exegetes dur-
ing the ninth and tenth centuries, though these authors claim to draw on
rabbinic literature.21
In western Europe prior to the modern period, the curse was invoked to
explain the origins of slavery, the provenance of black skin, and the exile of
Hamites to the less wholesome regions of the earth. But these aspects of
malediction were not integrated in an explicit justification for racial slavery
until the fifteenth century, when dark-skinned peoples were enslaved by the
Spanish and Portuguese, and the European slave stereotype was stabilized.22
Thus, only with the growth of the slave trade and the increasing reliance on
sub-Saharan Africa as a source for slaves did the curse’s role as a justification
for racial slavery eclipse its function as a scriptural explanation of either
“blackness” in particular or servitude in general.
As this summary indicates, it is not clear when to date the fateful con-
junction of slavery and race in Western readings of Noah’s prophecy. The
constitutive elements in the application of Genesis 9 to New World servi-
tude—the conviction that the story narrated the origins of slavery, association
of Ham’s offspring with the continent of Africa and with dark skin, and the
notion that Noah’s words represented a prophetic outline of subsequent hu-
man history—were present in some of the earliest readings of Genesis 9
8     

among Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Yet the application of the curse to racial
slavery was the product of centuries of development in ethnic and racial ster-
eotyping, biblical interpretation, and the history of servitude.
Nevertheless, by the early colonial period a racialized version of Noah’s
curse had arrived in America. In fact, the writings of abolitionists indicate
that by the 1670s the “curse of Ham” was being employed as a sanction for
black enslavement. In 1700, when Samuel Sewall and John Saffin squared off
over the rectitude of human thralldom, the efficacy of Ham’s curse figured in
the debate.23 It is significant that Saffin, whose tract carries the distinction of
being “the earliest printed defense of slavery in Colonial America,”24 was re-
luctant to make the dubious identification of Africans with Ham (or Canaan).
But as white servitude declined and racial slavery came under attack, the
curse’s role in the American defense of slavery was increasingly formalized.
By the 1830s—when the American antislavery movement became organized,
vocal, and aggressive—the scriptural defense of slavery had evolved into the
“most elaborate and systematic statement” of proslavery theory,25 Noah’s curse
had become a stock weapon in the arsenal of slavery’s apologists, and refer-
ences to Genesis 9 appeared prominently in their publications.

Honor, Order, and the American

Biblical Imagination

This study devotes particular attention to the American legacy of Noah’s curse,
beginning with a careful examination of its role in the antebellum proslavery
argument. By locating American readings of Genesis 9 within the history of
biblical interpretation, the distinctive features in proslavery versions of the
curse are clarified. Overwhelmingly, these reflect two concerns that pervaded
antebellum slave culture—honor and order.26
Over the past half-century, much has been written about Southern honor.
Even today attempts to explicate the “Southern mind” rely on the concept.
Social scientists design experiments to demonstrate that honor is indeed con-
stitutive of the Southern male character, and commentators find honor useful
for explaining hostile behavior on Southern highways.27 Yet despite decades
of attention to honor’s links with Southern history, few have attempted to
explore its role in the religious defense of slavery, even though the solid schol-
arly consensus is that “on no other subject did the [antebellum] Southern
mind reveal itself more distinctly than on the institution of slavery.” Because
part II considers the place of honor in proslavery readings of Genesis 9, it
will be useful to review the evolving scholarly understanding of honor’s place
in the Southern mind.
Among the first to hazard an explanation of the distinctive Southern
character was Mark Twain. In Life on the Mississippi, Twain employed the sort
of insightful hyperbole that became his trademark when he identified the roots
of the Civil War in the type of literature favored by Southern readers:
        

Sir Walter [Scott] had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it

existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war.
It seems a little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never should have
had any war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a plausible argument
might, perhaps, be made in support of that wild proposition. . . . [The South-
ern] character can be traced rather more easily to Sir Walter’s influence than
to that of any other thing or person.28

This reference to the immensely popular British author of historical romances

has been dismissed as “probably the wildest passage in all Mark Twain’s lit-
erary criticism.”29 But when Twain connected the novels of Scott, the code of
honor inscribed in them, the antebellum South, and the American Civil War,
he was composing a prelude to the twentieth-century scholarly quest for the
lineaments of the Southern character. The quest was officially launched in
1941 in W. J. Cash’s impressionistic but influential reading of honor as a
dimension of the Southern mind that survived the Confederacy’s defeat. In
1949, Rollin G. Osterweis argued in a classic study that romanticism was a
constitutive element of Old South culture.30 In The Militant South (1956), John
Hope Franklin initiated a new era in scholarly study of the South by empha-
sizing the centrality of honor to Southern history and explicitly linking slavery
and the Southern character. According to Orlando Patterson, Franklin was
the first to show “a direct causal link between the southern ruling class’s
excessively developed sense of honor and the institution of slavery.”31
For the past forty years, scholars of the American South have emulated
these pioneers by exploring the effects of Southern chivalry and honor on the
region’s distinctive identity. The resulting vast literature features such notable
studies as Clement Eaton’s “The Role of Honor in Southern Society” (1976),
Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s Southern Honor (1982) and Honor and Violence in the
Old South (1986), Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death (1982), and
Kenneth Greenberg’s Honor and Slavery (1996).32 Of particular interest for
these second-generation scholars has been the nexus between white Southern-
ers’ cult of honor and their advocacy of slavery. In a variety of insightful ways,
they interpret the Old South’s attachment to slavery as a function of its com-
mitment to a strict timocratic code. In the 1980s, Wyatt-Brown articulated the
emerging consensus when he declared that honor must be seen as “greater,
longer and more tenacious than it has been viewed before, at least in relation
to the slaveholding South.”33
This study takes up Wyatt-Brown’s charge by investigating the dynamics
of honor and shame in antebellum readings of Noah’s curse intended to de-
fend the institution of slavery. On the basis of this investigation it will be
argued that proslavery readings of the curse were rooted in a pair of crucial
premises: that slaves are debased persons and slavery a form of life without
honor and that as the eponymous ancestor of Africans, Ham embodies the
dishonorable condition of black slaves. Accordingly, the themes of honor,
dishonor, and social death are pivotal for comprehending the cultural signif-
icance of antebellum American readings of Genesis 9.
10     

Following an examination of honor in the biblical proslavery argument,

is an exploration of the passion for order that pervades American readings of
Noah’s curse. Although order was not a distinctively Southern feature of an-
tebellum culture, it served as a thematic link between racist readings of Gen-
esis 9–11 before and after the Civil War. Precisely because Noah’s curse was
so clearly applicable to the question of slavery, its postwar relevance was not
selfevident. But American Bible readers soon discovered that the curse could
function as a condemnation of the Hamite penchant for disorder, an incli-
nation embodied in Ham’s grandson Nimrod. Over time, the builder of Ba-
bel’s tower became the chief representative of a Hamite character typified not
by dishonor but by disorder and rebellion. Thus, when studied chronologi-
cally, American readings of Genesis 9–11 reveal a development in the biblical
imagination: from Ham, the lecherous and dishonorable son who is fit only
for servitude, to Nimrod, the rebel-king who tyrannizes his fellows, usurps
territory allotted to others, and thwarts God’s purposes for humanity.
Like other American stereotypes of the Negro, these biblical types are
complementary as well as contrasting. According to John W. Blassingame’s
classic study of plantation life, two conflicting slave stereotypes existed side
by side in the antebellum mind. One was “Sambo,” the docile, deferent, help-
less, and ultimately harmless slave. The other was “Nat,” the slave who might
appear harmless but was in fact incorrigibly rebellious.34 Sambo, “combining
in his person Uncle Remus, Jim Crow, and Uncle Tom, was the most pervasive
and long lasting of the . . . literary stereotypes. Indolent, faithful, humorous,
loyal, dishonest, superstitious, improvident, and musical, Sambo was inevi-
tably a clown and congenitally docile.” Nat, by contrast, was “the rebel who
rivaled Sambo in the universality and continuity of his literary image. Re-
vengeful, bloodthirsty, cunning, treacherous, and savage, Nat was the incor-
rigible runaway, the poisoner of white men, the ravager of white women who
defied all the rules of plantation society. [He was] subdued and punished only
when overcome by superior numbers or firepower.”35
Blassingame’s vivid rendering of these stereotypes indicates the ways they
are reflected in American readings of Genesis 9–11 before and after the Civil
War. In fact, the dichotomous depiction of the Negro slave in Southern lit-
erature appears to correspond to a bifurcation in the American biblical imag-
ination between the mischievous Ham and the rebellious Nimrod. On one
hand, antebellum readers of Genesis 9 consistently described Noah’s youngest
son as a sort of Sambo figure. For his lack of honor and a tendency toward
mild but annoying disorder, Ham was condemned to servitude, no doubt for
his own good. On the other hand, American portraits of Nimrod have tended
to fit the Nat stereotype in the white mind. Depicted as a cunning leader with
empire as his goal, Nimrod is savage rebellion personified. No doubt the
merging of these biblical archetypes and slave stereotypes was enhanced by
the subtle linguistic affinities between Ham and Sambo, Nat and Nimrod. As
we shall see, these enduring literary and cultural stereotypes outlived the in-
stitution of slavery to achieve a permanence in American racial discourse.
         

The Curse Reconsidered

Antebellum abolitionists were keenly aware of Genesis 9’s prominent role in

proslavery rhetoric, a fact reflected in Theodore Weld’s oft-cited observation
that “this prophecy of Noah is the vade mecum of slaveholders, and they never
venture abroad without it.”36 But some contemporary scholars have doubted
what was self-evident to antislavery activists. In fact, the curse’s role in the
proslavery argument has been questioned recently on several grounds, in-
cluding the claim that it was “largely passé among intellectual elites,”37 the
supposed difficulty literal interpreters of the Bible would have in applying
Noah’s malediction to Ham, and the assumption that biblical proof-texts are
in fact post hoc justifications for positions adopted on other grounds. But the
most substantial argument of this kind is that proslavery Bible readers knew
that Genesis 9 was not concerned with race and thus could not accept it as
a convincing justification for black servitude.
This case against the curse’s pivotal role in American proslavery thought
has been articulated by Eugene D. Genovese, a leading scholar of Southern
culture. Relying on his voluminous knowledge of the slaveholders’ Weltan-
schauung, Genovese concludes that manifest difficulties in applying Noah’s
curse to racial thralldom limited its utility in the proslavery rhetorical arsenal.
Genovese contends that “before the War the [Southern proslavery] divines
had not rested their case on race. They had explicitly declared slavery scrip-
turally sanctioned and ordained of God regardless of race. True, many divines
did invoke the Noahic curse and the supposed black descent from Ham in
an ideology that took deep root among the people, but [some] . . . prominent
divines, regarded it with suspicion since neither the Bible nor science dem-
onstrated that the blacks descended from Ham.”38
Genovese’s challenge raises a series of questions regarding the role of
Noah’s curse in antebellum America: How central was the “Ham myth” to
the proslavery argument? Was it purely “popular,” effective only at “the level
of propaganda and mass consciousness”?39 Should references to the curse in
the works of proslavery intellectuals be read as concessions to popular cre-
dulity or palliatives for a guilty Southern conscience?40 Did most Southern
divines regard the curse with suspicion because they could not “demonstrate”
blacks’ descent from Ham? Could the curse adequately sanction racial slavery
without proving too much—that is, the possibility of white slavery? And, given
the problems of applying Noah’s curse to racial servitude, why do we not find
more explicit attention to “race” in antebellum works that invoke the curse?
Thomas Peterson illumined these questions more than two decades ago
when he showed that because the curse so conveniently “framed the ethos of
plantation life within a sacred history,” it assumed a givenness among ante-
bellum slavery advocates.41 According to Peterson, Noah’s curse “became sym-
bolically persuasive because it reinforced prevalent attitudes about the nature
of government and the planters’ image both of themselves and of the ideal
12     

Southern plantation.”42 Did the curse’s mythic givenness in the Old South
mean that its application to racial slavery was also taken for granted? This is
where the cultural motifs of honor and order prove so helpful. These aspects
of Southern slave society operated in symbiosis with the biblical text itself
to encourage “racial” readings of Genesis 9 in which Ham’s essential “black-
ness” was evident not in his descent so much as in his character and behavior:
By comporting himself as a dishonorable or disorderly son, did not Ham
embody the very traits that distinguished the slave population? W. E. B. Du-
bois was not far off in describing the process by which Genesis 9 was “ra-
cialized” in the minds of America’s slavery advocates: “’Cursed be Canaan!’
cried the Hebrew priests. ‘A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.’
With what characteristic complacency did the slaveholders assume that Ca-
naanites were Negroes and their ‘brethren’ white? Are not Negroes servants?
Ergo!”43
Undoubtedly, this sort of racial thinking was largely unconscious; but by
contemporary standards it was far from irrational. In fact, in the antebellum
intellectual milieu, Ham’s affinity with the Negro could be defended within
the realms of tradition (the long genealogical convention that linked Ham
with Africa), history (the Table of Nations was widely accepted as a reliable
account of the world’s repopulation following the Deluge), and social thought
(Genesis 9–11 was believed to contain a veritable constitution for postdiluvian
societies). During the heyday of slavery in America, a racial understanding of
Genesis 9–11 was so much a part of cultural common sense that defensive
arguments were no longer required. The significance of Noah’s curse in Amer-
ican slavery debates cannot be appreciated until we grasp the way Genesis 9
provided the implied racial context that other biblical arguments lacked.
Even if we assume that Christian advocates of slavery knew the Bible
lacked any explicit justification for the “enslavement of Africans, and only
Africans, in particular,”44 this only confirms the central role of Noah’s curse
in the proslavery argument. The curse became indispensable precisely because,
according to culturally sanctioned views of the Bible, history, and society, it
could be regarded as providing the justification for black enslavement missing
from other biblical texts. If the majority of antebellum proslavery intellectuals
failed to emphasize the racial dimensions of Genesis 9:20–27,45 it is not be-
cause they were embarrassed by their inability to prove that Ham was the
ancestor of black slaves. Rather, they considered Ham’s negritude to be as
self-evident—as given—as Noah’s identity as the first planter patriarch or the
Bible’s applicability to American society.

Noah’s Camera

Because it traces the lingering influence of Genesis 9–11 after the Civil War,
this study implicitly challenges another of Genovese’s claims regarding the
        

place of race in Southern religious discourse. According to Genovese, the

reluctant acknowledgment that the Bible did not sanction racial slavery led
Southerners to abandon their professed theological orthodoxy by succumbing
to the attractions of secular ideologies such as scientific racism and American
imperialism.46 Genovese argues, in other words, that the racist bridge often
assumed to link the Old South with the New obscures the significant dis-
junction between the intellectual and moral justifications provided for ante-
bellum slavery and postbellum segregation. These chapters reveal, however,
that American reliance on Genesis 9–11 as a source for discerning God’s will
in racial matters is responsible for significant continuities between the pro-
slavery and prosegregation arguments.
Many examples of this continuity will be gleaned from the life and letters
of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, one of the South’s preeminent clergymen during
the second half of the nineteenth century. In the late antebellum period, Pal-
mer employed Noah’s prophecy as a sanction for chattel slavery, and following
the war he analyzed the South’s recent past—and its future—by using the
lens provided by Genesis 10 and 11. As a leading Presbyterian divine, Palmer’s
influence was considerable between the mid-1850s and his death in 1902.47 In
sermons from the pulpit of New Orleans’s First Church—arguably the most
prestigious Presbyterian post in the South—Palmer “raise[d] the function of
the clergy as ennobler and defender of Southern traditions to perhaps its
highest level.”48
Despite the attention given to Palmer by historians and scholars of reli-
gion, his reliance on Genesis 9–11 as a divinely revealed blueprint for human
societies has been ignored. For instance, in a recent study entitled Gospel of
Disunion, Mitchell Snay confirms Palmer’s significance in reflecting and influ-
encing the antebellum Southern mind but fails to note Palmer’s privileging of
Genesis 9–11 as the biblical foundation for Southern secession.49 Snay observes
that many clergymen utilized biblical history to elucidate the sectional con-
flict, but he overlooks the mythic power in Palmer’s invocation of the primeval
history in Genesis. Pre-Israelite themes such as Noah’s drunkenness, the dis-
persion of nations, and the Tower of Babel were more universal in scope and
application than stories from Hebrew history. The postdiluvian Adam and his
descendants possessed a timeless relevance that was not lost on Palmer or his
auditors.50
A careful examination of Palmer’s evolving interpretation of Genesis 9–
11 is useful for evaluating Genovese’s arguments regarding the role of race in
the proslavery argument and the purported discontinuities between antebel-
lum and postbellum Southern discourse. First, unlike many of his Old School
Presbyterian (and thus orthodox Calvinist) coreligionists, Palmer had no
qualms about appealing to Noah’s prophecy as a justification—indeed, the
biblical justification—for Negro slavery, despite the fact that many of the
Presbyterian intellectuals who mentored Palmer rejected Genesis 9’s applica-
tion to American slavery.51 Second, Palmer’s reading of the text thoroughly
14      

troubles Genovese’s assumptions about the American reception of Noah’s

curse. Genovese contends that because proslavery divines understood that the
story of Noah and his sons concerned slavery but not race, the curse died a
natural death following emancipation. But Palmer represents a tradition of
American interpretation in which Noah’s “prophecy” (he never used the word
curse with reference to Genesis 9) applies to race relations in general rather
than to slavery per se. Before and during the war, Palmer referred obliquely
to Hamite “servitude” without forcing American slavery into the mold of
Genesis 9. After the war, however, he invoked Noah’s prophecy with greater
frequency, arguing that it contained a normative picture of the relationship
between the world’s three great “races.” The American message in Noah’s
prophecy, Palmer implied, was not that blacks had to be enslaved, but that
their essential character befitted servitude. Because subservience could take
many forms, this message might be heeded under a variety of social condi-
tions. Yet no historical contingency could alter the fundamental relationship
of the great “nations” foreseen by Noah.
Third, in that Palmer’s career spanned the five decades between 1850 and
1900, he provides an excellent case study for judging Genovese’s contention
that the postbellum South forsook the proslavery worldview and the orthodox
theology that sustained it. As we shall see, Palmer both confirms and troubles
this claim. His writings following the Civil War contain just the sort of ac-
commodation between theology and rational racism discussed by Genovese.
But while Palmer was influenced by secular images and idioms, he continued
to regard Genesis 9–11 as the basis for reliable knowledge concerning the
world’s “races.” As one who successfully assimilated racism and imperialism
to a theology ostensibly rooted in scripture, Palmer represents an important
strand of continuity between prewar and postwar Southern ideology. Fourth,
Palmer reveals that the religious continuity in Southern racism was aided by
the easy transition from Ham to Nimrod in applications of the Bible to Amer-
ican history. In Palmer’s evolving interpretation of Genesis 9–11, we perceive
how these biblical “Negroes” were made to reflect not only the dichotomous
perception of blacks symbolized in slave stereotypes but also whites’ shifting
perceptions of themselves and their status in the world.
The key to comprehending Palmer’s enduring reliance on Genesis 9 is
“Noah’s camera,”52 an image he used repeatedly to symbolize the centrality of
Genesis 9:25–27 to his theological vision. Like many Southerners who survived
the war between the states, Palmer watched helplessly as a new world came
into being. Despite his confident assertions that the South’s lost cause would
be vindicated at the tribunal of history, Palmer’s sight had been trained in
the Old South, and he had difficulty finding his intellectual bearings in the
postwar world. Under these circumstances, the sure perception of “Noah’s
camera” promised to illumine a worldview sustained by the perfect vision of
God.
        

Other Chapters in the Genesis of Race

This is not a comprehensive treatise on the Bible’s utilization to support racist

social agendas. In fact, several prominent instances of racial exegesis in the
book of Genesis are ignored: the use of Genesis 2–4 in creating a two-seedline
version of human origins, most recently by the theorists of so-called Christian
Identity; interpretation of the Genesis Flood story (chapters 6–8) as a divine
judgment upon “race mixing”; and employment of passages from Genesis 10
and 11 to construct a theological rationale for South African apartheid. Because
these episodes in the history of modern racist biblical exegesis overlap in
varying degrees with our subject, they are briefly reviewed here.

Pre-Adamism
One of the oldest traditions of racist Bible reading focuses on the creation
story in Genesis and explicates the existence of various human races by pos-
tulating separate acts of creation. Pre-Adamism, as this tradition has come to
be called, was introduced as early as the tenth century, though it received
systematic exposition only in the seventeenth. In 1655, French scholar Isaac
de la Peyrère purveyed his pre-Adamite theory as an answer to the age-old
question regarding the identity of Cain’s wife: If Cain was the first descendant
of Adam and Eve, with whom did he continue his line after being banished
to the land of Nod. During the European Enlightenment, pre-Adamism was
embraced as a challenge to the biblical account of human origins, and in the
nineteenth century it was welcomed by advocates of white superiority. While
“scientific” racists embraced “polygenesis” as proof of nonwhites’ inferiority,
religious writers such as Dominick M’Causland and Alexander Winchell
sought to correlate pre-Adamism with both scripture and empirical knowl-
edge.53
Pre-Adamism has given rise to a number of interpretive schemes involv-
ing the early chapters of Genesis, all of them racist in some degree. One
involves the idea that Cain left his family to master an inferior tribe described
alternately by pre-Adamite theorists as “nonwhite Mongols,” “Black Races,”
or “beasts of the field.” The suggestion that Cain’s mark was blackness was
advanced in eighteenth-century Europe and was popularized a century later
in America by Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. In the early twen-
tieth century, writers such as Ellen Bristowe and Charles Carroll gave Cain’s
traditional association with evil distinctly racial dimensions when they claimed
that he married a black wife or that he had black skin. These shifting images
of Cain—as a white Adamite who deigned to associate with inferior beings
or as the first black—give some sense of the protean role he has played in
readings of Genesis concerned with racial difference.
16      

Eve and the Serpent

The early chapters of Genesis are also at the center of a racist mythology
forged by the leaders of the Christian Identity movement in America. As
Michael Barkun has shown in his masterful account of the intellectual origins
of this movement, contemporary Identity has its roots in the tradition of
biblical interpretation known as British-Israelism. British-Israelism evolved
among mid-nineteenth-century English Protestants and within a few decades
had spread to North America. Migrating from New England to the Midwest
and finally to the West Coast, American British-Israelism gradually lost its
ties to England, and following World War II was fully Americanized in nascent
Christian Identity. Leading Identity theorists published their seminal tracts
during the 1960s, and in the 1980s Identity adherents were making news in
dozens of antigovernment and racist groups across the country. In the 1990s,
Identity was linked to a series of violent acts against minorities and attacks
on the federal government, including the Oklahoma City bombing.
Identity’s most distinctive teaching casts Jews and other “nonwhite” peo-
ples as literal descendants of Satan. Barkun summarizes the doctrine this way:
“Either the Devil himself or one of his underlings had intercourse with Eve
in the Garden of Eden. Cain was the product of this illicit union. Hence Cain
and all his progeny, by virtue of satanic paternity, carry the Devil’s unchanging
capacity to work evil. These descendants of Cain became known in time as
‘Jews.’ ”54 In this inventive reading of Genesis, Eve is seduced by the serpent,
by a pre-Adamite “beast of the field,” or by the Devil himself. In each case,
the product of this ill-fated dalliance is Cain, whose demonic seedline links
Satan with Canaanites, Edomites, Shelahites (descendants of Judah and his
Canaanite wife), and modern Jews. Significantly, Ham is included in this
satanic seedline that links Cain with his putative Canaanite descendants.55
Some Identity advocates highlight Ham’s place in this chain of infamy by
arguing that he took a Cainite wife (a view that would appear to explain how
tainted Cainite blood endured the destruction of the Deluge). In another
version of this racist doctrine, the descendants of Cain and Ham produce
Hittites and Edomites.56
Even when they locate Ham in the ignominious seedline that has yielded
modern-day Jews, Identity believers virtually ignore Genesis 9:20–27. Identity
exegesis does intersect with Genesis 9–11 in oblique ways, however. One is the
belief that Ham wed a descendant of Cain, thus harboring Cainite evil through
the Flood. Another is the view that Canaanites (descendants of Ham, accord-
ing to biblical logic) are actually “children of Cain.” More intriguing, though,
are the parallels between Identity’s Cain and the traditions surrounding Nim-
rod in American biblical interpretation. Descriptions of Cain by Identity the-
orists and their predecessors bring to mind the traditional portrait of Nimrod
the arch-rebel, despot, and idolater.57 In fact, the similarities between the Cain
of Christian Identity and the Nimrod of racist exegesis may explain why so
        

few Identity theorists feature Ham and his descendants in their explanations
of primordial evil.58

The Nephilim and the Flood

According to Genesis 6, God flooded the earth in order to punish human
“wickedness” or “violence.” Understandably, early Bible readers sought textual
clues for a more explicit understanding of the transgression that precipitated
this cleansing of the world. Many seized on Genesis 6:1–5, which contains
mysterious references to “sons of God” who “took wives for themselves” from
among the daughters of men (v. 2) and adds, “The Nephilim were on the
earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to
the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes
that were of old, warriors of renown” (v. 4). Characterizing Jewish and Chris-
tian glosses on the Flood story, James L. Kugel writes that ancient readers
found in these verses
a hint that the immediate cause of the flood (and perhaps other ills) had
been the mating of the “sons of God” (generally interpreted to mean some
sort of angel or heavenly creature) with the “daughters of men.” The flood
must have come about, directly or indirectly, as a result of this union. Per-
haps it was because of some sort of sexual profligacy implied in this passage,
or because the mating of these two groups brought about a new race of
beings who were given over to sinfulness, or because, through their contact
with the humans, the angels had passed along a knowledge of secret things
that led to the humans’ corruption. All three traditions are found intermin-
gled even in the most ancient writings of the period.59

Distant reflections of this interpretive tradition appear in Euro-American

readings of Genesis that regard the cataclysm as a localized flood brought
about when wicked Adamites engaged in the heinous sin of racial intermar-
riage. Americans Alexander Winchell, John Fletcher, “Ariel” (Buckner H.
Payne), and Charles Parham were among nineteenth-century adherents of this
view. William Potter Gale and Wesley Swift, both influential leaders in Chris-
tian Identity circles, perpetuated the idea in the 1960s. According to Gale,
God’s original command to Adam and his descendants was a prohibition of
miscegenation. Satan tempted the Adamites to mongrelize themselves with
pre-Adamites, and God visited a flood upon them as punishment for this
transgression. The survivors, naturally, were those who resisted the temptation
to intermarry.60 This view of the Genesis Flood has become a staple of biblical
thinking on the racist right. In 1986, Thom Robb, national director of the
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, applied the causal link between race mixing
and apocalypse to America’s near future:
The Bible talks about the return of Christ. . . . Jesus said, “As it was in the
days of Noah, so shall it become in the days of the Son of Man.” And in the
18      

days of Noah there was massive race mixing. Most churches teach that Noah
was a righteous man and this is why he was preserved. But Noah was a man,
according to the Bible, who was “perfect in his generations.” The word “gen-
erations” means race. And so Noah was one of the few individuals at that
time who was not racially polluted.61

Thus, just as did ancient Bible readers, contemporary interpreters of the Del-
uge seek textual clues wherever they can be found.

The Tower, Dispersion, and Diversity

“The land of Shinar,” identified in Genesis 11:2 as the location for the Tower
of Babel, has proved a fertile field for racist readings of the Bible. In modern
South Africa, where Noah’s curse has played a very minor role in white ar-
guments for racial supremacy,62 Genesis 10 and 11 have been used to locate
the rationale for apartheid in the very mind of God. As the struggle over
apartheid’s theological status raged during the 1970s and 1980s, Genesis 11:1–
9 became an interpretive crux for those in both the liberation and proaparth-
eid camps.
The story’s stature as the “cardinal text” in the Dutch Reformed Church’s
theology of race relations was confirmed in 1974, when representatives of the
NGK (Nederduitse Geformeerde Kerk, the largest and most influential of the
Afrikaner Reformed churches) responded to attacks on “separate develop-
ment” in a document entitled Human Relations and the South African Scene
in Light of Scripture. The authors inquired “whether the Scriptures give us a
normative indication of the way in which the human race differentiated into
a variety of races, peoples and nations,” whether this diversity accords with
the will of God, and “whether Gn. 11:1–9 can serve as a Scriptural basis for a
policy of autogenous development.”63 Their response was instructive, if some-
what predictable.
While claiming that the genealogical tables in Genesis 10 teach the unity
of humankind, the authors concluded that ethnic diversity “is in its very origin
in accordance with the will of God for this dispensation.”64 Significantly, the
authors conjoin the story of the Tower of Babel with the passages that precede
it:
It is important to note that the situation presupposed in Gn. 11:1–9 goes back
beyond Gn. 10 and in reality links up with the end of Gn. 9. The descendants
of Noah’s three sons remained in the vicinity of Ararat for a few generations
(Gn. 10:25) before they decided to move in an easterly direction to Babylonia
(11:12). . . . These people clearly valued the unity of language and community
because, apart from the motive of making a name for themselves, their city
and tower had to serve specifically to prevent their being “scattered abroad
upon the face of the whole earth” (v. 4). From the sequel to this history it
is clear that the undertaking [the tower] and the intentions of these people
were in conflict with the will of God. Apart from the reckless arrogance that
         

is evident in their desire to make a name for themselves, the deliberate con-
centration on one spot was in conflict with God’s command to replenish the
earth (Gn. 1:28; 9:1, 7).65

Following a disquisition on the psychic and spiritual significance of hu-

man language (a discussion that recalls nineteenth-century romantic nation-
alism), the authors restate their contention that Genesis 11 communicates both
“man’s attempt to establish a (forced) unity of the human race . . . [based in]
sinful human arrogance” and God’s reassertion of the original command that
humanity split into separate volke with distinct languages and cultures. The
confusion of tongues and the diversity of races and peoples to which it con-
tributed are therefore “an aspect of reality which God obviously intended for
this dispensation. To deny this fact is to side with the tower-builders.”66 Thus,
the scriptural solution for human disharmony is not “a humanistic attempt
at unity based on the arrogance of man (Babel!),” but God’s promise of
spiritual unity. On the basis of these assertions, the authors conclude that the
policy of “autogenous development” (apartheid) is appropriate for governing
relations between differing racial and cultural groups.67
Other biblical proof-texts in the arsenal of apartheid’s defenders include
Deuteronomy 32:8 (“When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he
divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the
number of the gods”) and Acts 17:26 (“From one ancestor he made all nations
to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and
the boundaries of the places where they would live”). Like the passages ex-
plored in this book, these proof-texts have featured prominently in American
racial discourse over the last two centuries. There is no evidence that Amer-
icans or South Africans who have advanced these racial readings of the Bible
have done so in dependence upon one other or on a common source. Al-
though this does not exclude the possibility of mutual influence, it is an
indication of the curious power exercised by certain scriptural texts over those
seeking warrants for racial separation or superiority.
 I
CHARACTERS IN THE
POSTDILUVIAN DRAMA
 2
A Black Sheep in the (Second) First Family

The Legend of Noah and His Sons

Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard.

He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and he lay
uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan,
saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers
outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it
on both their shoulders, and walked backward and cov-
ered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned
away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When
Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest
son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan; lowest
of slaves shall he be to his brothers.” He also said,
“Blessed by the L my God be Shem; and let Canaan
be his slave. May God make space for Japheth, and let
him live in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his
slave.”
Genesis 9:20–27 ()

  Genesis 9’s history of interpretation from the formative periods

of Judaism and Christianity through the twentieth century, this chapter es-
tablishes a context for recognizing the distinctive features in American ver-
sions of Noah’s curse. As we shall see, themes that animated proslavery read-
ings of Genesis 9—for instance, the beliefs that the story relates the historical
origins of slavery and confirms Ham’s genealogical connection with Africa—
appear early and often in the history of interpretation. However, the perennial

23
24                   

tendency to view Ham’s misdeed in terms of sexual depravity or assault is

conspicuously absent from the writings of antebellum Americans. The signif-
icance of this discontinuity will be explored in part II.
As readers through the ages have encountered the story of Noah’s drunk-
enness, gaps in the biblical text have given rise to a number of interpretive
questions: Was Noah at fault in becoming intoxicated? What is implied by
the statement that Ham “saw the nakedness of his father”? What does it mean
that Noah “knew what his youngest son had done to him” when he awak-
ened?1 Does Noah speak for God when he announces a curse and blessings
upon his sons? If Ham is the culprit of some evil deed, why is Canaan the
object of Noah’s malediction? Finally, what motivates Noah to announce the
curse? Over time, answers to these questions assumed recurring patterns.
Eventually, they crystallized into an orthodox interpretive paradigm that cast
Noah as an innocent and righteous patriarch and his son Ham as culprit in
some heinous act against him. We begin our survey of the history of inter-
pretation with early Jewish readings of Genesis 9:20–27, construals that have
been the subject of recent controversy.

Jewish Interpretation
The Rabbis
Rabbinic commentary on this passage is quite rich. Early Jewish interpreters
assumed Noah was intrinsically righteous,2 considered his condemnation of
Ham justified, vilified Ham’s Canaanite descendants as liars, thieves, and for-
nicators,3 praised the exemplary behavior of Shem and Japheth,4 and found
in the story an explanation of Africans’ distinctive color. However, they
reached no consensus on the nature of Ham’s transgression, characterizing it
as everything from ridicule to sexual assault. The latter theme is featured in
a variety of rabbinic glosses on the story. One of these affixes blame to Ca-
naan, who “entered the tent, mischievously looped a stout cord about his
grandfather’s genitals, drew it tight, and unmanned him.”5 Observing the be-
havior of his son, Ham laughingly shared the account with his brothers. In a
variant tradition, Ham himself is held responsible for Noah’s castration: “Ham
saw [Noah in his tent with his wife], and he told his brothers what he had
noticed. [Ham then spoke] disrespectful words against his father. Ham added
to his sin of irreverence the still greater outrage of attempting to perform an
operation upon his father designed to prevent procreation.”6
An alternative explanation for Noah’s curse is located in Ham’s conduct
during the Flood: “During their sojourn in the ark, the two sexes, of men and
animals alike, had lived apart from each other. . . . This law of conduct had
been violated by none in the ark except by Ham, by the dog and by the raven.
They all received a punishment. Ham’s was that his descendants were men of
dark-hued skin.”7 In Genesis Rabbah, Rabbi Hiyya claims that “Ham and a
            ⁽     ⁾      

dog had sexual relations in the ark. Therefore Ham came forth dusky, and
the dog, for his part, has sexual relations in public. . . .”8 It is not clear whether
this rabbinic tradition censures Ham for engaging in forbidden sex with his
wife or with one of the animals. But the ambiguity may have given rise to
the medieval Christian legend that Canaan was the offspring of Ham’s liaison
with a raven.9
Another rabbinic theme associates Ham’s presumed sexual assault upon
Noah with the condition and color of his descendants:

A. Said R. Berekhiah, “Noah in the ark was most distressed that he

had no young son to take care of him. He said, ‘When I shall get
out of this ark, I shall produce a young son to take care of me.’
B. “When Ham had done the disgraceful deed, he said, ‘You are the
one who stopped me from producing a young son to take care of
me, therefore that man himself [you] will be a servant to his broth-
ers.’ ”
C. R. Huna in the name of R. Joseph: “ ‘You are the one who pre-
vented me from producing a fourth son, therefore I curse your
fourth son [corresponding to the fourth son I never had].’ ”
D. R. Huna in the name of R. Joseph: “ ‘You are the one who stopped
me from doing something that is done in darkness, therefore your
seed will be ugly and dusky.’ ”10

The connection between Ham’s sin and the physical appearance of his de-
scendants is featured in a notorious compendium of rabbinic comment on
Genesis 9:
When Noah awoke from his wine and became sober, he pronounced a curse
. . . upon the last-born son of the son that had prevented him from begetting
a younger son than the three he had. The descendants of Ham through
Canaan therefore have red eyes, because Ham looked upon the nakedness
of his father; they have misshapen lips, because Ham spoke with his lips to
his brothers about the unseemly condition of his father; they have twisted
curly hair, because Ham turned and twisted his head round to see the na-
kedness of his father; and they go about naked, because Ham did not cover
the nakedness of his father.11
Despite the temptation to trace later racial readings of Noah’s curse to
the rabbis, it must be emphasized that there is no definitive rabbinic inter-
pretation of Genesis 9:20–27. Typical, in fact, is a Talmudic passage in which
two third-century rabbis debate the meaning of Genesis 9:24, one arguing
that Ham mutilated Noah, the other that he raped him, while the redactor
harmonizes these opinions by suggesting that Ham first raped, then emas-
culated, his father.12 But in the process of wrestling with the meaning of this
difficult text, the rabbis did strike themes that would resonate through the
history of interpretation.
26                    

Other Jewish Readings

Midrashic treatments of the biblical tale retell the story of Noah and his sons
in imaginative ways. The Sibylline Oracles, a Jewish work from the late first
century ..., portrays Noah as a righteous preacher who attempted to warn
fellow human beings of the coming deluge: “[Then Noah] entreated the peo-
ples and began to speak such words: ‘men, sated with faithlessness, smitten
with great madness, what you did will not escape the notice of God.’ ”13 The
Book of Jubilees has Noah pass on to his sons the commandment to cover
their shame and to honor father and mother.14 In The Book of Adam and Eve,
the episode is reshaped so that Noah becomes drunk and has sex with his
wife, Ham sees Noah senseless, laughs and tells his brothers, and Noah’s wife
informs him of Ham’s fault on the following day.15
According to Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 ...–50 ..), Noah did not
drink to excess but remained a wise and virtuous man. Indeed, his very name
means “righteousness.” When prophesying about his sons, he spoke under
divine possession and thus should be considered a prophet. Ham’s fault was
casting shame upon his father by holding some lapse of his up to laughter
and scorn. Ham compounded his guilt by broadcasting Noah’s failure to oth-
ers “outside” the family. In Philo’s reading, Noah’s sons represent the good,
the bad, and the indifferent in nature. Ham is called the youngest because his
temperament loves rebelliousness and defiance. Philo also connects Ham’s
name with “heat,” a sign of vice in the soul: “Ham is vice in its quiescent
state while Canaan is vice in the active state. The two represent a single
object—wickedness.”16 Thus, although he read Genesis 9 through the lens of
allegory, Philo nevertheless remained within the orthodox interpretive para-
digm established by the rabbis.
In Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus (ca. 100 ..) echoed Philo in record-
ing what was to become an influential rendition of the episode recorded in
Genesis 9. After the flood, Noah offered his sacrifice to God, feasted and fell
asleep drunk. Then,

when his youngest son saw this, he came laughing, and showed to him his
brethren; but they covered their father’s nakedness. And when Noah was
made sensible of what had been done, he prayed for prosperity to his other
sons; but for Ham, he did not curse him, by reason of his nearness in blood,
but cursed his posterity. And when the rest of them escaped that curse, he
inflicted it on the children of Canaan.17

As we shall see, Josephus’s remark that Ham laughed at his father—though a

seemingly minor addition to the story—would become a leitmotif in the his-
tory of interpretation. Another distinctive aspect of Josephus’s reading of Gen-
esis 9 was his reliance on “Berossus the Chaldean” (a Babylonian priest of
the third century ...). Berossus argued that in punishment for his trans-
gression, Ham was “banished to the dark regions of Africa, forever carrying
the taint of corruption.”18
             ⁽      ⁾       

The Zohar (ca. second century ..) echoed this association of Hamites
with darkness, explaining that

Ham represents the refuse and dross of the gold, the stirring and rousing of
the unclean spirit of the ancient serpent. It is for that reason that he is
designated the “father of Canaan,” namely, of Canaan who brought curses
into the world, of Canaan who was cursed, of Canaan who darkened the
faces of mankind. For this reason, too, Ham is given a special mention in
the words, “Ham the father of Canaan,” that is, the notorious world-
darkener. . . . 19

It is not apparent whether the phrase “world-darkener” refers to skin color

or to the introduction of death, but it is clear that vilification of Ham and
his descendants was a recurring theme in formative Jewish literature and that
the link between Ham, sin, and Africa was forged quite early in the history
of interpretation.

Christian Interpretation
Church Fathers
Although the New Testament contains no allusions to Genesis 9:20–27, the
early Christian assessment of Noah is evident in the epistle to the Hebrews,
where the patriarch is depicted as an exemplar of moral rectitude. When the
church fathers considered Noah, they portrayed him, along with Abraham
and Enoch, as paragons of human obedience. Lactantius (ca. 240–320), for
instance, wrote that prior to the flood Noah “stood forth preeminent, as a
remarkable example of righteousness.”20 But the Christian portrait of Noah
featured distinctive themes, none more prominent that his depiction as a
forerunner of Christ.
Once the bond between Noah and Jesus was established in the Christian
imagination, pious commentators discovered typological symbols throughout
Genesis 6–9. Justin Martyr (ca. 100–165) wrote that like Christ, who regen-
erated a new race “through water, and faith, and wood . . . Noah was saved
by wood when he rode over the waters with his household.” Justin also found
import in the number of Noah’s family who boarded the vessel. The eight
were “a symbol of the eighth day, wherein Christ appeared when He rose
from the dead. . . .”21 Origen (ca. 185–254) so identified Noah as a type of the
savior that he could refer to Christ as the “spiritual” and “true” Noah.22 To
many of the church fathers, the ark was a fitting symbol of Christ’s church,
in which the faithful are rescued from the tumults of a wicked world.23
Typological perceptions of Noah and his ark pervade Christian art during
the first five centuries of the common era. Because Noah is the emblem of
the risen Christ, “the Ark must look like a gravechest, like a sarcophagus, the
funeral box in which the body of Christ was laid.”24
28                    

In keeping with the convention of viewing Noah christologically, many

church fathers discerned in Genesis 9:20–27 both a recapitulation of Ad1am’s
“fall” and a compelling anticipation of the gospel. The standard typological
reading of the story regarded Noah’s nakedness as a prefiguration of Christ’s
passion, Ham’s treatment of his father as a type of “the Jews’ ” irreverence
toward Christ’s body, and the brothers as exemplars of worshipful reverence
toward the crucified Christ.25 A representative gloss on the story is Augustine’s
allegorical reading:

“And he was drunken,” that is, He suffered; “and was naked,” that is, His
weakness appeared in His suffering, as the apostle says, “though He was
crucified through weakness.” Wherefore the same apostle says, “The weakness
of God is stronger than men; and the foolishness of God is wiser than men.”
And when to the expression “he was naked” Scripture adds “in his house,”
it elegantly intimates that Jesus was to suffer the cross and death at the hands
of His own household, His own kith and kin, the Jews.26

As for the meaning symbolized by the fact that Ham “went out and published
his father’s nakedness outside, while Shem and Japheth came in to veil it,”27
Augustine asserts that Ham represents “the tribe of heretics, hot with the
spirit, not of patience, but of impatience, with which the breasts of heretics
are wont to blaze, and with which they disturb the peace of the saints.”28 For
Augustine,

not only those who are openly separated from the church, but also all who
glory in the Christian name, and at the same time lead abandoned lives, may
without absurdity seem to be figured by Noah’s middle son: for the passion
of Christ, which was signified by that man’s nakedness, is at once proclaimed
by their profession, and dishonored by their wicked conduct. Of such,
therefore, it has been said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”29

Typological interpretations of Genesis 9 could also embrace Noah’s sons

as a group. Hilary viewed them as illustrating three sorts of relationship to
God: Shem symbolized those under the Law, Japheth those justified by grace,
and Ham the pagans who mock the dead Savior and the nude body of God.30
Far outlasting the convention of typing Noah as a Christ figure, in fact, was
the tradition of casting his progeny as exemplars of distinct human groups.
With a burgeoning interest in history and the origins of human diversity,
Christian readers were instructed by the biblical claim that the post-diluvian
world had been repopulated by Noah’s descendants. The “T-O” map of Isidore
of Seville (560–632) presents a tripartite division of the globe in which Asia
is associated with Shem, Europe with Japheth, and Africa with Ham.31
If the story of Noah and his sons provided convenient explanations for
human diversity and servitude, it also raised vexing questions. Particularly
bothersome was a textual non sequitur, that Canaan received a curse for a
sin committed by his father. In seeking to resolve this dilemma, Justin Martyr
followed rabbinic exegesis32 in arguing that “the Spirit of prophecy would not
            ⁽      ⁾      

curse the son that had been by God blessed along with [his brothers].”33
Chrysostom (347–407) supposed that Canaan was cursed because he had been
begotten on the ark. Ambrose concurred that Ham was unable to abide by
Noah’s suspension of marital relations and suggested that Canaan is men-
tioned in Genesis 9 in order to highlight Ham’s disobedience: Because he
would not obey his father, he was punished with a wicked son.34 Irenaeus (ca.
130–200) opined that because he was guilty of impiety Ham received a curse
that involved his entire race.
Yet despite the textual logic that made Canaan the story’s likely villain,
Ham became the church fathers’ archetype of human depravity. Augustine
figured him as “the symbol of the man in isolation, the clanless, lawless,
hearthless man who, like heathen ethnics, did not know God.”35 But the
Bishop of Hippo was only summarizing a Christian interpretive tradition that
for centuries had excelled in the vilification of Hamites. Lactantius believed
that after his fateful encounter with Noah, Ham “went into exile, and settled
in a part of that land which is now called Arabia; and that land was called
from him Chanaan, and his posterity Chanaanites. This was the first nation
which was ignorant of God, since its prince and founder did not receive from
his father the worship of God, being cursed by him; and thus he left to his
descendants ignorance of the divine nature.”36 Ham’s other descendants fared
no better, according to Lactantius; those who occupied Egypt “were the first
. . . to adore the heavenly bodies” and later “invented monstrous figures of
animals, that they might worship them.” Origen wrote in a similar vein about
the character of Ham’s progeny. The Egyptians, he opined, were

prone to a degenerate life and quickly sink to slavery of the vices. Look at
the origin of the race and you will discover that their father Cham, who had
laughed at his father’s nakedness, deserved a judgment of this kind, that his
son Chanaan should be a servant to his brothers, in which case the condition
of bondage would prove the wickedness of his conduct. Not without merit,
therefore, does the discolored posterity imitate the ignobility of the race.37

Clement (ca. 150–215) seems to be responsible for the view, widespread

in the Middle Ages, that Ham was the first magician. In his “Recognitions,”
Clement wrote that Ham “unhappily discovered the magical act, and handed
down the instruction of it to one of his sons, who was called Mesraim, from
whom the race of the Egyptians and Babylonians and Persians are de-
scended.”38 Clement maintains that Ham developed magic in order “to be
esteemed a god” among his contemporaries. Though he was consumed by a
fiery miracle of his own creation, Ham’s magic remains the source of “diverse
and erratic superstitions” that plague the world. In another place, Clement
traces most of the world’s nascent evils to Ham and his posterity:

In the thirteenth generation [after the creation], when the second of Noah’s
three sons had done an injury to his father, and had been cursed by him,
he brought the condition of slavery upon his posterity. . . . In the fourteenth
30                     

generation one of the cursed progeny first erected an altar to demons, for
the purpose of magical arts, and offered there bloody sacrifices. In the fif-
teenth generation, for the first time, men set up an idol and worshipped it.39

In Clement’s litany of disgrace, Hamites are blamed for the existence of slav-
ery, magic, idol worship, and aggressive war.
The writings of the fathers do not present anything like a consensus on
the meaning of Genesis 9:20–27. There is disagreement regarding the nature
of Ham’s transgression—with some interpreters concluding that it was sexual
assault (e.g., Chrysostom thought Canaan was born on the ark as a result of
Ham’s violation of the prohibition against copulation)40 and others, notably
Augustine, locating Ham’s fault in his calling attention to Noah’s nakedness—
as well as on the significance, consequences, and longevity of the curse.41 But
as our survey demonstrates, the practice of stigmatizing Ham as an irredeem-
able archsinner was well established in the patristic era.

Medieval Christendom
The legend of Noah and his sons was a meta-text in the European Middle
Ages. It was relied upon to explain the provenance of servitude,42 the disper-
sion of human beings after the Flood, and the structure of medieval society.
In fact, medieval exegetes did not so much interpret the story of Noah and
his sons as mine it for clues to the origins of postdiluvian phenomena. John
Cassian (360–435) claimed that Ham learned magic from the daughters of
Cain, inscribing its secrets on plates that would survive the flood. Others
linked Ham’s descendants with Zoroastrianism (Gregory of Tours, 540–94),
with the inhabitants of Sodom (Venerable Bede, ca. 642–735, following Genesis
10:19), with infidels (Rabanus Maurus, 776–856), and with unbelieving Jews
(Augustine, Jerome, Rabanus, Bede, Hilary, et al.).43
While never doubting the historicity of Genesis, medieval interpreters
accorded grand symbolic import to the Flood narrative. They discovered in
Genesis 9 both the origins of servitude and the partition of humanity into
distinct types. About 1125, Honorarius of Autun wrote that Ham, Shem, and
Japheth represented society’s three estates: “In Noah’s time the human race
was divided into three: into free men, soldiers and servants. The free are of
Shem, the soldiers of Japheth and the servants of Ham.” In the windows of
Chartres Cathedral (1235–40) Noah’s sons are portrayed as forerunners of
those who pray (priesthood), those who fight (knighthood) and those who
work (serfs and working classes).44 The Cursor Mundi (ca. 1300) combined
this social etiology with the older convention that assigned Noah’s sons to
dwell in separate regions of the world: “O sem freman, o Iaphet knytht/Thrall
of cham the maledight . . . Asie to sem, to cham affrik,/ To Iaphet europ, pat
wil-ful wike.”45 Hugo von Trimberg’s Renner (1296–1313) combined a symbolic
understanding of Noah’s sons with a serious look at the text of Genesis 9. In
             ⁽      ⁾       

Hugo’s view, the brothers’ behavior was causally related to the condition of
their descendants: The nobility typically ascribed to Shem’s progeny stemmed
from neither wealth nor descent, but from their ancestor’s virtuous action.
Conversely, if Ham had remained uncorrupted, his descendants would not
have been condemned to servitude.46
Little concerned with the literal meaning of the biblical text, medieval
exegetes nevertheless conformed to the orthodox interpretive paradigm be-
queathed to them by the rabbis and church fathers. On one hand, they reit-
erated traditional conceptions of Noah’s righteousness, often casting him as
a progenitor of the Messiah. According to Dom Cameron Allen,
In the allegorical accounts of the Middle Ages, Noah was always treated as
one of the great precursors of the Saviour. Endless comparisons were made
between the waters of the Flood and those of baptism, between the wood of
the Ark and the wood of the Cross, and between the door in the Ark and
the wound in Christ’s side. So the story of Noah had as definite a sanctity
as the story of Adam, Samson, David, and any other of the great adumbrators
of the doctrine of grace. . . . 47

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Noah is among the virtuous Hebrews who are
rescued in Christ’s harrowing of hell (Inferno IV:56), and his covenant with
God is cited as the reason the world will never again be flooded (Paradise
XII:17). Even Noah’s shameful nakedness could be circumvented by imagi-
native interpreters. Peter Comestor inferred from the patriarch’s condition
that underwear had not yet been invented.48 On the other hand, the medieval
portrait of Ham recalled earlier affirmations of his craftiness, prodigious sex-
uality, and affiliation with magic and the Devil.
Both Noah’s piety and Ham’s villainy are reflected in the popular story
of “Ham’s Broken Oath,”49 a thirteenth-century legend elaborating the rab-
binic notion that Ham could not abstain from sexual intercourse on the ark.
According to the version that appears as a marginal note in Aurora by Peter
of Riga (d. 1209),
Ham, younger son of Noah, trespassed against the continence proclaimed by
Noah—that women should spend the night by themselves and men likewise.
Ham, calling up a demon by magic art, crossed over to his wife and slept
with her. The reason why the vehicle of the demon was used is that Noah
had strewn ashes between them, by means of which he could observe the
footprints of those crossing over to their wives. The others remained conti-
nent with their father; Ham alone through the service of the devil and the
aid of his wife rendered himself to his wife’s embraces. Because Noah per-
sisted in his prayers the demon was unable to bring Ham back; blocked in
his efforts by Noah’s nocturnal orisons he fled. Ham therefore was compelled
to walk back before daylight to the other brothers, and because of the scat-
tered ashes he could not hide his guilt. Noah therefore detected his footprints,
and he began to hate Ham for his disobedience. This is the reason Ham
laughed at him after his intoxication.50
32                   

Riga’s account of the legend may have been influenced by Peter Comestor’s
Historia Scholastica, which features a related tradition—the identification of
Ham and Zoroaster, who is called “inventor magicae artis.” According to
Francis Lee Utley, the medieval association of Ham with magic “ultimately
goes back to the feeling that someone had to carry on magic tradition from
the antediluvian fons et origo, and that wicked Ham was the most likely can-
didate.”51
Another source for gauging medieval perceptions of Noah and Ham is
the popular fourteenth-century Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which purports
to explain why the Khan of the Mongols is called the “Grand Ham”:
During the great downpour of long ago . . . this Ham was the one who saw
the natural member of his father while he was sleeping uncovered. And he
mocked him and pointed him out. And for this he was cursed. Japhet averted
his glance and covered him. The three brothers took their entire lands. This
Ham for his cruelty took the biggest eastern part. . . . And because of this
Ham, all the emperors have since then been called Grand Ham and the son
of nature and the sovereign of all the world. And thus he calls himself in his
decrees.52
These medieval legends are intriguing inasmuch as they charge Ham with
mocking or laughing at his father, an extrabiblical theme that is prominent
in American versions of Noah’s curse as well.

Reformation
Despite the emphasis on rigorous biblical exegesis that accompanied the Ref-
ormation, the parameters of the orthodox interpretive paradigm remained in
force among Protestant commentators. In extensive remarks on Genesis 9:
20–27 in his “Lectures on Genesis,” Martin Luther treats the episode in tra-
ditional fashion. Luther regards Noah as “just and perfect,” adding that the
patriarch’s failure to beget children until he was five hundred years old was
an indication of his “remarkable and almost unbelievable continence.”53 Lu-
ther perceives another model for pious readers in the behavior of Shem and
Japheth, who refuse to let Noah’s drunkenness “destroy the respect they owe
their parent.” The story’s supreme message, however, is God’s “terrible judg-
ment” upon Ham’s “horrible example.”
For Luther, Ham’s laughter at his father’s nakedness is a serious offense
indicating that Ham “regard[s] himself as more righteous, holier, and more
pious than his father.”54 No doubt Ham would not have mocked his father
“if he had not first put out of his heart that reverence and esteem which, by
God’s command, children should have for their parents. . . . This points to a
heart that despises not only its parent but also the commands of God.” Ham’s
misdemeanor, then, should not be regarded as childish mischief, but as an
act reflecting “the bitter hatred of Satan.” Because Ham had such contempt
for his father, God “hates Ham with the utmost hatred.”
             ⁽     ⁾       

Luther’s conception of Ham’s career following the episode with Noah

seems to have been influenced by his reading of the church fathers. For in-
stance, he suggests that Ham “later on filled the world with idolatry”;55 claims
that after being cursed Ham traveled to Babylon, where he “engage[d] in
building a city and a tower, and establish[ed] himself as lord of all Asia,” and
developed “a new government and a new religion”;56 and adopts Augustine’s
suggestion that Ham’s name means “hot.”57 But Luther updates the tradition
of Hamite vilification, writing that “because the pope’s church condemns our
doctrine, we know that it is not the church of Christ but the church of Satan
and truly, like Ham, ‘a slave of slaves.’ ”58
John Calvin also discusses this biblical tale, most notably in his com-
mentary on Genesis. Although Calvin pays careful attention to the text of
Genesis 9:20–27, his portrait of Ham falls squarely within the interpretive
tradition. Calvin echoes Luther (and Clement and Josephus) in noting that
“by reproachfully laughing at his father, [Ham] betrays his own depraved and
malignant disposition.”59 He also concludes that Ham “must have been of a
wicked, perverse and crooked disposition,” “ungodly and wicked.” It is sig-
nificant, Calvin observes, that even in the hallowed sanctuary of the ark “one
fiend was preserved.” Why did Ham fail to show his father due respect? Calvin
determines that Ham must have dishonored Noah “for the purpose of ac-
quiring for himself the license of sinning with impunity.” Does Ham’s pun-
ishment fit the crime? Calvin reasons that Noah would not pronounce such
a harsh sentence except by divine inspiration, and so “it behooves us to infer
from the severity of the punishment, how abominable in the sight of God is
the impious contempt of parents, since it perverts the sacred order of nature,
however, . . . ’ ”60
Calvin departs from the interpretive tradition, however, in his refusal to
exonerate Noah. He flatly rejects the excuse that Noah had “completed his
labour, and being exhilarated with wine, imagines that he is but taking his
just reward,” countering that when Noah “in a base and shameful manner,
[did] prostrate himself naked on the ground,” he deserved to be laughed at
because he defaced the image of God. Calvin adds that the weightiness of
Noah’s sin is reflected in his dishonor: For “shamefully lying prostrate on the
ground,” “God brands him with an eternal mark of disgrace”; his son’s mock-
ing was thus a punishment “divinely inflicted upon him.”61 For Calvin, Ham’s
chastisement reveals God’s attitude toward the “impious contempt of parents,
since it perverts the sacred order of nature. . . .”62 Noah, for his part, acted
“in a base and shameful manner,” “shamefully lying prostrate on the
ground.”68
Though loathe to depart from the text or accept interpretive conjecture,
seventeenth-century English Protestants freely borrowed from the tradition in
delineating Ham’s culpability. Andrew Willet is typical of biblical exegetes
influenced by the Reformation. Willet “lets passe” the opinions of “some
Hebrewes” that Ham castrated his father or “enchanted” his private parts. We
34                    

need not exaggerate Ham’s disobedience, Willet writes, for it was great
enough: “he doth not ignorantly or by chance, but willingly gaze upon his
fathers secrets. . . . Neither is he content thus to disport himselfe, but hee
telleth his brethren, thinking to corrupt them also, to deride their father.”
Further, Ham rejoiced in his father’s fall, “as the ungodly doe reioyce, at the
fall of the godly.” Despite this unremarkable gloss on Ham’s offense, Willet
lends credence to Berossus’s view that Ham “was after this given over to all
leaudnes, corrupting mankind with his evill manners: and taught them, by
his owne example, approoving the same, that it was lawfull, as the wicked use
was before the flood, to lie with their mothers, sisters, daughters, with the
male, and bruit beasts. . . .”64 Willet’s Protestant sensibility regarding the pri-
macy of Scripture notwithstanding, he seems unable to conclude that Ham
was cursed solely for dishonoring his father.
Willet’s contemporary, Scottish commentator Abraham Rosse, published
Exposition of the Fourteene First Chapters of Genesis in 1626. Like Willet, Rosse
casts a skeptical eye at the interpretive tradition, denying that Noah “was
gelded by his son Cham as the Hebrews thinke, for this is fabulous.”65 Rather,
Ham’s sin consisted in a lack of reverence for his father, the fact that he took
pleasure in “seeing those members, whereof all men by nature are ashamed,”
mocked his righteous father, told his brethren, and, finally, as a grown man
himself, was not possessed of more “grace and discretion.” Yet despite his
Protestant attention to the letter of scripture, Rosse reveals the influence of
the interpretive tradition. In Rosse’s typological reading, Ham is “the type of
wicked children, and in Sem and Iapheth [we find] a patterne for good chil-
dren,” who are careful to honor their earthly father.66 Rosse even associates
Ham with “witchcraft, malice, contempt of religion, leacherie and other
vices.”67

Early Modern Period

Although Hamites had long been linked with southern regions of the inhab-
ited world, Ham himself was rarely racialized before Europeans explored West
Africa in the fifteenth century. A German map reflecting the medieval Eu-
ropean view of Noah’s sons places Ham at the bottom of the world, as it
were, near the continent of Africa. But it does not assign him a distinctive
physiognomy.68 Yet with increasing European involvement in the African slave
trade came a growing interest in Noah’s curse as an explanation for racial
slavery. In his Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (1441–48),
Portuguese scholar Gomes Eanes de Azurara invoked Genesis 9 to justify the
enslavement of Africans. According to Azurara, the servitude of non-Muslim
“Moors” resulted from the curse, “which, after the Deluge, Noah laid upon
his son Cain [sic], cursing him in this way:—that his race should be subject
to all the other races of the world. And from this race these blacks are de-
scended. . . .”69
             ⁽     ⁾       

Yet the European racialization of Hamites was neither consistent nor per-
manent.70 For instance, although attempts to trace the human family’s gene-
alogy invariably placed blacks in the Hamite line, tokens of negritude could
be introduced at many junctures—as early as Cush or as late as Dathan71
(who, according to Numbers 16, participated in a revolt against Moses at
Kadesh). Furthermore, early modern intellectuals retained a keen interest in
Genesis 9:20–27 as an episode in “the legend of Noah,” quite apart from its
usefulness in justifying the slave trade. Historians, poets, visual artists, and
dramatists treated the story of Noah’s drunkenness, transmitting the history
of biblical interpretation in the process. A prominent aspect of this history
was Ham’s sexual vilification, and among biblical commentators sexual ver-
sions of his “sin” became explanations of choice. According to Dom Cameron
Allen, “the two most popular explanations [for Noah’s curse] were that Ham
had either castrated his father or rendered him impotent with a magic spell.”72
In Purchas His Pilgramage (1614), Samuel Purchas assigned to Ham a full
catalog of sexual sins. He cited Berossus’s view that “Cham, the Sonne of
Noah, was by his Father banished for particular abuse of himselfe, and publike
corruption of the World, teaching and practising those vices, which before
had procured the deluge, as Sodomie, Incest, Buggerie; and was therefore
branded with the name Chemesenua, that is, dishonest Cham”73 Later that
century, Hermann Von der Hardt extended the tradition of regarding Ham
as a sex offender by theorizing that to “look on the nakedness” of one’s father
was to have incestuous relations with one’s mother.74
How is this early modern resurgence of sexual readings of Ham’s indig-
nity to be explained? Winthrop Jordan notes that “with the onset of European
expansion in the sixteenth century, some Christian commentators, or rather
some commentators who were Christians, suddenly began speaking in the
same mode which Jews had employed a thousand years and more before.”75
Like the convention of racializing Noah’s progeny, the sexual theme in Genesis
9 was a dimension of the interpretive tradition that was well suited to the
ideological climate of the Age of Exploration. Englishman George Best pro-
vides an excellent example of how race and sexuality converged in readings
of the curse during this period. Following a sea voyage in 1577, Best seized on
the biblical account of Ham’s disobedience to explain Africans’ skin color:

The wicked Spirite . . . finding at this flood none but a father and three sons
living, hee so caused one of them to disobey his fathers commandment, that
after him all his posteritie should bee accursed. . . . Noah commaunded his
sonnes and their wives, that they should with reverence and feare beholde
the justice and mighty power of God, and that during the time of the floud
while they remained in the Arke, they should use continencie, and abstaine
from carnall copulation with their wives: and many other precepts hee gave
unto them, and admonitions touching the justice of God, in revenging sinne,
and his mercie in delivering them, who nothing deserved it. Which good
instructions and exhortations notwithstanding his wicked sonne Cham dis-
36                     

obeyed, and being perswaded that the first childe borne after the flood . . .
should inherite . . . all the dominions of the earth, hee . . . used company with
his wife, and craftily went about thereby to dis-inherite the off-spring of his
other two brethren: for which wicked and detestable fact, as an example for
contempt of Almightie God, and disobedience of parents, God would a
sonne should bee borne whose name was Chus, who not onely it selfe, but
all his posteritie after him should bee so blacke and lothsome, that it might
remaine a spectacle of disobedience to all the worlde.76
Best utilizes the rabbinic tradition of Ham’s incontinence at sea, the well-
rehearsed theme of disobedience, and the notion that the substance of the
curse was blackness and combines them all with the idea that Ham sought to
usurp the birthright of his brothers’ sons. Although Ham’s prodigious greed
was noted by other interpreters,77 this was not a common theme in the history
of interpretation. As we shall see, the charge of tyranny over Noah’s other
descendants was typically debited to the account of Ham’s grandson Nimrod.
The nexus between blackness, sexuality, and the curse was revisited early
in the seventeenth century by Richard Jobson, a trader on the African coast,
who wrote that “the enormous Size of the virile Member among the Negroes
[was] an infallible Proof, that they are sprung from Canaan, who, for uncov-
ering his Father’s Nakedness, had (according to the Schoolmen) a Curse laid
upon that Part.”78
Works of the imagination from this period were more concerned with
Ham’s character than with his color or penis size. Nevertheless, they tended
to reiterate the orthodox interpretive paradigm: They cast Noah as an inno-
cent patriarch whose naive experiment with viticulture goes slightly awry,
while depicting Ham as a sullen, impious, and lecherous lad whom the upright
Noah must patiently endure.79 A veritable compendium of anti-Hamitism was
produced by sixteenth-century poet Guillaume De Salluste Sieur Du Bartas,
a Calvinist from the south of France who is probably best known for his
influence on Milton. In “L’Arche,” an early section of Du Bartas’s La Seconde
Sepmaine, Ham’s irreverence is extended into the prediluvian age. As Noah
warns of impending doom, Ham is said to “nourish already within his breast
a blind root of profane atheism.” In Du Bartas’s vision, Ham’s ultimate in-
tention is to occupy God’s place “in order to possess a magnificent temple
under the name of Jupiter amid the sands of Africa.”80 Ham meets the pious
Noah’s concern for God’s judgment with disdain: “Alas! I’m happy that these
servile fears—annoyances normally associated with low-spirited souls—take
hold of you! My father, do you want always to face the outrageous judgments
of a false Judge? . . . A barbarous hangman, who with a bloody sword menaces
night and day your criminal neck?” Ham goes on to call the Lord a tyrant
and a slaughterer of innocent beasts, “who, caught up with rage, exterminates
cruelly his own empire.”81
Later, Du Bartas relates the episode narrated in Genesis 9:20–27:
Like the ravens that, with wind in their tailfeathers, pass over the perfumed
woods of happy Arabia, scorning its delightful parts and gardens whose
             ⁽      ⁾       

bright flowers perfume the skies, and stop—the gluttons!—at the dirty corpse
of a criminal bludgeoned some time before, or like a painter crazy about a
new palate-knife neglects the most beautiful part of a portrait and accen-
tuates, highlights the ugliness of a deformity, big nose or lips, sunken eyes,
or some other ugly trait—thus the treacherous sons of the father of the lie
with ingratitude mop up with a sponge of forgetfulness the traits of virtue,
and envious, throw upon the least sins the venom of their eyes . . . ; broad-
casting in every age the peccadilloes of the greatest people, thus Ham, who
allowed his impudent eyes to graze on the parental dishonor: and who burst-
ing out in a profane laugh, shamelessly announces the miserable state of this
drunken old man.
“Come, come, brothers” says he, “Come, run and see this controller
who censured us wrongly, and so often, see how he messes up his bed,
vomiting through the nose, the eyes, the mouth, governed by wine, and—
the brute—leaving his genitals uncovered for all to see!”82

Du Bartas is equally graphic in describing the reaction of Shem and Japheth:

“Huh? you impudent piece of shit!” says each of the brothers, with just ire
written on their brows: “Unnatural villain, pernicious monster, unworthy to
see the beautiful torches of heaven, since we weren’t here, you should have
hidden with your mantle—and especially with your silence—your father,
whom boredom, strong wine, and old age caused to slip this once; you yap
on about him and, to build yourself up, make a center stage show of his
shame.” Having said this, averting their eyes, they cover the naked body of
their venerable father.83

Du Bartas’s poetic retelling of the episode represents the acme of Ham’s def-
amation, at least until American advocates of slavery began to read the story.
John Milton also chronicles Ham’s transgression, although in terms that
are surprisingly mild, given Du Bartas’s influence on him. In Book XII of
Paradise Lost, the archangel Michael outlines for Adam and Eve the history
of sin that will be written by their descendants: “Witness th’ irreverent son/
Of him who built the ark, who for the shame/ Done to his father, heard this
heavy curse,/ ‘Servant of servants,’ on his vicious race.”84 Although Milton
does not attribute a peculiar stigma to the descendants of Ham, he does place
the burden of postdiluvian corruption on Noah’s “irreverent son”: “Thus will
this latter, as the former world,/ Still tend from bad to worse, till God at last/
Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw/ His presence from among them, and
avert/ His holy eyes; resolving from thenceforth/ To leave them to their own
polluted ways.”85

Enlightenment
Between the early eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries there appeared a
number of commentaries, dictionaries, and encyclopedias that cataloged tra-
ditional readings of Genesis 9. Though skeptical of the interpretive tradition,
Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) transmitted many of the “unknown number of lu-
38                     

dicrous stories” that had crystallized around the figure of Ham by the late
seventeenth century.86 In his landmark Dictionaire Historique et Critique Bayle
summarized this catalog of infamy:

It has been believed that since Ham had displayed such indiscretion toward
his father, he was a cursed soul who had committed all sorts of abominations.
He is said to be the Inventor of Magic and many things are told about this.
It is claimed that he gave an example of unchastity not very edifying, that
is to say that he made his wife pregnant in the ark itself. Some say that the
offense which he committed against his father is infinitely more atrocious
than the way in which it is represented in the Holy Scripture. Some believe
that he castrated him; others say that he made him impotent thanks to some
magical spells; others claim that he wallowed in incest with Noah’s wife.87

Bayle approaches this litany of charges with a combination of Renaissance

skepticism and pre-Enlightenment credulity. On one hand, he doubts that
Ham castrated his father, commenting that “if such a painful operation as the
one that is mentioned had been carried out on him, he would not have had
to wait to awake from his drunkenness.”88 Bayle also discounts the possibilities
that Ham reintroduced antediluvian sins following the Flood (a view he at-
tributes to Berrosus) or that the words “Ham saw the nakedness of his father”
mean that he engaged in incestuous relations with his mother. On the other
hand, while denying that Ham invented magic (it was “the Angels enamored
of sex who taught it to men”), Bayle does hold him responsible for preserving
it through the Deluge. Bayle also considers it likely that Ham settled in Egypt
and was posthumously worshiped there as Jupiter Hammon. Thus, although
the Frenchman regarded Noah’s “curse” as nothing more than a prophecy of
Hebrew victories under Joshua and dismissed the notion that Ham became
black as “a chimerical tale,” his dictionary gave wide circulation to some of
the more pernicious strands of European anti-Hamitism.
Augustin Calmet’s (1682–1757) Dictionary of the Holy Bible was probably
the most influential treatment of Ham and his curse to appear in the eigh-
teenth century.89 Published in France in 1722, by 1832 Calmet’s dictionary had
appeared in a seventh edition in America, where it promoted the idea that
Ham’s name means “burnt, swarthy or black.” Calmet also perpetuated the
notion that Ham “ridiculed” his father, a leitmotif in American readings of
the curse. Furthermore, although European writers had previously cited Gen-
esis 9 in relation to the African slave trade, Calmet appears to have been the
first scholarly Bible commentator to link Ham with blackness and slavery.90
Another influential eighteenth-century interpreter of Noah’s curse was
Bishop Thomas Newton, chaplain to George II of Great Britain. In his Dis-
sertations on the Prophecies (1759), Newton asserted that “Ham the father of
Canaan . . . instead of concealing [Noah’s] weakness, as a good-natured man
or at least a dutiful son would have done, he cruelly exposed it.” Ham’s
brothers, by contrast, “more compassionate to the infirmities of their aged
            ⁽      ⁾       

father . . . acted with such decency and respect, that ‘they saw not the naked-
ness of their father.’ ”91 Newton’s otherwise unremarkable comments on the
biblical text nevertheless provided an original contribution to the history of
interpretation. Confronted with the contradiction between Ham’s offense and
Canaan’s punishment that had vexed earlier interpreters—and firm in the
conviction that “such arbitrary proceedings are contrary to all our ideas of
the divine perfections,”—Newton offered a text-critical solution to the prob-
lem:

Hitherto we have explained the prophecy according to the present copies of

our Bible; but if we were to correct the text, as we should any ancient classic
author in a like case, the whole perhaps might be made easier and plainer.
Ham the father of Canaan is mentioned in the preceding part of the story;
and how then came the person of a sudden to be changed into Canaan? The
Arabic version in these three verses hath the father of Canaan instead of
Canaan. Some copies of the Septuagint likewise have Ham instead of Canaan,
as if Canaan was a corruption of the text.92

In Newton’s endeavor to eschew logical inconsistency and affirm divine jus-

tice, he eliminated the need to explain why Canaan had been cursed for Ham’s
transgression. In the process, he forged a useful weapon in the American
struggle to justify the peculiar institution.93
Also noteworthy for its treatment of Genesis 9 is the one-volume Bible
commentary of Matthew Henry (1662–1714), an English divine who enjoyed
a considerable reputation in America as a Bible expositor. Henry’s portrait of
Ham was simultaneously conventional and inventive: Ham “pleased himself
with the sight [of his naked father], as the Edomites looked upon the day of
their brother (Obad. 12), pleased, and insulting. Perhaps Ham had sometimes
been himself drunk, and reproved for it by his good father, whom he was
therefore pleased to see thus overcome. . . .” However, Henry differed mark-
edly from other commentators by describing Ham’s offense solely in terms of
honor and shame:

[Ham] told his two brethren without (in the street, as the word is), in a
scornful deriding manner, that his father might seem vile unto them. . . . It
is very wrong . . . to publish the faults of any, especially of parents, whom it
is our duty to honour. Noah was not only a good man, but had been a good
father to him; and this was a most base disingenuous requital to him for his
tenderness. . . . Disgrace is justly put upon those that put disgrace upon oth-
ers, especially that dishonour and grieve their own parents.94

For Henry, as for Calvin, Noah contributed to his own dishonor through
shameful drunkenness: “He was uncovered within his tent, made naked to
his shame, as Adam when he had eaten forbidden fruit.”95 Still, Henry’s con-
clusion must have encouraged American readers of his commentary who
sought a biblical sanction for slavery: “An undutiful child that mocks at his
40                     

parents is no more worthy to be called a son, but deserves to be made as a

hired servant, nay, as a servant of servants, among his brethren.”

Nineteenth Century
Biblical expositor Adam Clarke appears to have exercised a peculiar influence
on popular readings of Genesis 9. In his widely read Commentary (published
between 1817 and 1825), the British exegete popularized Bishop Newton’s tex-
tual solution to the problem of Noah’s curse, even while admitting that “this
[reading] is acknowledged by none of the other versions, and seems to be
merely a gloss.”96 In other respects, Clarke reiterated the orthodox interpretive
paradigm. He claimed that the conduct of Shem and Japhet was “such as
became pious and affectionate children” and affirmed that Noah was “without
the least blame.”97 Clarke’s opinion that “Ham, and very probably his son
Canaan, had treated their father on this occasion with contempt or reprehen-
sible levity”98 may have influenced antebellum American slavery advocates,
who agreed that Ham had dishonored Noah by making sport of his nakedness.
Later chapters will explore the role of Noah’s curse in the American bib-
lical imagination. Next we turn to a survey of the interpretive tradition that
developed around Ham’s grandson Nimrod.
 3
Unauthorized Biography

The Legend of Nimrod and His Tower

The descendants of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.

The descendants of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah,
and Sabteca. The descendants of Raamah: Sheba and De-
dan. Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first
on earth to become a mighty warrior. He was a mighty
hunter before the L; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod
a mighty hunter before the L.” The beginning of his
kingdom was Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the
land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria, and
built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, and Resen between
Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.
Genesis 10:6–12

’s  in the landscape of modern racial discourse came to my

attention as I perused a reprint of Josiah Priest’s influential Slavery as it Relates
to the Negro or African Race (1843). Priest’s text includes two crude illustrations
of Ham’s grandson Nimrod. One depicts a swarthy savage engaged “in battle
with a gang of wild beasts.” The other portrays Nimrod in conversation with
Ham’s brother Japheth in front of the Tower of Babel. According to the cap-
tion, we are witnessing an episode of primordial conflict between the epon-
ymous ancestors of white Europeans and black Africans. Japheth is “finding
fault with Nimrod, on account of his project,” the tower “built by the Negroes
of the house of Ham, under the direction of Nimrod.”1 These sketches present
a series of intriguing questions: Why is Nimrod—an obscure figure men-

41
42                   

tioned briefly in the Table of Nations in Genesis 10—of such importance to

Josiah Priest, a New Yorker known for his frontier adventure stories, Indian
captivity narratives, and “true” tales of the Revolutionary War?2 Is Priest’s
conception of Nimrod original, or does he drawn on earlier depictions of this
shadowy biblical character? And to what extent is Priest’s picture of Nimrod
based in the biblical text?
According to Umberto Cassuto’s renowned Bible commentary,3 the ref-
erences to Nimrod in Genesis 10:6–12 indicate that he was “a famous ancient
hero, and was a popular subject of Israelite epic poetry.” In fact, the words
“therefore it is said . . .” (v. 9) connote a proverb widely current in Israel and
based on an epic poem in praise of Nimrod. Cassuto speculates that the
biblical author borrowed from this epic, making vv. 6–12
perhaps an excerpt from the very opening lines which indicated at the outset,
in accordance with the customary practice in epic poetry, the subject of the
poem. In the continuation of the poem, in so far as we can surmise, a
detailed account was given of his mighty deeds in hunting beasts and mon-
sters, of his military expeditions and conquests in the lands of Babylon and
Assyria, and of the cities he built.4

Like Cassuto, modern commentators are interested in recovering the Nimrod

who may lurk behind the text of Genesis 10. Our concern, however, is with
the Nimrod who has taken shape in front of the text, as it were—the figure
who has come to life in the imaginative space between the Bible and its
readers. The historical Nimrod—and the epic chronicle of his deeds that may
be reflected in the text of Genesis—are lost to us. But Nimrod’s legend, woven
by generations of Bible readers from scraps of text and tradition, is available
for scholarly perusal in the history of interpretation. This chapter traces the
contours of Nimrod’s unauthorized biography from early Jewish midrashim
to the speculative works of nineteenth-century Christian polemicists.

Jewish Contributions

The legend of Nimrod commences with postbiblical glosses on Genesis 10

authored and collected by the rabbinic sages. Not surprisingly, the Bible’s
gnomic description of this “mighty hunter before the Lord” piqued the mid-
rashic imagination. Although Nimrod is mentioned in rabbinic texts that are
quite diverse in provenance and genre, a brief summary of Jewish legend
concerning Ham’s grandson will provide a starting place for tracing his unau-
thorized biography.5
One rabbinic tale relates that following the Flood, the descendants of
Noah’s sons appointed princes to rule over them: “Nimrod for the descendants
of Ham, Joktan for the descendants of Shem, and Phenech for the descendants
of Japheth.” Determined to “make bricks, and each one write his name upon
             

his brick,” Nimrod and the other princes undertake to build the tower de-
scribed in Genesis 11. Twelve righteous men, among them Abram, dissent from
the plan. When the twelve are brought before the princes, Nimrod and Phe-
nech become enraged and resolve to throw them into the fire.6
In another version of the tale, Nimrod raises an army from the descen-
dants of Shem and Ham in order to rout the Japhethites. The Hamites crown
Nimrod king, and he vanquishes the Semites. Having achieved dominion over
Noah’s descendants, Nimrod builds “a fortress upon a round rock, setting a
great throne of cedar-wood upon it to support a second great throne, made
of iron; this, in turn, supported a great copper throne, with a silver throne
above the copper, and a golden throne above the silver. At the summit of this
pyramid, Nimrod placed a gigantic gem from which, sitting in divine state,
he exacted universal homage.”7
Jewish legends also feature descriptions of Nimrod’s clothing: His “father
Cush . . . gave him the clothes made of skins with which God had furnished
Adam and Eve at the time of their leaving Paradise.” Intended for Shem, these
garments were stolen by Ham from their father and passed on to Cush. Cush
hid them until he could bequeath them to his son Nimrod, who received
them at the age of twenty.8 According to tradition, these garments had a
wonderful property: “He who wore them was both invincible and irresistible.
The beasts and birds of the woods fell down before Nimrod as soon as they
caught sight of him arrayed in them, and he was equally victorious in his
combats with men. The source of his unconquerable strength was not known
to them. They attributed it to his personal prowess, and therefore they ap-
pointed him king over themselves. . . .”9 After consolidating his power, Nim-
rod chose Shinar as his capital. “Thence he extended his dominion farther
and farther, until he rose by cunning and force to be the sole ruler of the
whole world, the first mortal to hold universal sway, as the ninth ruler to
possess the same power will be the Messiah.”10
In rabbinic legend, Nimrod’s impiety keeps pace with his growing power.
He fashioned and worshiped idols of wood and stone and, aided by his son
Mardon, tempted his subjects to evil. The effects were sinister: “Men no longer
trusted in God, but rather in their own prowess and ability, an attitude to
which Nimrod tried to convert the whole world. Therefore people said, ‘since
the creation of the world there has been none like Nimrod, a mighty hunter
of men and beasts, a sinner before God.’ ”11 In some versions of Nimrod’s
legend, he wishes to “set himself up as a god” so that all nations will pay him
divine homage.
According to the rabbis, Nimrod’s iniquity climaxed in the building of
the Tower of Babel, an enterprise that “was neither more nor less than re-
bellion against God.” Nimrod said: “I will be revenged on Him for the drown-
ing of my ancestors. Should He send another flood, my tower will rise even
above Ararat, and keep me safe.”12 According to tradition, three sorts of rebels
could be found among the tower’s 600,000 builders: those who said, “Let us
44                   

ascend into the heavens and wage warfare with Him,” those who said “Let us
ascend into the heavens, set up our idols, and pay worship unto them there,”
and those who said “Let us ascend into the heavens, and ruin them with our
bows and spears.” Upon completing the tower, the builders shot arrows up-
ward. When these returned to them covered with blood, they cried, “We have
slain all who are in heaven.”13 The builders “were punished according to the
nature of their rebellious conduct.” In addition to confounding their language,
the Lord pelted them with bricks. “Some were turned into apes and phantoms,
some were set against each other in combat, some were scattered over the
earth.”14 Following the episode at Babel, Nimrod continued to rule and build
cities, “which he filled with inhabitants, reigning over them in majesty.”15
Other Jewish contributions to Nimrod’s unauthorized biography concern
his relationship to the Hebrew patriarchs, particularly Abram. These include
the legend that Abram’s father, Terah, commanded Nimrod’s armies and that
Nimrod’s astrologers witnessed a comet at Abram’s birth. According to this
tradition, the wise men whispered to each other that Terah’s son would be a
mighty emperor, his descendants inheriting the earth and dethroning kings.
Upon learning of this, Nimrod attempted to buy Abram, but Terah out-
smarted the king by selling him the son of a slave woman. Abram he secured
in a cave until he was ten years old.16 In another legendary account of Abram’s
birth, Nimrod is an astrologer who discerns from the stars that a child will
overthrow the gods he worships. His counselors advise him to slaughter every
male child in his kingdom, which he does. Observing the slaughter, the angels
cry out to God, “Have You not seen how Nimrod the blasphemer murders
innocents?” But the unborn Abram is miraculously undetected in his mother’s
womb. He survives, grows to adulthood in twenty days, and instructs Nimrod
on the nature of the true God.17
In another rabbinic tradition, the angel Gabriel magically spirits Abram
to Babylon, where his father has fled with Nimrod. Abram enters Nimrod’s
palace, shakes his throne, and calls him a blasphemer, at which the king and
his idols fall on their faces. In still another legend, Satan appears to Nimrod
and offers to build him a catapult with which to heave Abram into a fiery
furnace.18 In a tradition involving Abram’s grandchildren, we learn that at the
age of 250 Nimrod was killed by Esau, “each having been jealous of the other’s
fame as a hunter.” Esau derives strength from Nimrod’s holy garments until
Jacob steals them from his tent.19
Josephus warrants special attention, in that he is both a window on con-
ceptions of Nimrod current among Hellenistic Jews and a conduit to the world
of the Christian church fathers. In Antiquities, Josephus writes “concerning
the Tower of Babylon, and the Confusion of Tongues” that God commanded
the survivors of the Flood and their descendants to “send colonies abroad,
for the thorough peopling of the earth, that they might not raise seditions
among themselves.” According to Josephus, the postdiluvians refused to com-
ply with this command because they suspected God wished to divide them so
             

they would be more easily oppressed. “Now it was Nimrod,” Josephus con-
tends, “who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God.” He was

a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe
it to God, as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe
that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also grad-
ually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning
men from fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on
his power. He also said, “He would be revenged on god, if he should have
a mind to drown the world again, for that he would build a tower too high
for the waters to be able to reach; and that he would avenge himself on God
for destroying their forefathers.”20

Josephus recapitulates many features of the rabbinic portrait of Nimrod,

including his association with the tower. But he also introduces themes that
would influence later writers. One is his claim that Nimrod and “the multi-
tude” in his train built the tower with “burnt brick, cemented together with
mortar made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water.”21 This
idea, a corollary of the belief that the tower was designed to withstand another
flood, was adopted by Milton in the seventeenth century. Another novel di-
mension of Josephus’s commentary was his emphasis on the dispersion that
followed the confusion of tongues at Babel. The survivors of the Flood feared
that God’s mandate to “send colonies abroad, for the thorough peopling of
the earth” was intended to keep human beings divided and weak. According
to Josephus, Nimrod led those who resisted this diaspora. But following the
tower episode, the dispersion was more efficacious. The builders “went out
by colonies every where; and each colony took possession of that land which
they light upon, and into which God led them.”22 The motif of dispersion—
based textually in Genesis 11:9 (“from there the L scattered them abroad
over the face of all the earth”)—would became quite prominent among Nim-
rod’s American biographers.
It is possible to discern subtle evolution in the Jewish picture of Ham’s
grandson. If the rabbinic Nimrod is a portrait of arrogance, violence, and
blatant rebellion, Josephus’s Nimrod is craftier and more focused in his op-
position to the divine will. He is, in fact, a sort of anti-Noah—not an ex-
emplar of righteousness who builds an ark at God’s behest, but a paragon of
unrighteousness who presumes to thwart God’s will and constructs a tower
to ensure against the consequences. Nimrod is not yet the satanic figure he
would become in the Christian Middle Ages, but his legend is clearly devel-
oping in that direction.
Considered as a whole, the Jewish tradition made several lasting contri-
butions to the legend of Nimrod: (1) He governed the sons of Ham following
the flood, choosing Shinar as his capital; (2) he was a universal ruler whose
success was attributable to dark magic; (3) he was an irascible man prone to
violence; (4) much like the fallen angels, he fomented rebellion against and
46                   

within heaven;23 (5) he demonstrated his penchant for defiance by building a

tower with which he intended to avert a second deluge; (6) his contumacious
character and belligerence toward God were reflected in the tower’s builders;
(7) he encouraged human self-sufficiency and introduced the worship of idols;
and (8) he posed as a god and demanded that the nations pay him homage.

Christian Contributions
Church Fathers
Like the rabbis, Christian writers of the patristic period felt obliged to explain
the arcane reference to Nimrod inserted into Genesis 10’s Table of Nations.
In the process, they made lasting contributions to his incipient biography.
Among the fathers, Augustine’s musings on Nimrod were probably the most
influential. In Book XVI of City of God, Augustine attempted to clarify the
Bible’s sketch of Ham’s grandson by translating Genesis 10:9 “[Nimrod] was
a gigantic hunter against the Lord God.”24 This construal contained two ele-
ments that would have an impact on subsequent interpreters.
The first was the notion that Nimrod was of prodigious size. Among
Christian writers, this idea can be traced to Filaster in the fourth century and
to Tertullian in the second.25 But ultimately it may be based in Jewish
sources—either the Septuagint version of Genesis (which reads “And Cush
begot Nimrod; . . . He was a giant hunter before the Lord God”)26 or 1 Enoch,
an apocalyptic text from the third century ...,27 which contends that the
forbidden union between “daughters of men” and “sons of God” described
in Genesis 6 yielded a race of giants. Because the description of Nimrod in
Genesis 10:8–9 features the same word (gibbor, “mighty”) used in Genesis 6:
4 to describe the inhabitants of the prediluvian world, early Bible readers
assumed that Nimrod must have been “mighty” in this physical sense.28 What-
ever its provenance, Nimrod’s herculean stature became an enduring aspect
of the interpretive tradition when it was endorsed by Augustine.
Another notable influence on subsequent interpreters was Augustine’s
claim that Nimrod was a hunter against, rather than before, the Lord. It may
be that Augustine followed Philo in reading the text this way.29 In any case,
having rendered the preposition in 10:9 to denote Nimrod’s spiritual de-
meanor, Augustine was led to conclude that the noun hunter could “only
suggest a deceiver, oppressor and destroyer of earth-born creatures.”30
Through a combination of translation and interpretation, Augustine portrayed
Nimrod as an enemy of God and a foil to true humility: “The safe and genuine
highway to heaven is constructed by humility,” Augustine noted, “which lifts
up its heart to the Lord, not against the Lord, as did that giant. . . .”31 The
supposition that Nimrod resisted God was intimately related in Augustine’s
view to the assumption that he, “with his subject peoples, began to erect a
tower against the Lord, which symbolize[d] his impious pride”:
           

The city which was called “Confusion” is none other than Babylon, whose
marvelous construction is praised also by pagan historians. The name “Bab-
ylon” means, in fact, “confusion.” Hence it may be inferred that Nimrod
“the giant” was its founder, as was briefly suggested earlier. For when the
Scripture mentions him, it says that “the beginning of his empire was Bab-
ylon,” that is, Babylon was the city which had the pre-eminence over all the
others. . . . 32

Augustine opines that God’s breaking of the human conspiracy by the con-
fusion of tongues was a condign retribution for Nimrod and his underlings:
“Since a ruler’s power of domination is wielded by his tongue, it was in that
organ that [Nimrod’s] pride was condemned to punishment.” As a conse-
quence, “he who refused to understand God’s bidding . . . was himself not
understood when he gave orders to men.”33 This gloss on Babel may well have
influenced Dante, who, as we shall see, portrayed Nimrod as a titan lacking
intelligible speech.
Several patristic writers reinforced Nimrod’s long-standing association
with tyranny. For instance, Jerome (347–420) asserts that “Nimrod the son of
Cush was the first to seize tyrannical power [previously] unused, over the
people.”34 In his Recognitions, Clement elaborates this picture of Nimrod and
his descendants:

In the seventeenth generation Nimrod I reigned in Babylonia, and built a

city, and thence granted to the Persians, and taught them to worship fire. In
the nineteenth generation the descendants of him who had been cursed after
the flood [Ham], going beyond their proper bounds which they had obtained
by lot in the western regions, drove into the eastern lands those who had
obtained the middle portion of the world . . . while themselves violently took
possession of the country from which they expelled [its inhabitants].35

Clement’s thumbnail sketch of the Hamite genealogy includes some leading

features of Nimrod’s legend as it would develop in the succeeding centuries.
Nimrod is associated with city building and idolatry, and his descendants are
said to emulate the tyrannous behavior for which he will become notorious.
Clement also presents the idea—adumbrated in Josephus—that Nimrod led
an insurrection against the postdiluvian allotment of territory among Noah’s
sons. Rejecting their assignment to “the western regions,” the Hamites under
Nimrod migrate “beyond their proper bounds which they had obtained by
lot” and invade Shem’s lands in Mesopotamia (“the eastern lands of those
who had obtained the middle portion of the world”). Like Josephus, Clement
charges Nimrod with opposition to God’s plan for postdiluvian dispersion,
an accusation that would become a leitmotif in the history of biblical inter-
pretation.
Patristic interpreters assigned Nimrod symbolic as well as historical sig-
nificance. His legendary role as hunter, tower builder, and tyrant made him
a consummate symbol of human pride and rebellion. Ambrose cast Nimrod
48                     

as the type of all who pursue earthly glory, thus contrasting him with Peter,
the fisher of men for God’s glory. In time, Nimrod came to represent “an
excessive attachment to earthly things, a noble but ill-directed ambition, since
its objective was not God but human goods.”36 Meanwhile, despite his leg-
endary connection with Babylon, Nimrod’s descent from Ham through Cush
led patristic authors to regard him as an African. Some claimed that “in
Hebrew Chus means Aethiops”; others that “Nembroth means Aethiops.” In
both cases, Nimrod and his tower were africanized through association with
Ham.37 The combination of spiritual and genealogical attributes that tradition
ascribed to Nimrod led Ambrose to conclude that he was a personification
of humanity’s dark side: “Forced by his nature to live and act more like an
animal than a creature of reason, Nimrod is an image of the guilty soul,
‘Ethiopian, enemy of the light, deprived of brightness.’ ”38

Middle Ages
The legend of Nimrod continued to evolve during the Christian Middle Ages.
Lineaments of the portrait rendered by the rabbis and church fathers remained
intact, but there were many embellishments. For instance, Nimrod was in-
creasingly associated with hidden knowledge, being credited with everything
from composing a prophecy to inform the Magi of Jesus’ birth,39 to unlocking
the mysteries of the stars, to mastering the knowledge of statecraft.
One medieval tradition connected Nimrod with the mysterious fourth
son of Noah. The Book of the Cave of Treasures, composed in Syriac perhaps
as late as the sixth century .., claims that Noah’s fourth son, Yonton, (Jon-
athan) traveled to the east and encountered Nimrod.40 There Jonathan taught
the giant-king oracular wisdom—that is, legitimate astronomy.41 According
to The Book of the Cave of Treasures, Nimrod was a teacher as well. “The
revelation of Nimrod” was thought to be a Christian messianic prophecy, the
knowledge of which brought the Magi to Bethlehem.42 Another medieval text
in which Nimrod figures prominently is the so-called Apocalypse of Pseudo
Methodius (Syriac, probably late seventh century ..). It relates a similar
story regarding Yonton, begotten by Noah after the flood and sent to the east.
A recipient of divine revelations that include astronomical knowledge, Yonton
instructs Nimrod “in all wisdom,” particularly statecraft.43
The medieval association of Nimrod and astronomy has been analyzed
in a classic study by Charles Homer Haskins.44 Haskins notes that in the
twelfth century a mysterious figure—variously named Nebrot, Nebrod, Ne-
broz, Nembroz, or Nembroth—was cited as an “authority on astronomical
and chronological matters of the same type as Bede, Helperic, Gerland, and
Thurkil.” Since no writer of this name is known to have existed in the Middle
Ages, the probable reference is to the Nimrod of Genesis, “whose name has
furnished a fruitful field for speculations and conjectures of orientalists.”45 By
the sixth century, Nimrod had become an astronomer, “and an astronomer
            

he remained to the men of the Middle Ages.”46 Haskins describes a medieval

manuscript purported to be the treatise of Nimrod the giant on astronomy,
which he dates to around 800 and places in Gaul.47 This work features a
drawing of Atlas and Nimrod, the two kings “whom classical and oriental
tradition respectively make the founders of astronomy.” According to Haskins,
“Atlas is depicted standing on the Pyrenees and bearing on his shoulders the
firmament with its stars, while Nimrod stands on the mountain of the Am-
orites and looks upward while he supports in his hands the heavens without
stars.”48 The content of the treatise reflects another medieval theme in the
legend of Nimrod, for it takes the form of a dialogue between Nimrod and
Noah’s fourth son, Jonathan.49
Despite Nimrod’s mythic prominence, medieval writers never lost sight
of his blood relationship to Ham. The fourteenth-century Travels of Sir John
Mandeville emphasized this connection as it transmitted and embellished
Nimrod’s legend:
From one of [Ham’s] sons, Nimrod the giant was born, who was the first
king in the world and who started to build the tower of Babel. And with
him the fiends of the underworld would come frequently to lay with the
women of [Nimrod’s] descent and created various people, all disfigured, one
without testes, another without an arm, a third with one eye, a fourth with
the feet of a horse, and many others disfigured and misshapen. And from
this generation of descendants of Ham came the pagan folk and the various
peoples of the isles of Asia. And because he was the most powerful and none
would dare oppose him, he was called the son of God and sovereign of all
the world.50
Recalling that the same author calls Ham “the mightiest and most pow-
erful” and regards him as the forerunner of Mongol emperors who call them-
selves “Grand Ham and the son of nature and the sovereign of all the world,”
we note that Nimrod’s legend was definitely shaped by his connection with
Ham. But this dynamic worked in the other direction as well. Nimrod’s iden-
tity as the archetypal rebel and tyrant was often projected back onto his grand-
father. In fact, perceiving Ham through Nimrod’s lens promoted the para-
doxical notion that the curse of Ham “led to cruelty, to mastery, to imperial
power, even to becoming ‘the son of God.’ ” It was no doubt this association
that caused Luther to dub Ham “the lord of all Asia.” Benjamin Braude has
shown that the tradition of a masterful Ham grew directly out of medieval
attention to Nimrod, who was, “after Noah himself, the most imperial figure,
literally and figuratively, in the ancient and medieval imaging of the Bible.”51
The Hamite’s association with rulership made him strangely attractive to Eu-
rope’s imperial rulers, some of whom claimed descent from both Ham and
Nimrod.52
Because of Dante’s prodigious influence on the literary imagination in
his own and in subsequent ages, Nimrod’s treatment in The Divine Comedy
deserves close attention. The aspects of Nimrod’s evolving legend transmitted
50                    

by Dante are his giant stature, his tyranny over humanity, and his responsi-
bility for the confusion of language at Babel. Nimrod is mentioned in each
section of The Divine Comedy, but by far the most important passage appears
in Canto XXXI of Inferno. Dante discovers Nimrod in the region of hell
inhabited by the giants of myth and legend, and describes him in terrible
detail:
I began now to distinguish the face of one [horrible giant], the shoulders
and the chest and a great part of the belly and down by his sides both arms.
Nature, assuredly, when she gave up the art of making creatures like these,
did right well to deprive Mars of such executors; and if she does not repent
of elephants and whales, one looking at it carefully will hold her the more
just and prudent for it, for where the equipment of the mind is joined to
evil will and to power men can make no defence against it. His face appeared
to me to have the length and bulk of Saint Peter’s pine-cone at Rome and
the other bones were in proportion, so that the bank [of the pit in which
Nimrod and the other giants are sunk], which was an apron to him from
the middle down, still showed so much of him above that three Frieslanders
would have boasted in vain of reaching his hair; for I saw thirty great spans
of him down from the place where a man buckles his cloak.53
While Dante is marveling at the prodigious Nimrod, a strange sound reaches
his ears: “ ‘Raphel may amech zabi almi,’ began the savage mouth to cry, for
which no sweeter psalms were fit; and my Leader towards him: ‘Stupid soul,
keep to thy horn and vent thyself with that when rage or other passion takes
thee. Search at thy neck, bewildered soul, and thou shalt find the strap that
holds it tied; see how it lies across thy great chest.’ ”54 Virgil instructs Dante
on the hideous behemoth’s identity: “He is his own accuser. This is Nimrod,
through whose wicked device the world is not of one sole speech. Let us leave
him there and not talk in vain, for every language is to him as his to others,
which is known to none.” Significantly, Nimrod’s only words are unintelligible
murmurings. Other references in Dante’s Divine Comedy emphasize Nimrod’s
responsibility for the tower and the resultant confusion of languages.55
By the end of the Middle Ages, the contours of Nimrod’s legend were
firmly established. He was Ham’s grandson, a physical giant sometimes as-
sociated with disfigurement and the loss of human intelligence. He was the
earth’s first tyrant. He possessed astronomical and other types of esoteric
wisdom. He was an archrebel “against the Lord,” who refused to abide by
Noah’s postdiluvian allotment of lands. Migrating to the east, he settled on
the plain of Shinar, where he became the builder of the infamous Tower of
Babel. This project led directly to the dispersion of nations and the plurality
of tongues.

Reformation and Renaissance

In his Lectures on Genesis, Martin Luther indicates just how close had become
the association of Ham and Nimrod in the Christian imagination. Not only
            

do the characters share a family resemblance; but they begin to merge when
Luther ascribes to Ham significant aspects of Nimrod’s legend. For instance,
he places Ham in Babylon, where, “together with his descendants, he engages
in building a city and a tower.”56 But Luther does not ignore Nimrod, who,
“after setting up his power through tyranny, afflicts the godly descendants of
Noah in various ways, establishes a kingdom for himself, and assumes sole
sovereignty over it.”57 Like grandfather, like grandson. Just as Ham despised
Noah’s religion and doctrine by mocking his father and establishing a new
government and new religion, so Nimrod “sinned against both the govern-
ment and the church. He did not cultivate the true religion.”
Following Josephus and the church fathers, Luther indicts Nimrod for
practicing “unjust tyranny on his cousins, whom he expelled from their pa-
ternal lands.”58 Specifically, the Hamites under Nimrod invade the region del-
egated to Shem, “the heir of the promise concerning Christ.” For such be-
havior, the Hamites are painted in demonic language: “Even though there is
no written record of what they attempted against the true church, against
Noah himself, the ruler of the church, and against his pious posterity, it can
nevertheless be surmised by analogy if we carefully consider the actions of
our opponents at the present time. For Satan, who incites the ungodly against
the true church, is always the same.”59 As the enemy of Noah and his pious
descendants, Nimrod invites identification with the evil one.
John Calvin’s discussion of Nimrod in his Commentaries is brief but note-
worthy. Despite his reputation as a careful biblical scholar, Calvin transmits
many features of Nimrod’s burgeoning legend. According to Calvin, Moses
made special mention of Nimrod because as “the first author of tyranny” he
was eminent in an unusual degree. For this distinction, Nimrod was “branded
with an eternal mark of infamy,” indicating how pleasing God finds “a mild
administration of affairs among men.” Calvin claims it was ambition that led
Nimrod to seek high honor rather than to cultivate equality with his inferiors:
“Nimrod attempted to raise himself above the order of men; just as proud
men become transported by a vain self-confidence, that they may look down
as from the clouds upon others.” The description of Nimrod as a “mighty
hunter” Calvin takes to mean that he was a “furious man, and approximated
to beasts rather than to men.” Nimrod was also an expansionist, who, “not
content with his large and opulent kingdom, gave the reins to his cupidity,
and pushed the boundaries of his empire even into Assyria, where he also
built new cities.”
Following the interpretive tradition and clues in the biblical text, Calvin
affirms that Nimrod probably built the tower (though he is troubled by the
fact that the name Babel, which presumably denotes the confusion of tongues,
appears already in Genesis 10). On Nimrod’s role in leading this project,
Calvin surmises thus: “Solicitous about his own fame and power, [Nimrod]
inflamed [his contemporaries’] insane desire by this pretext, that some famous
monument should be erected in which their everlasting memory might re-
52                   

main.” Like Luther, Calvin refers to the violent expulsion of Shem from the
dwelling place allotted him under Noah.60
Once again, Du Bartas’s La Seconde Semaine deserves a special place in
our survey of the interpretive tradition. Although dependent on previous au-
thors, Du Bartas brings Nimrod’s legend to a new level of detail and psycho-
logical complexity:
Nimrod has not even reached his twelfth year
when he begins to act the tyrant among his peers,
vaunting himself over his equals, and under that good sign
establishes the foundation of his future grandeur
and carries in his hand reeds for scepters,
doing apprenticeship among the shepherds.
Then, understanding that a lord who aspires
to a powerful empire, presuming it his fate,
must surpass his vulgar companions in deeds of renown
or at least wear the mask of virtue,
he doesn’t spend the night on a soft mattress
or the day in a heated room; so, the young man becomes accustomed
to bad weather and good, taking, ambitious [as he is]
a rock for his pillow and the sky for his bed linens,
bows are his toys, sweat his delight,
preferring hawks to sparrows, his hunting dogs are constantly
with him
and his preferred feast the flesh of a fine trembling buck
that he has not finished flaying.
Sometimes he challenges himself to mount in a single breath
a steep rock outcropping that dominates a plain,
to cross against the current a flooding river
that in the rainy season has destroyed a hundred bridges
and gallops and bounds
across a narrow gorge
to recapture a shaft [arrow or javelin] gone astray
to take in fine chase either a doe or a buck.
But at age twenty-five
and proudly sensing his physique and his courage
worthy of proud Mars, he seeks out here and there
a tiger, a lion, a bear, a leopard,
attacks it without fear, conquers it, slaughters it and
displays its bloody hide on the high places.
Then the common people—who see by his warlike hands
the roads freed of inhuman assassins,
the deep forests [cleared] of horrible groanings
and the flocks [liberated] from fear—they like this liberator
this evil-chasing Hercules, show him their favor,
and call him father and savior.
            

Nimrod, grabbing fortune by the hair and striking while the iron
is hot, flatters, presses, importunes
now one, now another; hurrying along his good fate,
from a hunter of animals, he becomes a hunter of men.
Because, just as he used in his earlier hunts
birdlime, traps, birdcalls, [and] nets,
and in the end, against the wildest
maces, spears, arrows, and darts;
[so] he wins certain ones with promises,
others with presents, others by tricks,
and furiously tearing asunder the ties of equality,
seizes rule over the renascent world,
whereas before this the chief of each clan
commanded it separately, and the youthful audacity
of a frisky spirit, an ambitious upstart,
dared not put its sickle into the harvest of the patriarchs.61
Du Bartas goes on to describe Nimrod’s career on the throne, accenting
his violent and cruel nature. Nimrod insults the Almighty, waving his scepter
in the Lord’s face; he enslaves the people and forces them to construct a tower.
Enough living in tents, he announces; let us build an edifice that will have its
base in the depths and its head in the heavens, a tower that will stand as “an
inviolable asylum and sacrosanct refuge from the wild inundation of a rav-
aging deluge.”62
By illuminating new aspects of Nimrod’s life and character, Du Bartas
significantly expands the interpretive tradition. For the first time, Du Bartas
offers depictions of Nimrod’s childhood, his early aspirations for power, his
asceticism, his training as a hunter and warrior, his tactics for gaining favor
among the people, and his conniving methods for maintaining it. The com-
posite portrait that emerges from Du Bartas’s biography of Ham’s grandson
is one of alarming hubris; of a man who dares to “put his sickle into the
harvest of the patriarchs,” and of an illegitimate ruler who cleverly exploits
human insecurity while flaunting his power before God. To the feudal men-
tality, Nimrod’s ill-gotten rulership might appear liberating. But in Du Bartas’s
mind it is a bane to society that “furiously tear[s] asunder the ties of equality”
and usurps the respect previously commanded by the patriarchs.
In Britain, as on the continent, Nimrod found prominence in a variety
of learned works published between 1500 and 1700. Sir Walter Raleigh’s (1554–
1618) popular History of the World includes a lengthy discussion of Noah’s
descendants, with particular attention to Nimrod and his legend. Raleigh looks
to the biblical account of human origins for a record of the world’s repopu-
lation following the flood. To the lineage of Noah, God “assigned and allotted
to every son, and their issues, their proper parts.”63 According to Raleigh,
Nimrod figured prominently in this initial dispersion: “All these people which
came into Shinaar, and over whom Nimrod, either by order or strength, took
the dominion, did, after the confusion of languages, and at such time as they
54                      

grew to be a mighty people, disperse themselves into the regions adjoining to

the said valley of Shinnar, which contained the best part of Mesopotamia,
Babylonia, and Chaldea, and from the borders thereof in time they were prop-
agated. . . .”64
Raleigh calls Nimrod the “establisher of the Babylonian monarchy,” the
first to reign “as sovereign lord after the flood.” But did his rule derive from
just authority? Raleigh is aware that “this empiry of Nimrod, both the fathers
and many later writers, call tyrannical.” However, he contends that Nimrod
gained the reputation as a “bitter or severe governor, because his form of rule
seemed at first far more terrible than paternal authority.” He received the
moniker “mighty hunter” because he “destroyed both beasts and thieves.”65 It
appears to Raleigh that Nimrod did not usurp his rule but received it “by
just authority.” Like Caesar, Nimrod broke the “rule of eldership and pater-
nity, laying the foundation of sovereign rule.”66 This discussion reveals an
element of Nimrod’s legend that was increasingly contested among European
commentators: Whether Nimrod was the original tyrant and usurper of pa-
triarchal authority, or a type of the monarch who governs with divine sanc-
tion.
John Milton’s portrayal of Nimrod seems to have been influenced by his
reading of Du Bartas, a fellow opponent of monarchy.67 Book XII of Paradise
Lost includes an extensive reference to the shadowy king and his tower. Milton
has Michael prophesy of one who

. . . shall rise
Of proud ambitious heart, who not content
with fair equality, fraternal state,
Will arrogate Dominion undeserv’d
Over his brethren, and quite dispossess
concord and law of Nature from the Earth;
Hunting (and Men not Beasts shall be his game)
With War and hostile snare such as refuse
Subjection to his Empire tyrannous:
A mighty Hunter thence he shall be styl’d
Before the Lord, as in despite of Heav’n,
Or from Heav’n claiming second Sovranty;
And from Rebellion shall derive his name,
Though of Rebellion others he accuse.
Hee with a crew, whom like Ambition joins
with him or under him to tyrannize,
Marching from Eden towards the West, shall find
the Plain, wherein a black bituminous gurge
Boils out from under ground, the mouth of Hell;
Of Brick, and of that stuff they cast to build
A city and Tow’r, whose top may reach to Heav’n’
And get themselves a name, lest far disperst
In foreign Lands thir memory be lost,
            

Regardless whether good or evil fame.

But God who oft descends to visit men
Unseen, and through thir habitations walks
to mark thir doings, them beholding soon,
comes down to see thir City, ere the Tower
Obstruct Heav’n Tow’rs, and in derision sets
Upon thir tongues a various Spirit to rase
Quite out thir Native Language, and instead
To sow a jangling noise of words unknown:
Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud
Among the Builders; each to other calls
Not understood, till hoarse, and all in rage,
As mockt they storm; great laughter was in Heav’n
And looking down, to see the hubbub strange
And hear the din; thus was the building left
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion nam’d.68
This passage, based loosely on Genesis 10 and 11, catalogs most of the
patristic and medieval themes in the developing legend of Nimrod. He is the
archetypal tyrant (“not content/ with fair equality, fraternal state,/ Will ar-
rogate Dominion undeserv’d/ Over his brethren, . . . With . . . Subjection to
his Empire tyrannous . . . ). He is a hunter of human beings (“and Men not
Beasts shall be his game”; “A mighty Hunter thence he shall be styl’d”).69 He
is builder of Babel’s Tower70 and responsible for corrupting human speech
(God “sow[s] a jangling noise of words unknown/ Forthwith a hideous gabble
rises loud Among the Builders”). His tower is both an expression of self-
aggrandizement and a ploy to resist dispersion (“And get themselves a name,
lest far disperst/In foreign Lands thir memory be lost”). But although echoes
of Josephus, Augustine, and Dante are audible in Milton’s text, novel chords
are struck as well. These include the notion that Nimrod’s name means “re-
bellion” (“And from Rebellion shall derive his name,/ Though of Rebellion
others he accuse”). This idea seems to have been widespread during the Re-
naissance, but Paradise Lost was the conduit through which it entered modern
literature.71 Another innovative element in Milton’s biography of Nimrod is
his placement of the tower over the spot “wherein a black bituminous72 gurge/
Boils out from under ground, the mouth of Hell.” This nexus between Nim-
rod, the tower, and hell is a potent one: Milton portrays Nimrod as the first
tyrant on earth, Satan as the first tyrant of all.73
Nimrod was also of considerable interest among British biblical com-
mentators, who, despite their stated interest in the literal meaning of scripture,
faithfully transmitted his legend. Writing in 1637, Gervase Babington deemed
Nimrod the quintessential despot: “Nimrod a tyrant starteth up in this Chap-
ter . . . ancient therefore are oppression and cruelty.” In Nimrod’s character,
Babington perceives insight into sin’s effects on human beings: If we continue
to do evil, “at last it will be said of us as of Nimrod, that even before God
we are become hunters, that is, we are growne to an impudency and boldness
56                      

of sinning.” Iniquity is so virulent, Babington observes, that every town has

one or two Nimrods: “That is, a hard, cruell, a greedy, and covetous man,
that grindeth the faces of his neighbours, till both skin and flesh being off,
the bare bones doe onely remaine.”74 Babington’s contemporary Abraham
Rosse agreed that Nimrod was the original tyrant, interpreting the phrase
“mighty in the earth” as indicating that he was “bloody and cruell.” Nimrod
was also an inventor of idolatry and builder of the tower. Like many Bible
readers before him, Rosse linked Nimrod’s sordid character with his descent
from Ham.75
Andrew Willet was skeptical of the Hebrew “fables” that had attached
themselves to the figure of Nimrod. Nevertheless, he transmitted many of
them, including the notions that Nimrod was a giant, that he hunted men,
that he spread contempt for God, that he brought idolatry into the world and
taught men to worship fire, and that he clothed himself with the skins donned
by Adam and Eve in the garden. The scriptural view, Willet contends ironically,
is “that even in the sight and presence of God, without all feare of God,
Nimrod practiced tyrannie and crueltie: so that it grew into a proverbe, to
resemble a cruel tyrant and oppressor to Nimrod.”76 Willet thinks it likely
that Nimrod was identical with Belus, the founder of the Babylonian mon-
archy.
The texts we have surveyed from the Reformation and Renaissance reveal
that in an age when the divine right of monarchs and the religious authority
of popes were contested, one’s picture of Nimrod was determined to a great
extent by one’s attitude toward kings and bishops. Thus Andrew Willet per-
ceives in the sinister Nimrod a symbol of papal despotism: “As old Babylon
was the beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod . . . so Rome the second or new
Babylon, is the head of the kingdome of Antichrist, the Nimrod of the world
that hunteth mens soules, as the other did tyrannize over their bodies.”77
Similarly, Milton describes Ham’s grandson as the sort of tyrant who “from
Heav’n claim[s] second Sovranty.”

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

At this point, we begin to consider texts that were published in America and
that influenced conceptions of Nimrod there. As we have seen, Augustin Cal-
met was instrumental in shaping Ham’s image in the American mind. Calmet’s
Dictionary of the Bible (1722) also provided a concise sketch of Nimrod’s leg-
end. According to Calmet, Nimrod
was the first who began to monopolize power on the earth, and gave occasion
to the proverb, “Like Nimrod, the great hunter before the Lord.” His hunting
was not only of wild beasts, but also to subdue men, to reduce them under
his dominion. Ezekiel (xxxii.30. Vulg.) gives the name of hunters to all ty-
rants. The foundation of the empire of Nimrod was at Babylon; and, very
probably, he was among the most eager undertakers of the tower of Babel.
           

He built Babylon at, or near, that famous tower, and from thence he ex-
tended his dominion over the neighboring countries, . . . when Nimrod had
established the beginning of his empire at Babylon, and in the land of Shinar,
he advanced towards Assyria, where he built powerful cities, as so many
fortresses, to keep the people in subjection. . . . To Nimrod is imputed the
invention of idolatrous worship paid to men.78

This recitation of traditions includes mostly familiar ideas:79 Nimrod was the
prototypical tyrant who invented idolatry and built a city and tower, around
which he organized an expansionist empire.
In his Commentary on the Whole Bible, Matthew Henry transmitted even
more of the interpretive tradition regarding Nimrod. According to Henry,
Nimrod was

1. A usurper: “Nimrod was a violent invader of his neighbour’s rights

and properties, and a persecutor of innocent men, carrying all be-
fore him, and endeavoring to make all his own by force and vio-
lence.”
2. An idolator: Like Jeroboam, Nimrod set up idolatry to consolidate
his dominion. “That he might set up a new government, he set up a
new religion upon the ruin of the primitive constitution of both.”
3. A hunter against the Lord: “He carried on his oppression and vio-
lence in defiance of God . . . as if he and his huntsmen could out-
brave the Almighty. . . .”
4. A political sovereign: He laid “the foundations of a monarchy, which
was afterwards a head of gold, and the terror of the mighty, and
bade fair to be universal. . . . See the antiquity of civil government,
and particularly that form of it which lodges the sovereignty in a
single person.”80
5. A cunning builder: He was most likely the architect of Babel. When
his project to rule the Noahides failed in the confusion of tongues,
Nimrod left and built Ninevah.
6. An object lesson in human ambition: From Nimrod we learn that
ambition is boundless, restless, expensive, and daring.
7. A rebel: “Nimrod’s name signifies rebellion, which (if indeed he did
abuse his power to the oppression of his neighbours) teaches us that
tyrants to men are rebels to God, and their rebellion is as the sin of
witchcraft.”81

Adam Clarke, the British divine who published his biblical commentary
in the early nineteenth century, appears to have been another source for
American versions of Nimrod’s legend. Clarke reflects the conflicted attitude
of Protestant commentators caught between text and tradition, writing that
although the verses regarding Nimrod in Genesis 10 are not definite, “it is
very likely he was a very bad man.” Clarke confirms that Nimrod’s name
58                    

derives from the Hebrew marad, “he rebelled”; that he was a warlike giant;
that as an archrebel and apostate he was a principal instrument in the spread
of idolatry; that his kingdom at Babel “appears to have been founded in
apostasy from God, and to have been supported by tyranny, rapine and op-
pression”; and that Nimrod was among the tower’s builders (perhaps assisted
by giants like himself).82 While failing to endorse Nimrod’s entire legend,
Clarke’s text valorized the themes that animated the history of interpretation.
And his portrait of Nimrod was painted with the broad strokes of condem-
nation that would characterize American versions of his legend. When this
portrait is contemplated, there is only one response: “From the Nimrods of
the earth, God deliver the world!”83
The strangest chapter in Nimrod’s unauthorized biography is also the
longest and most intricate. Its author is Alexander Hislop (1807–1865), a Scot-
tish divine who in 1858 published The Two Babylons, or Papal Worship Proved
to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife.84 Hislop’s goal in this exceedingly
convoluted anti-Catholic tract was to demonstrate the “Babylonian character
of the Papal Church” by uncovering the common “mysteries” uniting them.
In Hislop’s view, the Roman church had borrowed extensively from the “an-
cient Babylonian Mysteries,” and in their chief objects of worship—the ma-
donna and child—the two religions were virtually identical. On what basis
does Hislop make this bizarre claim? First, he identifies Nimrod’s father Cush
with Bel the founder of Babylon and Nimrod himself with the Babylonian
divine child Ninus. These associations are established on putative linguistic
affinities, as well as the penchant for conquest shared by Nimrod and Ninus.85
And what sort of man was Nimrod? Hislop’s answer draws to a great
extent on the interpretive tradition he inherited. For instance, he contends
that Nimrod led a band of “mighty ones,” bent on invading neighboring
peoples, and links him with Babylon and the Tower of Babel.86 Nimrod’s path
to sovereignty is also quite familiar: Although he shattered the patriarchal
system, Nimrod gained the loyalty of his subjects by taming and ordering the
postdiluvian world:

The amazing extent of the worship of this man indicates something very
extraordinary in his character; and there is ample reason to believe, that in
his own day he was an object of high popularity. Though by setting up as
king, Nimrod invaded the patriarchal system, and abridged the liberties of
mankind, yet he was held by many to have conferred benefits upon them,
that amply indemnified them for the loss of their liberties, and covered him
with glory and renown. By the time that he appeared, the wild beasts of the
forest multiplying more rapidly than the human race, must have committed
great depredations on the scattered and straggling populations of the earth,
and must have inspired great terror into the minds of men. . . . The exploits
of Nimrod, therefore, in hunting down the wild beasts of the field, and
ridding the world of monsters, must have gained for him the character of a
pre-eminent benefactor of his race. . . . 87
            

Had Nimrod earned renown solely from his prowess as a hunter, all might
have been well. But a pernicious effect on his fellows was soon evident in the
religious sphere: “Not content with delivering men from the fear of wild
beasts, he set to work also to emancipate them from that fear of the Lord
which is the beginning of wisdom, and in which alone true happiness can be
found.”88 His contemporaries came to view Nimrod as a great “Liberator” in
that he had emancipated them from “the impressions of true religion”; in
fact, however, he was an “Apostate” who led them in abandoning the primeval
faith.89 Nimrod convinced his followers to “put God and the strict spirituality
of His law at a distance” and “to seek their chief good in sensual enjoyment.”90
It is no surprise to learn that Nimrod traveled with troops of women, accom-
panied by music, games, and revelries.
Hislop reports that in the midst of a “prosperous career of false religion
and apostasy,” Nimrod met a violent death. He was not crushed by his own
tower, as some surmise, but slain by Noah’s son Shem. With “resolution and
unbounded ambition,” Nimrod’s wife Semiramis elevated him to a place in
the Babylonian pantheon, and when his mystery cult was forced underground
he was worshiped alternatively as Osiris, Tammuz, or Adonis. “Men were
gradually led back to all the idolatry that had been publicly suppressed, while
new features were added . . . that made it still more blasphemous than be-
fore.”91 When Nimrod’s mystery religion of idolatry, prostitution, and human
sacrifice emerged into the light of day centuries later, it took the form of
Roman Catholicism.
Hislop’s biography of Nimrod is distinctive in several respects. For in-
stance, despite his interest in etymology, Hislop denies that Nimrod’s name
should be translated “to rebel.” Although “there is no doubt that Nimrod
was a rebel, and that his rebellion was celebrated in ancient myths,” Hislop
discounts the traditional derivation. Further, Hislop links Nimrod with the
“Giants [who] rebelled against Heaven” (the Nephilim of Genesis 6?), iden-
tifying these behemoths with Nimrod and his party.92 Hislop’s drama is also
notable for its casting of the members of Nimrod’s family. Although he re-
veals little interest in Ham, Hislop does allege that he was “black . . . a ne-
gro . . . and the real original of the black Adversary of mankind, with horns
and hoofs.”93 Meanwhile, Nimrod’s father, Cush, ignored by the majority of
commentators, is identified with Bel, the traditional founder of Babylon,
and is assigned responsibility for fabricating the Tower of Babel, “the first
act of open rebellion after the flood.”94 Cush is characterized as “a ring-
leader in the great apostasy,” who had a “pre-eminent share in leading
mankind away from the true worship of God.”95 Finally, Hislop pays con-
siderable attention to Nimrod’s consort Semiramis (associated with Diana,
among others), whom he claims was deified in the Babylonian mysteries.
60                      

Conclusion

Briefly, let us sketch a composite portrait of Nimrod as he was imagined by

European Bible readers through the middle of the nineteenth century. The
dominant lines in this portrait appear in italics, the various subthemes as
bullets:

Nimrod was a grandson of Ham through Cush.

Nimrod was a man of renown, stemming from:
• his prowess as a hunter
• his success as a leader
• his magical clothing

Nimrod was the first sovereign ruler:

• he was appointed by the descendants of Ham
• he usurped authority from the patriarchs
• he manipulated and intimidated common folk in order to introduce
tyranny
• he assumed “just authority” under God’s aegis

Nimrod was the world’s first idolater:

• he introduced fire worship
• he established false religion
• he set himself up as a god
• he was taught esoteric knowledge by Noah’s son Jonathan

Nimrod was a rebel:

• his name means “to rebel”
• he resisted God’s wish that humanity disperse following the flood
• he rebelled against patriarchal authority

Nimrod built the Tower of Babel:

• over the mouth of hell
• as protection against a second flood
• as a means of ascending into heaven

Nimrod was responsible for the plurality of tongues:

• he was cursed with an inability to render intelligent speech
• he is an example of those who attempt to thwart God’s will

Nimrod was “mighty”:

• he was an imposing figure, perhaps a physical giant
• he may have been identical with ancient mythological figures, perhaps
Bacchus, Osiris, or Hercules
              

Nimrod was a hunter:

• he was a warrior who fought wild beasts after the flood
• he “hunted” men, in the sense that he became a tyrant bent on con-
quest
• his success against wild beasts that threatened postdiluvian humanity
contributed to his support among the people
Nimrod was a city builder:
• from his base in the plain of Shinar, he founded the major cities of
Mesopotamia
• he was taught the art of statecraft by Noah’s son Jonathan
Nimrod was an expansionist:
• he and his minions spread into areas reserved for others
• he invaded the territory allotted to Shem
• he thus became “lord of all Asia” and the archetypal imperial ruler
Nimrod symbolizes ill-directed ambition:
• his tower is a monument to human vanity
• he is an emblem of human pride and rebellion
• he is the type of all who pursue earthly glory
Nimrod was an agent of Satan:
• he defied God and led others to do the same
• he encouraged human beings to believe they were self-sufficient
• he created a mystery religion instigated by Satan
• he symbolizes the despotism of Rome, the new Babylon
Nimrod was black:
• his grandfather Ham was the first Negro
• his father Cush was the ancestor of Ethiopians
• he personifies human nature’s darker side

American chapters in Nimrod’s unauthorized biography are the focus of chap-

ter 6. As we shall see, while American Bible readers utilized most of the themes
in the portrait of Nimrod they inherited, they made their own contributions
as well.
 II
HONOR AND ORDER
 4
Original Dishonor

Noah’s Curse and the Southern Defense of Slavery

And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a

vineyard: 21. And he drank of the wine, and was drunken;
and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the fa-
ther of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told
his two brethren without. 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. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew
what his younger son had done unto him. And he said,
Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto
his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the L God of
Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge
Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Ca-
naan shall be his servant.
Genesis 9:20–27

  Genesis 9:20–27 in the King James Version of the Bible, the English
translation in which antebellum Americans encountered the story of Noah’s
drunkenness. This chapter explores the various ways nineteenth-century
American advocates of slavery utilized the story to defend the institution of
slavery. It illumines the peculiar manner in which Genesis 9 was read by
proslavery intellectuals (particularly between 1830 and 1865). And it suggests
how this distinctive chapter in the history of biblical interpretation confirms

65
66        

the centrality of honor in the white Southern mind. In the process, it prob-
lematizes the view that Old South racism was a projection of white sexual
fears and fantasies. Beginning with nineteenth-century abolitionists, who re-
garded the South as a modern-day Sodom in which “men could indulge their
erotic impulses with impunity,”1 the proslavery argument has been perceived
as a rationale for dominance and sexual transgression. But careful study of
the way Genesis 9 was read in antebellum America indicates that proslavery
intellectuals were at least as deeply concerned with honor and dishonor as
with sex and power.

Noah’s Curse and Southern Honor

Once light was shed on the role of honor in the Southern psyche, it was
inevitable that it would illuminate the institution the Southern mind sought
hardest to protect.2 However, attempts to clarify the nexus between honor,
slavery, and its religious defense are conspicuously absent from scholarly dis-
course. Although it is acknowledged that the so-called curse of Ham was the
religious rationale for slavery invoked most frequently by antebellum South-
erners,3 scholarship has failed to explicate the curse’s American reception.
Why have studies of American slavery ignored the link between antebellum
readings of Genesis 9 and Southern honor?
One contributing factor has been disciplinary specialization. Just as his-
torians often reveal a superficial knowledge of the Bible or a tendency to
introduce extratextual assumptions,4 scholars of religion are typically unaware
of the vast literature on Southern culture and its implications for interpreting
documents of the antebellum period. In addition, those in both groups have
failed to properly consider Genesis 9’s history of interpretation and thus have
overlooked the distinctive ways antebellum advocates of the curse read the
story of Noah and his sons. Another explanation for the failure of academics
to thoroughly explore proslavery readings of Genesis 9 is the assumption that
doing so is wasted effort, in that anyone claiming to find a justification for
chattel slavery in the pages of the Bible must be of limited intelligence, grave
foolishness, or profound insincerity. This assumption is widely held among
scholars, even though it is contradicted by several known facts: Antebellum
advocates of the curse included respected professionals such as doctors, law-
yers, politicians, clergymen, and professors; these men were, relatively speak-
ing, well educated; and although it is not possible to ascertain their motives
in writing about the curse, they appear to be as sincere on this topic as on
the others they addressed. These things were particularly true of proslavery
divines.5
Whatever the reasons, scholars of history and religion alike have failed
to comprehend that proslavery Southerners were drawn to Genesis 9:20–27
because it resonated with their deepest cultural values. This chapter begins
          

with what is known—that for Southern proslavery intellectuals Ham’s act of

gazing on his father’s nakedness and Noah’s subsequent curse of the descen-
dants of Ham and Canaan to be “servants of servants” were held to be defin-
itive proof that the enslavement of black Africans was God’s will—and it poses
a heretofore unexamined question: Precisely how did proslavery men read
this story, and why? The answer offered is that, almost invariably, white Bible
readers understood the transgression as a violation of familial loyalty that
marked Ham and his African descendants as utterly devoid of honor and thus
fit for slavery. In other words, proslavery Americans were unconsciously
drawn to the tale of Noah’s drunkenness because it cast slavery’s origins in
an episode of primal dishonor.

Reviewing the History of Interpretation

Chapter 2 showed that vilification of Ham has been the leitmotif in Genesis
9’s history of interpretation and that the interpretive imagination has known
few limits in denigrating Noah’s youngest son. This praxis of vilification is a
function of clues within the text, as well as what readers have brought to it—
namely, a desire to make Ham’s crime fit the punishment meted out by his
father and the conviction that humanity’s sinful tendencies must have their
origin in Noah’s family. Thus, for over two millennia Bible readers have
blamed Ham and his progeny for everything from the existence of slavery
and serfdom, to the perpetuation of sexual license and perversion, to the
introduction of magical arts, astrology, idolatry, witchcraft, and heathen re-
ligion. They have associated Hamites with tyranny, theft, heresy, blasphemy,
rebellion, war, and even deicide. Benjamin Braude’s observation that during
the Middle Ages Ham was “an archetypal Other, the example of qualities not
to be emulated,”6 could be fairly applied to the entire history of interpretation.
Among the various forms of ignominy applied to Ham through the ages,
sexual themes have dominated. Sexual commentary is invited by verse 24
(“And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done
unto him,” ), a statement that, despite its ambiguity, “leads the reader to
resolve that something sexual has transpired.”7 In response to this textual
provocation, Bible readers have figured Ham’s transgression as attempted rape
or castration of his father, as incest with his mother (an act that produced
Canaan, perhaps), as willful violation of Noah’s policy of celibacy on the ark,
or as some combination of these heinous acts. As was demonstrated in chapter
2 images of Ham “brimming with sexuality”8 animate rabbinic comments, the
writings of church fathers, medieval legends, Renaissance art and drama, and
biblical commentary. Even modern Bible scholarship has contributed to the
remarkable longevity enjoyed by sexual readings of Genesis 9. These are en-
couraged by historical-critical inquiry (which suggests that the story is an
68       

etiological tale explaining Canaanite sexual practices the ancient Israelites

found abhorrent), as well as by canon criticism.9
Charges that Ham was guilty of filial disobedience, disrespect, or irrev-
erence also appear throughout the history of interpretation. However, these
themes rarely displace other forms of vilification. The same rabbis who allege
that Ham spoke “disrespectful words against his father” also charge that he
“added to his sin of irreverence the still greater outrage of attempting to
perform an operation upon his father designed to prevent procreation.” Like-
wise, Martin Luther, while condemning Ham’s disobedience, attributes his
filial disrespect to “a satanic and bitter hatred” and associates Ham with idol-
atry, tyranny, and rebellion. The conviction that Ham’s trespass was failure
to honor his father—and nothing more—was apparently first advanced in
the sixteenth century by John Calvin. This reading of the story, which may
reflect the Renaissance emphasis on personal honor,10 was adopted by a num-
ber of European commentators between the sixteenth and nineteenth centu-
ries. For instance, seventeenth-century English exegete Jeremy Taylor opined
that God had “consigned a sad example that for ever children should be afraid
to dishonour their parents, and discover their nakedness, or reveal their tur-
pitude, their follies and dishonours.” Similarly, Sir Edward Coke wrote that
“Bondage or Servitude was first inflicted for dishonouring of Parents: For
Cham the Father of Canaan . . . seeing the Nakedness of his Father Noah, and
shewing it in Derision to his Brethren, was therefore punished in his Son
Canaan with Bondage.”11
Still, given the conscious and unconscious forces that impinged on an-
tebellum interpreters of Genesis 9—the biblical text’s invitation to view Ham
as a sexual offender or voyeur, the need to identify a crime commensurate
with Noah’s punishment, and the prominence of sexual themes in the history
of interpretation—we should expect a thorough sexualization of the story
among Bible readers who wished to sanction the enslavement of Ham’s pu-
tative offspring. Further, given the general propensity to view members of
marginalized groups as sexual predators, a sexualized Ham would be doubly
attractive to members of the Southern Bible-reading elite. Conversely, if the
white minority’s intellectual vanguard failed to exploit the sexual clues in the
text and the interpretive tradition, it must be because they found some other
explanation of Ham’s iniquity more compelling, more damning, more inti-
mately related to the condition of slavery.

Antebellum Readings of Genesis 9 and the

Interpretive Tradition

Because American defenders of slavery rarely cited exegetical authorities, it is

difficult to determine how much, if at all, they were influenced by the inter-
pretive traditions that developed around the story of Noah and his sons. On
         

one hand, they seem unaware and uninterested in specific traditions that cast
Ham as sexual offender, heretic, blasphemer, magician, father of idolaters,
archrebel, and friend of demons. And they are largely silent regarding Ham’s
conduct on the ark, his career following the Flood, his religious legacy, and
his standing with God and Satan. On the other hand, proslavery readings of
Genesis 9 adhere strictly to the paradigm of orthodox interpretation that had
developed over the centuries. The parameters of this paradigm were Noah’s
exaltation as a righteous and obedient patriarch and Ham’s deprecation as a
worthless son, both of which were axiomatic in antebellum America. If any-
thing, proslavery Southerners surpassed the interpretive tradition in venerat-
ing Noah, who in their eyes was not only God’s regent in the postdiluvian
world but also the patron saint of plantation life.12 And because they strained
to identify some behavior that merited a severe punishment among Ham’s
putative descendants, American proslavery intellectuals were quite at home in
an interpretive tradition that had developed defamation into an art form.
Despite their interest in extending the chief trajectories of the tradition,
however, proslavery Bible readers represent a conspicuous departure from the
history of interpretation. Quite simply, one searches in vain among their com-
ments on Genesis 9 for an explicit statement that Ham’s transgression was in
any way sexual.13 Even as proslavery propagandists strain to identify a crime
warranting eternal servitude, they inexplicably refuse to take refuge in the
ignominy of sexual assault. A typical example is John Bell Robinson, who,
while charging that “Ham’s crime was a thousand times more flagitious [than
Adam’s],” does not give any indication how this heinous crime is to be un-
derstood.14 The lone exception to this generalization—an exception that ef-
fectively proves the rule—is Josiah Priest, whose Slavery as It Relates to the
Negro or African Race (1843) was widely read in America prior to the Civil
War. Priest not only dwells on Ham’s career and disposition but also serves
up the seamy details of his crime against Noah, retrieving the early modern
tradition that Ham’s outrage may have been incest with his mother.
It is believed by some, and not without reason, that [the crime of Ham] did
not consist alone in the seeing his father’s nakedness as a man, but rather in
the abuse and actual violation of his own mother.
This opinion is strengthened by a passage found in Levit. xviii. 8, as
follows: “The nakedness of thy father’s wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy
father’s nakedness.” On account of this passage, it has been believed that the
crime of Ham did not consist alone of seeing his father in an improper
manner, but rather of his own mother, the wife of Noah, and violating her.
If this was so, how much more horrible, therefore, appears the character
of Ham, and how much more deserving the curse, which was laid upon him
and his race, of whom it was foreseen that they would be like this, their lewd
ancestor.15
Priest’s defamation of Noah’s son extends beyond the charge of sexual im-
propriety; yet the incident is regarded as constitutive of Ham’s character and
70       

predictive of Hamite destiny.16 It is easy to understand why Priest portrayed

Ham as a sexual reprobate, for this portrait was sketched in the biblical text
and fleshed out in the history of interpretation. What is puzzling—especially
considering the influence Priest enjoyed in the antebellum South,17 white con-
ceptions of the “lascivious African,” and popular notions that blacks were
more “sensuous” than intellectual, naturally lewd, and in possession of unu-
sually large sex organs18 —is that the proslavery tracts that proliferated in the
1840s and 1850s did not emulate Priest in exploiting the theme of sexual ag-
gression.
Absent this theme and its powerful leitmotif of vilification, how did pros-
lavery intellectuals sufficiently impugn the character they regarded as the fa-
ther of the African race? The answer is hinted at in Priest’s own reading of
Genesis 9, which depicts Shem and Japheth as gentlemen who behave toward
their father in a “delicate and thoughtful manner” before retiring in silence
and refers to Ham’s descendants as occupying “the lowest condition of all the
families among mankind . . . [as] a despised, a degraded, and an oppressed
race.” The dynamics of honor and dishonor in Noah’s family alluded to by
Priest were reflected in dozens of proslavery publications during the second
third of the nineteenth century.

Varieties of Interpretation in the Antebellum South

If we examine antebellum proslavery treatises in terms of how they treat

Genesis 9:20–27, three categories of interpretation can be discerned. The ma-
jority cite the story (as both a biblical justification for slavery and a historical
account of servitude’s introduction in the postdiluvian world) but do not
relate or analyze it. Texts in a second group cite the story as a rationale for
slavery and in the process paraphrase or recount it, but they do not charac-
terize the offense for which Ham or Canaan is condemned. A third collection
of texts analyze or retell the story, in the process describing or intimating the
nature of Ham’s misdeed.
Texts in the first and largest category are of interest inasmuch as they
confirm the central role of Noah’s curse in the antebellum proslavery argu-
ment. Though many are secular in orientation, these texts confirm that the
great majority of slavery’s defenders felt obliged to invoke the curse, and they
substantiate abolitionist Theodore Weld’s oft-cited claim that “this prophecy
of Noah is the vade mecum of slaveholders, and they never venture abroad
without it.” Representative of these tracts is James Smylie’s Review of a Letter
from the Presbytery of Chillicothe, to the Presbytery of Mississippi, on the Subject
of Slavery, published in 1836. Introducing the Old Testament evidence for his
scriptural proslavery argument, Smylie wrote that “it appears, from Genesis
ix, 25, 26, and 27, that when there was but one family on the face of the earth,
a part of that family was doomed, by the father Noah, to become slaves to
         

the others. That part was the posterity of Ham, from whom, it is supposed,
sprung the Africans.”19 Reflecting a similar lack of interest in the details of
the story is an address delivered in 1818 by Senator William Smith of South
Carolina, who averred that “Ham sinned against his God and against his
father” but failed to describe the violation in any way.20
Texts in the second category—those that paraphrase or recount Genesis
9:20–27 without enumerating Ham or Canaan’s offense—serve two functions.
In addition to validating the curse’s role in the defense of slavery, they reveal
that proslavery authors did not feel obliged to delineate Ham’s crime in order
to commend the curse to American readers. Typical of texts in this group is
The Christian Doctrine of Slavery (1857) by Virginia Presbyterian George D.
Armstrong, who writes that “it was in consequence of sin, in part actually
committed, and yet more foreseen in the future that the first slave sentence
of which we have any record was pronounced by Noah upon Canaan and his
descendants.”21 Even Baptist J. L. Dagg, author of a proslavery textbook pre-
pared to rival Francis Wayland’s The Elements of Moral Science,22 does not
offer a definite reading of Ham’s offense. In exploring slavery’s origins, Dagg
observes that the “curse was denounced by the patriarch Noah, because of a
crime committed by his son Ham, the father of Canaan. . . . [The words of
Noah] are a denunciation of God’s displeasure at the sin of Ham, and an
explanation of the degradation which has fallen on his posterity.”23 Yet despite
his stated goal of defending the moral rectitude of slavery, Dagg fails to iden-
tify Ham’s “crime” or “sin.”
Frederick Dalcho, whose Practical Considerations Founded on the Scrip-
tures Relative to the Slave Population of South-Carolina appeared in Charleston
in 1823,24 is another advocate of the curse who remains mute on the nature
of Ham’s transgression. The Bible teaches, according to Dalcho, that human
beings lost immortality through disobedience and sin. “And, perhaps, we shall
find,” he continues, “that the negroes, the descendants of Ham, lost their
freedom through the abominable wickedness of their progenitor.” Although
this “abominable wickedness” is not further enumerated, Dalcho claims that
Noah’s malediction encompassed “Canaan’s whole race . . . [who] were pe-
culiarly wicked, and obnoxious to the wrath of God.”25 In 1852, Louisianan
John Fletcher related the tale of Noah’s drunkenness with a passing reference
to “the ill-manners of Ham towards his father” but supplied no clues for
interpreting this phrase.26 A Defence of Virginia, published in 1867 by Pres-
byterian Robert L. Dabney, characterized Ham and his descendants as
“wicked,” “depraved,” and “degraded in morals,” referred to “the indecent
and unnatural sin of Ham,” and described slavery as God’s “punishment of,
and remedy for . . . the peculiar moral degradation of a part of the race.” Still,
Dabney’s text fails to illumine the offense(s) for which it holds Ham respon-
sible.27
It is texts in the third group—those that communicate the nature of
Ham’s indignity—that clarify the distinctive way Genesis 9:20–27 was read by
72       

antebellum proslavery authors. The silver thread that ties together these read-
ings of Genesis 9 is the assumption that in reacting to Noah’s shame Ham
revealed a fundamentally dishonorable character. Renditions of the curse in
this category traffic in standard images of violated honor, including (1) the
statement or implication that Noah is deserving of honor, a fact unaltered by
his temporary disgrace; (2) the notion that by dishonoring or shaming his
father, Ham divulged his own dishonorable character; (3) the assumption that
Ham’s dishonorable behavior constitutes a serious offense, the one for which
he (or his son Canaan) is cursed; (4) the contrasting of Ham’s conduct with
the respectful and dutiful action of Shem and Japheth; and (5) the prediction
of future degradation or “social death”28 for the descendants of Ham or Ca-
naan, who are destined to reflect this condition through forced servitude until
the world is redeemed from the effects of sin.
Perhaps the most explicit honor-bound reading of Genesis 9 to appear
in antebellum America was published in 1860 in an anonymous pamphlet
titled African Servitude. Preparing readers for his discussion of the curse, the
pamphlet’s author avers that “the family was instituted by God,” who gave to
its head “great power and corresponding honor and responsibility.” Following
the flood, Noah received from God “directions for the government of the
world.” Then,

Noah became a husbandman, planted a vineyard, and partaking too freely

of the fruit of the vine, exposed himself to shame. The Scriptures do not
state that he was guilty of anything more than an act of imprudence. In his
exposed state he was discovered by his younger son, probably his grandson
Canaan, who informed his father Ham, and one or both of them, so far
from feeling or expressing grief for the dishonor of their parent, exultingly
informed others of it, glorying in his shame, despising his power and au-
thority, and his office as ruler and priest of God to them and the rest of
their father’s family, lightly esteeming also his parental blessing, as well as
the blessing of God.
A true spirit of filial regard, love, honor and obedience moved Shem
and Japheth to protect their father; just the reverse of that which influenced
their brother Ham to dishonor him. On the part of the former, it was an
act of faith; of the latter, unbelief. . . . [Ham] knew that God had chosen his
father as the honored head of the human family, declaring him faithful, and
communicating to him his designs. . . . In refusing to honor his parent, he
refused to honor all governors, natural civil, ecclesiastical, human, and di-
vine. The sin was a representative one, and, under the circumstances, it was
no light one in Ham and his son. It manifested in them no love for their
parent, but an evil heart of unbelief toward God.29

According to the author of African Servitude, Ham lost his position in the
great human family as a result of his “lack of faith, his sinful conduct of
defection.” Ham “broke the first command on the second table, by scorning
and deriding his father, the legal consequences of which seems to be death of
          

his body, or the forfeiture of it for the benefit of others.”30 With the language
of “honor,” “dishonor,” and “shame” and the contention that Ham’s primal
dishonor resulted in social death (“death of his body, or the forfeiture of it
for the benefit of others”) African Servitude inextricably links honor and slav-
ery in its treatment of Genesis 9:20–27.
Another proslavery text that utilizes the vocabulary of honor in describing
the relationship of Noah and his sons is Dominion; or, the Unity and Trinity
of the Human Race (1858) by Tennessee clergyman Samuel Davies Baldwin.31
In this five-hundred-page expatiation on Noah’s prophecy (regarded by the
author as a “divine political constitution of the world”), Baldwin expounds
the divine plan for the three “races” that inhabit the earth. Ham has been
condemned to endure “the humility of bondage,” but for what reason? Bald-
win notes “Ham’s vile deportment toward his father,” alleges that he was a
“source of shame” to the patriarch, and intimates that Noah’s curse befell him
for the sins of “filial dishonor,” “mocking or making light of a parent,” and
“base and shameless conduct.” At one point, Baldwin pauses to remark on
the perception that Noah’s response is incommensurate with Ham’s trans-
gression:
Filial dishonor is not regarded as a heinous offence by civil law; and many
moralists, unconsciously governed by mere human statutes in their estimate
of guilt, seem to look at Ham’s wickedness as venial. Viewed, however, in
the light of revelation, it is more obnoxious to censure and punishment than
theft, forgery, or falsehood, and stands before them in importance in the
graduated scale of the Decalogue.32

It may be debated whether Baldwin’s standard for judgment is “revelation”

or the interests of slave culture, but it is clear that his understanding of Gen-
esis 9 hinges on Ham’s presumed dishonor toward his father.
A similar reading of the biblical story is offered in The Great Question
Answered (1857) by Mississippi Presbyterian James A. Sloan.33 Sloan locates in
Genesis 9 both the origin of human diversity and the basis for “the subor-
dination of one portion of the human family to that of another.” In recount-
ing the biblical tale, Sloan censures Ham who,
instead of concealing the matter [of his father’s nakedness], as both decency
and respect for his father should have directed, his bad disposition led him
to give vent to his sinful feelings, and wishing his brothers to have a part of
his unseemly enjoyment, he “told it to his two brothers without.” Shem and
Japheth did not enter into this improper and sinful sport of their brother,
but took means to hide the shame of their father, and adopted a plan to
accomplish that end which manifested the greatest respect for their parent,
and at the same time, the feelings of refined delicacy toward their erring
father. . . . 34

The honor-bound character of Sloan’s exegesis is indicated not only by his

use of terms such as decency, shame, respect, and refine[ment] but also the
74         

claim that Ham’s dishonor warrants his social death. Sloan contends that
“Ham’s conduct really deserved death. ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that
thy days may be long in the land which the Lord they God giveth thee.’—
Exodus XX:12. Such is the express law of God; and passages bearing on this
point are found scattered throughout both the Old and New Testaments. . . .”
In making death a meet punishment for dishonor and servitude an acceptable
substitute, Sloan elucidates the nexus between honor and the social death of
slavery.35
H. O. R., anonymous author of The Governing Race (1860), also proffers
an honor-bound reading of Genesis 9. H. O. R. notes that the “awful scene”
involving Noah and Ham is actually the third instance in Genesis where God
chastises a portion of the human race in retribution for sin. But what is the
nature of this outrage, “more wicked in its inception, more polluting in its
nature than the fratricide of Cain”? According to The Governing Race, Ham
is guilty of “dishonoring his father”; in contrast, Shem and Japheth exemplify
“chaste reverence and filial obedience” by refusing to succumb to Ham’s
“wicked temptation of dishonoring . . . their father.”36

Reading Honor

Recognizing the dynamics of honor and shame in antebellum readings of

Genesis 9:20–27 can aid us in interpreting proslavery tracts in the second
category—those that paraphrase or recount Genesis 9:20–27 but fail to de-
scribe Ham’s transgression. Typical of texts in this group is Georgian Howell
Cobb’s A Scriptural Examination of the Institution of Slavery in the United
States (1856), which argues that slavery was established as a penalty for the
transgression related in Genesis 9 but does not reveal what “sin” Ham com-
mitted. The nature of Ham’s “reprehensible” conduct toward his father must
be inferred from Cobb’s observation that “the text does not warrant the con-
clusion that Canaan participated in the mirth or contempt which the discovery
of Noah’s condition occasioned.” And thus, “The whole prophecy must be
taken together—Shem and Japheth had shown a virtuous regard for their
father; that virtue manifested itself in their posterity—it was that virtue that
was blessed. On the contrary, Ham’s conduct was vicious (vice in his posterity
has ever been their most marked characteristic)—it was that viciousness that
was cursed, and which has been punished in so peculiar a manner.”37 Although
Cobb provides little evidence for characterizing Ham’s “vicious” conduct, we
may conclude that his interpretation of the curse is honor-bound, because it
hinges on a contrast between Ham’s “contempt” and his brothers’ “virtuous
regard” for their father.
Once the central role of honor in proslavery readings of Genesis 9 has
been grasped, it is possible to make sense of otherwise puzzling treatments of
the story. Undeveloped comments—that Ham’s waywardness consisted of “ex-
          

posing his father’s shame”; that Ham “failed to cover his father. . . . This was
the amount of his fault. The failure left Noah exposed to the gaze of others”;
that Shem and Japheth “covered their father in a way that evinced ingenuity
and delicacy in a very high degree”38 —can be confidently read as intimations
that Ham’s crime was his failure to behave honorably toward his father.
The authors surveyed to this point are all Southerners. Yet honor-bound
readings of Genesis 9 were common among proslavery Northerners as well.
For instance, Pennsylvania Methodist John Bell Robinson alleged that Genesis
9 demonstrates “the duty of children to parents under every circumstance of
this life”—that is, their duty to honor parents even if parents act dishonorably.
In Robinson’s view, Noah’s curse represents God’s judgment on Ham’s crime
against “the old patriarch, who was [his] temporal parent.” Shem and Japheth,
by contrast, acted “as every good child would. Therefore a blessing was pro-
nounced upon them.”39 Robinson observes that among the story’s lessons is
that “children must be respectful to their parents in and under all circum-
stances in this life. One of the commandments says, ‘Honor thy father and
thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord they
God giveth thee.’—Ex. xx.12. . . .”40
Robinson reveals the organic bond in proslavery thought between filial
disobedience, dishonor, and slavery when he remarks that “if Ham and his
son Canaan had been true to their father and grand-father, there would have
been no slaves nor negroes in this world of ours.”41 He goes on to describe
the consequences of Ham’s dishonor as a sort of living death in which his
descendants “are marks of the displeasure of the Divine being toward the
disobedience of children to their parents, and they are this day moving, living,
hearing and talking monuments of his displeasure towards disobedient chil-
dren to parents.”42 For this honor-bound reader of Genesis 9, American slaves
are emblems of God’s displeasure, living embodiments of dishonor.
John H. Hopkins of Vermont is another Northerner whose reception of
Genesis 9 is infused with the dynamics of honor.43 Hopkins observes that “the
first appearance of slavery in the Bible is the wonderful prediction of the
patriarch Noah: “Cursed be Canaan . . .” (Gen 9:25).” Commenting on the
story, he supposes that “Ham became disrespectful and irreverent toward his
father, and trained his children in a course which, of all others, is most hateful
in the eyes of that God, who commands that HONOR must be given to the
father and the mother.”44 Although Ham’s behavior was the immediate oc-
casion for Noah’s prophecy, its fulfillment was reserved for his posterity, “after
they had lost the knowledge of God, and become utterly polluted by the
abominations of heathen idolatry. The Almighty foreordained them to servi-
tude or slavery . . . doubtless because he judged it to be their fittest condition.
And all history proves how accurately the prediction has been accomplished,
even to the present day.”45 Hopkins’s reading is somewhat atypical for ante-
bellum America, reflecting as it does the patristic tradition that Ham’s pos-
terity fell into “groveling idolatry.” Nevertheless, it is honor-bound inasmuch
76        

as it depicts Ham’s transgression as “heartless irreverence . . . toward his em-

inent parent,” and connects slavery with the degraded “condition” to which
Ham’s descendants sank following the episode narrated in Genesis 9.
Perhaps the most notorious proslavery propagandist of the antebellum
period was New Yorker Josiah Priest, whose Slavery as It Relates to the Negro
or African Race (1843) was reprinted eight times during a five year period.
Curiously, although Priest thoroughly sexualized Ham’s offense, he neverthe-
less found in the story a serious violation of honor. For instance, Priest argued
that “the Patriarch was deeply grieved on account of the reckless impiety of
Ham” and concluded his rendition of the episode by remarking:
On the subject of a child’s treating its parents with intended disrespect, see
the opinion of God himself, Deut. xxvii, 16, who, in that place says,
“CURSED be he that setteth light by his father or his mother, and all the
people shall say amen.” This sin, the treating a father or mother disrespect-
fully, was, by the law of Moses, punished with death. See Deut. xxi, 18, 19,
20, 21. Consequently, according to this law, Ham was morally worthy of
death.46
As if to cover all the bases in his vilification of Ham, Priest included many
of the elements of honor-bound interpretation described previously.
Finally, there is evidence that even antebellum authors opposed to slavery
instinctively viewed Genesis 9 through the lens of honor. The best example is
Joseph P. Thompson’s Teachings of the New Testament on Slavery (1856). While
ostensibly treating the New Testament, this antislavery tract includes a three-
page section on the “curse of Ham.” Thompson takes pains to show that
Noah’s curse fell only on Canaan and was fulfilled in the Canaanites’ subjec-
tion by Israel “900 years after.” Still, he regards the encounter of Ham and
Noah as an affair of honor: “You, my youngest son, have put me to shame
before your brethren; you shall feel the punishment of this in the degradation
of your youngest son; he shall be put to shame before his brethren, and his
posterity shall feel in their bones the curse of their dishonored ancestor.”47
The proliferation in antebellum America of honor-bound interpretations
of Genesis 9 indicates that proslavery tracts from this period that fail to de-
scribe Ham’s offense are not silent because their authors regarded his trans-
gression as inconsequential but because author and implied reader alike as-
sumed it to have been an egregious violation of honor. As the tale of Noah
and his sons came to function as a myth of origins for slaveholding culture,
honor was the spirit that animated antebellum reception of the curse. The
influence of this dominant reading made it increasingly unnecessary for ex-
positors to state the obvious.

Alternative Explanations

I have made the case that antebellum proslavery writers did not sexualize
Ham’s behavior because they instinctively viewed his “sin” as a violation of
          

honor; that because these authors regarded Ham’s shameful act with dreadful
seriousness, they did not resort to other species of vilification; and that the
charge of dishonor bore in the white mind a convenient relation to the social
death of slavery. But perhaps there are other explanations for the distinctive
way antebellum slavery advocates interpreted Genesis 9.
One alternative is that proslavery intellectuals eschewed sexualized read-
ings of Genesis 9 because, unlike the rabbis and church fathers who developed
and transmitted them, they felt obliged to interpret the biblical text as literally
as possible.48 The difficulty with this argument is that, as abolitionists never
tired of pointing out, proslavery intellectuals did not read Genesis 9:20–27 in
the literal sense. If they had, they would have been forced to acknowledge that
Noah’s curse was aimed at Canaan, not Ham, and that according to Genesis
10’s Table of Nations Canaan had no connection to Africa. If their commit-
ment to “literalism” did nothing to deter proslavery interpreters from assum-
ing that Noah’s curse applied to Ham, that Ham was the father of sub-Saharan
Africans, and that the curse was perpetual, it is difficult to understand how it
would deter them from vilifiying Ham as a sexual offender.
Another possible explanation for the conspicuous absence of sexual
themes in antebellum glosses of Genesis 9 is that proslavery authors feared
contravening the Victorian sensibilities of white Bible readers. Although this
argument seems plausible, it, too, is plagued by difficulties. For instance, ear-
lier interpreters of the story had successfully avoided the details of Ham’s
nefarious act, while intimating its sexual nature.49 Furthermore, nineteenth-
century gentlemen frequently extended the bounds of good taste to exploit
white fears of black sexual aggression. Scholars since W. J. Cash have noted
Southern whites’ phobic concern with slave insurrections and with the sexual
violence they imagined would befall white women if slaves successfully re-
belled. Southern Presbyterians, among the more genteel of the region’s Prot-
estants, went on record as opposing recognition of slave marriages because,
as they put it, no legal remedies would control the “deplorable sensuality of
our Africans.”50
Finally, the “Victorian sensibility” argument would have to convince us
that antebellum prudishness was sufficient to counteract the biblical, cultural,
and historical factors that invited a sexual reading of Ham’s offense. If the
history of interpretation is any guide, textual cues alone have led many Bible
readers to infer a sexual encounter between Ham and Noah. When we go on
to consider the cultural forces that would impinge upon interpretation of this
text in antebellum America—including the hoary tradition that cast Ham as
a Promethean sexual force, a similar view of Africans widespread in the Old
South, and the tendency for majority cultures to attribute deviant sexual prac-
tices to racial and ethnic minorities51 —it is really quite remarkable that sex
does not animate at least a minority of proslavery readings of Genesis 9. As
Lillian Smith noted so forcefully in Killers of the Dream, the Negro, sex, and
the body have been inextricably bound in the Southern mind.52 The unlike-
lihood that fear of offending readers would completely obscure this bond in
78        

antebellum readings of the curse is underscored by the reappearance of sexual

themes in twentieth-century invocations of Noah’s curse among white Amer-
icans.

Genesis 9 and the Nature of Southern Honor

To this point, we have considered how antebellum advocates of Ham’s curse

might have read the story of Noah and his sons (by briefly reviewing Genesis
9’s history of interpretation), and we have examined the ways they did read
it (by carefully analyzing proslavery renditions of the curse). We turn now to
explore why these men interpreted Genesis 9:20–27 in the manner they did.
What factors, in other words, contributed to the predominance of honor
readings of Genesis 9 among American proslavery intellectuals?
Based on our survey of the text’s history of interpretation, we cannot rule
out the possibility that some proslavery divines were directly influenced by
John Calvin or his epigones. But, of course, not all advocates of the curse
were Calvinists, nor can it be assumed that those who were knew Calvin’s
exegesis of this passage.53 Further, although Calvin did read Genesis 9 from
the perspective of honor, he neither invoked the passage to justify the enslave-
ment of human beings nor made the dishonorable Ham a representative of
his biological descendants. Another explanation is that the code of honor and
shame inscribed in the Hebrew Bible determined the American perception of
violated honor in Genesis 9.54 As Julian Pitt-Rivers notes, in all cultures of
honor “the private parts are the seat of shame, vulnerable to the public view
and represented symbolically in the gestures and verbal expressions of dese-
cration . . . as the means of procreation they are intimately connected with
honor, for they signify the extension of the self in time.”55 Bertram Wyatt-
Brown shows that in the vortex of the secessionist crisis, Southern clergy easily
adopted an idiom of honor that was familiar in both the Hebraic and Chris-
tian traditions. This was in part, he argues, because of the affinity between
ancient Israelite culture and their own. In particular, “the Old Testament
rendering of honor endured among southerners accustomed to face-to-face,
small-scale, family oriented usages that bore analogy with the pastoral society
that produced the Holy Word.”56
But a nuanced assessment of the forces driving honor readings of Genesis
9 requires that we consider not only Bible readers and their texts but also the
world that shaped their reading. How does scholarship on Southern culture
illumine proslavery intellectuals’ identification with the culture of honor, and
how this might have affected their reception of Noah’s curse? First, this schol-
arship confirms the essential place of honor in the Southern mind. As John
Hope Franklin wrote in 1956, “while the concept of honor was an intangible
thing, it was no less real to the Southerner than the most mundane commodity
that he possessed. . . . To him nothing was more important than honor. In-
          

deed, he placed it above wealth, art, learning, and the other ‘delicacies’ of an
urban civilization and regarded its protection as a continuing preoccupa-
tion.”57 Honor “entered the very texture of upbringing” as Southern males
were socialized into “the most elaborate and deliberately articulated timocracy
of modern times.”58 Clement Eaton observes that the Southern culture of
honor flourished in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, precisely
when the majority of proslavery treatises were published. It did so in response
to “strong political and external forces . . . operating on the Southern psyche,”
including abolitionism, which led Southerners to idealize their society and
portray slave masters as “paternal, high-minded and honorable gentlemen.”59
Thus, the abolitionist attack on the South’s peculiar institution not only im-
pelled Southerners to embrace moral and biblical justifications for slavery but
also heightened their attraction to honor and thus increased the likelihood
that they would interpret Genesis 9 in honor-bound fashion.
In addition, honor scholarship reminds us that many Southern slave-
holders regarded themselves as patriarchs in the tradition of Noah, men who
demanded filial respect from family members and slaves alike. As Charleston-
ian Christopher Memminger explained in 1835: “The Slave Institution at the
South increases her tendency to dignify the family. Each planter in fact is a
Patriarch—his position compels him to be a ruler in his household. . . .”60
Michael P. Johnston writes that while “few families attained the patriarchal
ideal, many approached it.”61 The patriarchal conception of slavery was “fa-
milial proprietorship, in which reciprocal, parent-child obligations and affec-
tions gave meaning to those involved.” Southern men “championed a form
of slaveholding that extended the protective authority of a loving father over
the entire household of whites and blacks.”62 When we compass the fact that
“Christian patriarchalism remained the keystone of proslavery thought,”63 it
is easier to appreciate the appeal of a biblical text in which agricultural life,
the patriarchal family, and the imposition of slavery were believed to originate.
Honor scholarship also aids us in imagining how men of honor might
have reacted to the shame associated with Noah’s inebriation and disrobing.
As Bertram Wyatt-Brown comments, the greatest dread imagined by adher-
ents of honor was “the fear of public humiliation,” especially when it involved
“bodily appearance [that] was an outward sign of inner merit.” Noting that
cultures concerned with honor highly value appearance, Kenneth Greenberg
adds that a momentous form of dishonor in the Old South was the shaming
of an opponent through unmasking him “to identify an image as falsely pro-
jected and to show contempt for it.” In light of these observations, we can
imagine how men of honor might perceive Noah’s shame: Just as Jefferson
Davis was notoriously unmasked by Federal soldiers at the conclusion of the
Civil War, Noah is figuratively stripped under Ham’s gaze, while his brothers
reclothe their father in an attempt to preserve his threatened honor.64 We can
also discern why Ham’s broadcast of Noah’s condition became a crucial part
of the biblical story among proslavery interpreters. If in the Old South “an
80         

affront [to honor] depend[ed] upon being made public,” naturally Ham’s
report to “his two brethren without” would be highlighted in honor-bound
readings of Genesis 9.65
Furthermore, honor scholarship helps explain why antebellum Southern-
ers were quick to overlook Noah’s own shameful behavior. Kenneth Greenberg
suggests that proslavery authors would have been significantly less concerned
than previous interpreters with whether Noah had sinned when he became
intoxicated: “When the man of honor is told that he smells, he does not draw
a bath—he draws his pistol. The man of honor does not care if he stinks, but
he does care that someone has accused him of stinking.”66 For readers formed
by Southern honor, the point of the biblical story was not whether Noah had
acted dishonorably but why Ham had discovered his shame and revealed it
to others. As Orlando Patterson writes, “two persons may perform the same
act, yet the behavior of one is considered honorable while that of the other
is not. Acting honorably is not the same thing as being honorable; it is not
enough to abide by a code of honor.”67 Because Southern proslavery intellec-
tuals assumed that Noah possessed honor while Ham did not, their “dishon-
orable” actions took on profoundly different meanings.
Honor scholarship also illumines elements in the biblical text that may
have encouraged proslavery writers to assess the story itself as an affair of
honor. First, like the affair in the Old South, the biblical story features a
conflict between men. Second, alcohol was a factor in the biblical tale, as it
often was in affairs of honor.68 Third, to avoid offense, Southern men ap-
proached each other carefully, often by means of deferential letters that as-
sumed a standard form. Considering the biblical story through this cultural
lens, we might say that the deferential letter is to the breach of honor between
men what the brothers’ carrying of the blanket is to Ham’s gazing at and
broadcasting his father’s nakedness. In one situation, a man of honor is ap-
proached carefully and according to custom; in the other, custom is disre-
garded and honor is encroached upon. Thus it is the absence of deference—
highlighted by the respectful behavior of Shem and Japheth—that invites an
honor reading of Genesis 9.
In the Old South, affairs of honor could be precipitated by an inappro-
priate look. According to the code penned in 1847 by “A Southron,” the man
of reputation could not afford to disregard “the sneers and scoffs and taunts,
the burly bullying look, the loud and arrogant tone, the thralldom so often
coveted to be exercised by the physically strong over the physically feeble”;
Wyatt-Brown adds that in the Old South “the eyes witnessed honor and
looked down in deference or shame. Thus a steady gaze from a slave signaled
impudence.” In view of the look’s importance in Southern culture, it is not
surprising that a stare from the putative progenitor of the African race was
viewed as a breach of patriarchal honor.69 These analogies between the biblical
story and the structure of antebellum affairs of honor help explain why pro-
slavery readings of Genesis 9 place so little importance on precise descriptions
          

of Ham’s offense. If the story was read implicitly as an affair of honor between
men, readerly focus would settle not on the nature of the “crime” committed
but on the necessity of satisfaction.
Studies of Old South romanticism suggest another reason the unlikely
story of Noah’s curse so appealed to men of honor. According to scholars of
the region, “there arose in the South between 1820 and 1861 a luxuriant ro-
manticism of mind that formed the principal basis of Southern honor.” In
this region “powerfully influenced by myths,” the stories generated by men
of honor often became crucial to their identity: “Telling these stories about
themselves, planter-class men renewed their belief in themselves, their expla-
nations, and the institutional forms that served them so well.”70 Given the
appeal of these personal myths, it is no wonder the story of Noah and his
sons was widely told and retold in the Old South. Similarly, honor scholarship
assists us in hearing Noah’s “prophecy” the way it must have been heard by
Southern ears.71 As Greenberg writes, in the Old South “truth was a matter
of assertion and force—and the master had it in his control.” Wyatt-Brown
notes that “the stress upon external, public factors in establishing personal
worth conferred particular prominence on the spoken word and physical ges-
ture as opposed to interior thinking or words and ideas conveyed through
the medium of the page.”72 All this suggests that the cogency of Noah’s curse
must have been enhanced for Southern Bible readers if they assumed it was
uttered by a man of honor, was stated forcefully, and had come to fruition
in the history of Ham’s putative descendants.
In elucidating the relation between honor, loyalty, and duty, scholars of
the South indicate how the various attitudes of Noah’s sons would be judged
in a culture of honor. Wyatt-Brown writes that “from the earliest times in
Western history, the cardinal principle of honor was family defense. To war
against one’s own family was a violation of law—a law that, unwritten and
often unspoken, superseded all others.” Franklin adds that in the antebellum
period “loyalty was connected with the concept of honor which required every
man of the South to profess a kind of fidelity to his nation, his state, his
family, even to his slaves.” According to Julian Pitt-Rivers, in honor societies
“the family (and in some societies the kin group) and the nation” are the
fundamental collectivities that define one’s essential nature. Thus, “traitors to
their fathers or their sovereigns are the most execrable of all.”73 Although
Southerners felt acutely the conflict between honor and conscience, shame
and guilt, both systems agreed upon the importance of deference to the older
generation (cf. Ham and Noah), on which point “conscience and honor ar-
rived at the same point from somewhat different perspectives.”74
Honor scholarship also helps explain why, in the minds of the curse’s
advocates, slavery seemed an apt punishment for Ham despite the clear bib-
lical precedent for executing those who dishonor parents. Orlando Patterson’s
groundbreaking cross-cultural work demonstrates that in timocratic societies
slavery is defined as a life without honor, and thus worse than death. Green-
82        

berg, citing the writings of proslavery theorists Thomas Roderick Dew, Wil-
liam Harper, William J. Grayson, Edmund Ruffin, Iveson Brookes, and Samuel
Cartwright, notes that “slavery was viewed in the [Southern] culture of honor
as an alternative to and substitute for death.”75 Understanding that American
slavery was the antithesis of honor and a substitute for death clarifies the
instinctive connection drawn by proslavery writers between enslavement and
African debasement. As Rev. George D. Armstrong related the “Scriptural
theory respecting the origin of Slavery, . . . the effect of sin, i. e., disobedience
to God’s laws, upon both individuals and nations, is degradation.”76
Finally, honor scholarship confirms that proslavery intellectuals who were
not members of the aristocracy were nevertheless likely to identify with the
values of the upper class. Following John Hope Franklin, Orlando Patterson
argues that in the South “the notion of honor diffused down to all free mem-
bers of the society from its ruling-class origins.” Clement Eaton agrees: “What
is remarkable about the Southern practice of honor as a code of conduct was
that it was not confined to the upper class . . . , through a process of osmosis
[it was] acquired by all classes of Southern society.” Wyatt-Brown describes
Old South honor as “a people’s theology.” And in a study with direct relevance
to proslavery divines, Christine Leigh Heyrman has shown that in the early
nineteenth century Southern Protestant clerics aggressively conformed to
codes of white southern manhood in an effort to demonstrate “mastery” and
“prove themselves men of honor in recognizably southern ways.”77
In all these respects, scholarly analyses of Southern culture have the po-
tential to illumine antebellum readings of Genesis 9. Initially, proslavery men
and women may have been drawn to Noah’s curse because it was located in
holy writ and was believed to depict the normative relationship between the
great races of humankind. But as they rehearsed and reflected on the story,
they were grasped by the dynamics of honor and shame inscribed there. As
the biblical story received compelling honor-bound readings in the early de-
cades of the nineteenth century, its grip on the slaveholding imagination tight-
ened, to the point where otherwise reasonable men and women, otherwise
careful Bible interpreters, became oblivious to the manifest textual and his-
torical problems with linking Noah’s curse and American slavery.

God, Honor, and Noah’s Curse

For proslavery intellectuals who were also devout Christians, Genesis 9 seems to
have become an intellectual nexus where religion and honor commingled in
support of a common cause. But this observation raises a question that has
vexed students of Southern culture for decades: How did timocracy and Chris-
tianity coexist in the antebellum Southern mind? How did the ostensibly anti-
thetical ethics of evangelical Christianity and manly honor function symbioti-
cally? Our analysis of proslavery readings of Noah’s curse does not solve this
          

dilemma, but it does shed light on how the dissonance between honor and con-
science was temporarily submerged in efforts to justify African servitude.
A widely accepted construction of the relationship of honor and evan-
gelical Christianity in the Old South is offered by Ten Ownby, who writes that
among Southern men evangelical behavior and the code of honor were “ever
in conflict.”78 Ownby claims that although evangelical Christianity and “mas-
culine sinfulness” operated simultaneously, “male culture and evangelical cul-
ture were rivals, causing sparks when they came in contact and creating guilt
and inner conflict in the many Southerners who tried to balance the two. The
two forces operated against each other in an emotionally charged dialectic,
the intensity of each reinforcing the other.”79 Bertram Wyatt-Brown enumer-
ates the same paradox when he observes that although “the Southern mind
has always been divided between pride and piety,” no scholar has yet suc-
ceeded in portraying “the tortured relationship between Protestantism and
popular ethics.”80
Wyatt-Brown’s attempt to do so sketches honor and religion as “ideolo-
gies . . . in contention for mastery of the soul of the South.” He contends that
between 1600 and 1861 the balance of power between these ideologies slowly
and fitfully shifted in favor of religion until the establishment of a Confed-
eracy “based on a paradoxically dissonant union of honor and the cause of
God.”81 Especially in the Age of Custom (1600–1760), “honor, not Christian
practice, provided the psychological framework in an unreliable world.” How-
ever, “the hard code of family-based honor gradually softened” during the
Age of Fervor (1760–1840), “as piety became a prerequisite for the determi-
nation of respectability.”82 By the Age of Ambivalence (1840–1861) the church’s
power was sufficient to jeopardize the rule of honor, yet barriers to the Chris-
tianization of Southern culture remained. These are attested by the habits of
violence that plagued the region and by the church’s inability to transform
popular attitudes on moral issues such as drinking and dueling. Wyatt-Brown
concludes that while some honor-based Southern ideals were compatible with
Christian doctrine and faith, others were “clearly anti-Christian.” In the latter
case, because the church was not in a position to challenge “the salience of
honor and shame,” it upheld the honor system by coexisting with it or by
serving as guardian of the social order.
Wyatt-Brown maintains that the church’s adaptation to—and ultimate
embrace of—the Southern code of honor is evident in the language used by
patriotic clerics to welcome secession from the Union:
Because honor to God and honor to self in this southern discourse [of se-
cession and war] were so closely bound together, it was possible for church-
goers to reconcile the traditional ethic and evangelical belief. Romantic her-
oism—the badge of the Confederate cavalier—and Christian dignity and zeal
could be—and were—congenially united. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson,
and Jefferson Davis were both Christian gentlemen and men of honor in the
highest sense of those terms that southern culture could produce.83
84         

But because neither honor nor evangelical religion triumphed by the time war
arrived, “the South would have to live thereafter with a divided soul.”84
Responding to Wyatt-Brown, Ownby, and others who underscore the
enduring conflict of religion and honor in the Southern mind, Edward R.
Crowther casts this troubled relationship in a new light.85 He argues that
historians have struggled to identify the interpretive thread running through
the Old South because “students of the southern mind have placed religion
outside the mainstream of forces that shaped both southern behavior and
secession. According to these scholars, concepts of honor, not religious beliefs,
directed the southern male, or at least those southern men who exerted real
influence.”86 This is a false dichotomy, Crowther asserts, because the basis of
the South’s remarkable cohesion was essentially religious. He observes that

by the time Abraham Lincoln was elected president, secessionists uttered

their calls for action in language borrowing from and mixing together evan-
gelical rhetoric and traditions of honor, creating a southern civil religious
litany. Over time, many religious and secular ideals, which were not neces-
sarily dissonant in their expression, had fused to produce a hybrid and dis-
tinctly southern value, a holy honor that drew on evangelical and martial
traditions for its sustenance and animated and, for white southerners, jus-
tified southern behavior.87

Crowther contends that this “holy honor” was nurtured in the common ethos
of preachers and planters (a commonality rooted in shared class anxieties),
and the desire of evangelical Christians to redirect rather than destroy con-
cepts of personal honor. He concludes that “by the mid-nineteenth century
both sacred and secular values reflected and were helping to transform a
common ethos, at least at the level of ideals.”88
If Crowther is correct, and the antebellum South was infused with a holy
honor that united planter and preacher in common perceptions of the world’s
order, then we would expect this vision to be reflected not only in the thought
and behavior of Southern planters (as examined by Crowther) but also in the
writings of proslavery apologists who identified with the planter class. To test
this thesis, let us review some honor-bound renditions of Noah’s curse, paying
special attention to idioms of honor-shame and righteousness-sin. Many of
these texts use the vocabularies of honor and faith interchangeably, as when
James A. Sloan identifies “shame” with “sinful sport.”89 Others provide
glimpses of the fusion of evangelical Christianity and timocracy Crowther calls
“holy honor.” For instance, the author of The Governing Race thoroughly
integrates the languages of honor and morality in his portrayal of Ham’s
transgression. He characterizes Ham’s affront as “dishonoring his father” and
then classifies this misdeed as one of “three notable instances of laws in which
our Creator imposed certain specified penalties for sin on certain classes of
the human race.” On one hand, Ham’s dishonor has transmitted an “insen-
sibility to shame” to his progeny; on the other hand, it was a “polluting
          

depravity,” “treason against nature and rebellion against God,” an attempt to

“overthrow and destroy the moral life of mankind.”90
Similarly, in his description of Ham’s villainy, the anonymous author of
African Servitude conflates honor with faithfulness, respect with faith, disgrace
with “the fall,” and dishonor with “an evil heart of unbelief toward God.”
Although containing a very explicit honor reading of Noah’s curse, the pam-
phlet is permeated with religious images: Hamite slavery is a result of “righ-
teous judgment”; God “allowed the faith of the three sons of Noah to be tried,
and Ham was found wanting”; Ham “broke the first command on the second
table, by scorning and deriding his father.” Occasionally, the vocabularies of
honor and faith merged, as in the reference to Ham’s “lack of faith, his sinful
conduct of defection.” A few Southern advocates of the curse sought to reduce
the dissonance between religion and honor through linguistic baptism. Recall
Samuel Davies Baldwin’s claim that, viewed in the light of revelation, “filial
dishonor . . . is more obnoxious to censure and punishment than theft, for-
gery, or falsehood, and stands before them in importance in the graduated
scale of the Decalogue.” Citing the fifth commandment (“Honor your father
and your mother. . . .” Exodus 20:12; cf. Deuteronomy 27:16: “Cursed be any-
one who dishonors father or mother”), Baldwin—along with Sloan and oth-
ers—roots honor at Sinai rather than South Carolina.
In the process of embracing Noah’s curse as a chief rationale for human
bondage, antebellum proslavery intellectuals made a remarkable contribution
to the development of “holy honor.” Reflecting the influence of previous in-
terpreters,91 the dynamics of honor and shame inscribed in their Old Testa-
ment, and their own sensibilities as Southern gentlemen, they interpreted
Noah’s curse in a manner that made the ethics of faith and honor virtually
interchangeable. These authors indicate the fluid boundaries that existed in
the Southern mind between honor and faith, shame and unbelief, and they
provide a unique glimpse of the proslavery imagination straining to alleviate
the conceptual discordance between faith and timocracy. Bertram Wyatt-
Brown has written that “without grasping the ancient, even pagan origins and
continuities of honor, we cannot comprehend the endurance of racism as a
sacred, intractable conviction, or the approach of civil war, or the desperate
commitment of Southern whites to hold black Americans forever in their
power.”92 We should add that without grasping the “continuities of honor,” it
is not possible to comprehend the way antebellum proslavery intellectuals read
the biblical text they regarded as containing both the origin and the justifi-
cation for African slavery.

Epilogue: Resexualizing Ham’s Transgression

Given the usefulness of Genesis 9:20–27 in defending American slavery, it is

not surprising that Noah’s curse was rehabilitated during the 1950s and 1960s
86       

by white Christians seeking to buttress the religious case for legalized segre-
gation. Naturally, American segregationists are regarded as the intellectual
grandchildren of antebellum slavery advocates. But this assessment ignores
the facts that Civil Rights–era segregationists who invoked Noah’s curse de-
parted from the proslavery legacy—by failing to interpret Ham’s transgression
in terms of familial honor and by reclaiming the presumption of innate sexual
perversion in the “Negro” descendants of Ham.
In Place of Race—a short work published in 1965 to explicate the biblical
mandate for racial segregation outside the church—C. E. McLain refers
plainly to “the sensual sin of Ham.” This outrage, McLain suggests, reveals
“the germ of sexual sin which was to permeate the Hamitic tribes.”93 Similarly,
in a published sermon titled “God the Original Segregationist,” Baptist min-
ister Carey Daniel associates the episode in Genesis 9 with the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah. In a sly reference to popular conceptions of black
sexuality, Daniel writes that “anyone familiar with the Biblical history of those
cities during that period can readily understand why we here in the South are
determined to maintain segregation.”94 Later in the same sermon, Daniel
frankly links the curse and sexual impropriety: “The Bible clearly implies that
the Negroes’ black skin is the result of Ham’s immorality at the time of his
father Noah’s drunkenness. For example, in Jeremiah 13:23 we read, ‘Can the
Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do
good, that are accustomed to do evil.’ Here the black skin of the Negro is
obviously a symbol of evil.”95
American Segregationist readings of Genesis 9–11 will be discussed in
more detail in chapter 6. At this point, we note only that references to the
story of Noah and his sons among twentieth-century segregationists conspic-
uously lack the theme of honor that is so distinctive in antebellum readings
of Genesis 9.96
 5
Original Disorder

Noah’s Curse and the Southern Defense of Slavery

When Ham had been within the tent, and had seen the
condition of his father, he was noticed by them to rush
out in a state of very great excitement, yelling and explod-
ing with laughter. . . .
Josiah Priest, Slavery as It Relates to the
Negro or African Race

   probed the relations between Southern honor, the
American proslavery argument, and the biblical text most often relied upon
to sustain that argument. This chapter continues the investigation of the dis-
tinctive ways Genesis 9 was read to support American slavery, arguing that
antebellum readings of the story of Noah and his sons reflect both the pen-
chant for disorder believed to exemplify the “Negro” character and the ne-
cessity of preserving order in the ideal society. Though expressed in a variety
of ways, the order dynamic in proslavery commentary on Genesis 9 can be
described quite simply: The servitude of Ham’s descendants functions to pro-
tect the social order from the sort of disorderly conduct that Ham brought
to the postdiluvian community. Subordination is necessary, in other words,
to restrain the rebellious Negro character so accurately depicted in Genesis 9:
20–27.
Long before they were embraced by American Bible readers, concerns for
order appeared throughout Genesis 9’s history of interpretation. In fact, one
of the tradition’s enduring motifs is the threat to social harmony associated
with Ham and his descendants. Examples include rabbinic comments that

87
88         

conjoin Ham with theft, fornication, prevarication, and hatred for masters,
and the medieval Zohar, in which Canaan is given the appellation “notorious
world-darkener.” It was left to Christian writers, however, to fully conceptu-
alize the Hamite predilection for disorder. Recall that in Clement’s genealogy
of human corruption, Hamites are responsible for slavery, demon worship,
idolatry, the practice of magical arts, and violent conquest. Transmitting and
embellishing Ham’s legacy as the patriarch of chaos, Luther claims that after
receiving Noah’s curse, Ham developed a new government and religion and
filled the world with idolatry. This chapter explores how antebellum inter-
preters of Genesis 9 extended this tradition of Hamite disorder in response
to the peculiar needs of the American slavocracy.

Order and the Southern Mind

As was noted in chapter 1, Mark Twain is credited with the audacious claim
that the character of the Old South could be understood as an outgrowth of
the region’s penchant for the novels of Sir Walter Scott. Although most in-
terpreters regard Twain’s comment as tongue-in-cheek social commentary, in
the 1960s James McBride Dabbs revisited the issue by arguing that Scott’s
popularity could indeed shed light on the formation of Southern character.
In an essay entitled “Sir Walter Scott and the Civil War,” Dabbs contended
that the underlying aim of the Waverly novels was to “present the primary
purpose of the social order, especially as bound up with the institution of
property.” “Scott created two types of heroes and heroines: the proper, or
passive, hero who defended law and order, reason, prudence, and the accepted
values, especially property; and the dark hero, who acted for the individual
against these values, and in a spirit of passion and disorder. Though perhaps
he lived more richly, the dark hero always came to a disastrous end, in failure,
exile, or death.”1 In Dabbs’s view, the essential though unconscious message
for Southerners in Scott’s novels was “the value of social order over freedom
and of prudence over passion.” The Southerner embraced Scott’s romances
because he identified himself in the passive hero who was defender of law,
order, and property.2 If there is truth in Dabbs’s analysis, and antebellum
Southerners were attracted to stories in which the “passive hero” represented
order and the “dark hero” passion and disorder, we should not be surprised
to discover similar dynamics in their readings of biblical narratives. But first
let us consider evidence of order’s centrality to the proslavery imagination.
The integral link between order and African servitude is discernible in
many aspects of the proslavery weltanschauung—the aristocratic conservatism
common among Southern intellectuals,3 a widespread perception that the only
reliable social constitution was to be found in the Bible, and the notion that
slavery was necessary to control “Africans’ predisposition to lascivious and
socially disruptive behavior.”4 Americans on the proslavery side also assumed
          

that God’s careful structuring of the natural world was evident in racial hi-
erarchy. As Howell Cobb maintained in the 1850s, “the great Architect . . .
framed [blacks] both physically and mentally to fill the sphere in which they
were thrown, and His wisdom and mercy combined in constituting them thus
suited to the degraded position they were destined to occupy.”5 In 1862, Joseph
C. Addington applied this apperception of racial gradation to the destiny and
character of Noah’s sons, writing that “the White or Japhetic race is first in
position. The Red or Shemitic Race, is second. . . . The Black or Hamitic race,
is last in position. . . .”6 Rooted in creation and providence alike, this hierarchy
had to be upheld for whites to fulfill the great work of civilization to which
they were called. This conviction was dramatized in a fictional dialogue be-
tween representatives of the Japhetic and Hamitic races published in the
Southern Literary Messenger in 1855. The son of Japheth warns his cousin that
“you may not mingle your blood with ours, you may not participate in our
counsels . . . for you may not be permitted to thwart by your incompetence
the great scheme in which we are engaged and on which so much depends.”7
According to the proslavery mind-set, the organization of the world both
justified and required black servitude.
Another dimension of American slave culture that reflected the intellec-
tual kinship between servitude and order was the perception of blacks as
perpetual children in the human family. Thought to combine adult strength
and childlike judgment, slaves were considered susceptible to disorder in a
variety of forms.8 White infantilization of African Americans was fostered by
the popular sentiments that blacks were naturally unintelligent, morally un-
derdeveloped, and imitative and by the supposition that whites were obligated
to care for and protect the semisavages in their midst. It was also nourished
by assumptions regarding the biblical pattern of “domestic slavery,” in which
wives, children, slaves, and other relatives were considered members of an
extended patriarchal family. Thus, ironically, the conception of slaves as pu-
erile beings was encouraged by religious reformers who insisted that American
slavery meet the “Bible standard.” Among them was Presbyterian James A.
Lyon of Mississippi, who in 1863 opined that the relationship of slave and
master was “equal, in all respects, to that of parent and child,” the only
difference being that “a slave is a minor for life.”9
Corollary to the image of slaves as dependents in the patriarchal family
was the expectation that order and hierarchy structure every domestic rela-
tionship. In 1857, Fred A. Ross asserted that husband-wife and parent-child
relations ought to reflect “the world-wide law that service shall be rendered
by the inferior to the superior.” Ross did not hesitate to “run a parallel be-
tween the relation of master and slave and that of husband and wife.”10 Al-
though some proslavery ideologues were uncomfortable linking slavery and
wifely submission, others found the analogy too compelling to resist. Samuel
B. How sought a middle ground, denying that “the relation between husband
and wife is similar to that which exists between the master and the slave,”
90       

but affirming that both could be traced to the Garden of Eden. In God’s re-
sponse to human transgression, How perceived “the origin of [man’s] sub-
jection to labor” and thus the incidental cause of slavery. And because Eve
was the vehicle for sin’s entry into paradise, her subjection to Adam was coeval
with the origin of servitude—of man to man, and man to earth.11 Although not
always visible in proslavery literature, the ligament between slavery and
women’s oppression was obvious to radical abolitionists such as Sarah Grimké.
Systematic proslavery thought developed after 1830 in reaction to the ab-
olitionist assault on human servitude, and, of course, the specifics of that
attack determined the character of the proslavery response. Because aboli-
tionists wished to portray thralldom as barbaric and hopelessly out of step
with modern religious, political, and social principles, slavery’s defenders were
obliged to portray the institution as a cornerstone of the good society. In fact,
the claim that slavery was essential for producing and maintaining societal
order pervades the writings of proslavery intellectuals, religious and secular
alike. South Carolinian William Harper called slavery a “Great Wall” that
protected every white man, woman, and child.12 John C. Calhoun stressed
that Southern bondage was the best system of control for maximizing societal
peace and the happiness of whites and blacks alike.13 Rev. Leander Ker boasted
that Southern slaves were “ten times more polite, mannerly, genteel, intelli-
gent, and moral, than those dogged impudent, insolent, profane and filthy
creatures that swarm about the towns and cities of the North”14 William Henry
Hammond contended that slavery was less abusive than so-called free labor.
Responding to the plight of workers in the British Empire, Hammond wrote
to an English abolitionist: “To alleviate the fancied sufferings of the accursed
posterity of Ham, you sacrifice by a cruel death two-thirds of the children of
the blessed Shem—and demand the applause of Christians—the blessing of
heaven!”15
And what of the charge that because slaves would naturally seek their
freedom, bondage increased social insecurity? William Gilmore Simms re-
sponded that the danger of insurrection did not arise in “the natural move-
ments of the servile mind . . . [but were] instigated from without.”16 Charles-
ton, he observed, was plagued by neither mutiny nor revolt and had less need
for police protection than New York or Europe. Thomas R. Dew concurred:
American blacks had been so civilized under slavery that “nothing . . . but the
most subtle and poisonous principles, sedulously infused into [the slave’s]
mind, can break his allegiance, and transform him into the midnight mur-
derer.”17 In “Professor Dew on Slavery,” Dew argued that slavery prevents
social chaos by strengthening the bonds of mutual affection among members
of two otherwise incompatible and antagonistic races. Furthermore, he
opined, “there is nothing but slavery which can destroy those habits of in-
dolence and sloth, and eradicate the character of improvidence and careless-
ness, which mark the independent savage.”18 Because in Dew’s mind blacks
were peculiarly drawn to immorality, slavery was a suitable vehicle for con-
trolling their sinful predispositions. Further, human bondage was a boon to
          

peace and order, in that it mitigated the frequency and horrors of war and
destroyed “that migratory spirit in nations and tribes, so destructive to the
peace and tranquility of the world.”19
The proslavery compulsion to associate human subjugation and civic har-
mony is quite evident in the writings of Virginian George Fitzhugh, the most
respected slavery apologist in the decades prior to the Civil War. In two books
published during the 1850s—Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free
Society (1854) and Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters (1857)—Fitzhugh
assailed the foundations of democratic society while establishing an intellec-
tual basis for slavocracy. Fitzhugh regarded the preservation of societal order
as among the chief benefits of human thralldom, declaring that “at the slave-
holding South all is peace, quiet, plenty and contentment. We have no mobs,
no trade unions, no strikes for higher wages, no armed resistance to the law,
but little jealousy of the rich by the poor. We have but few in our jails, and
fewer in our poor houses.”20 This was no coincidence: Because blacks so
clearly required masters, racial slavery was “the most necessary of all human
institutions,” an “indispensable police institution.”
In Fitzhugh’s view, abolitionists sought nothing less than the reorgani-
zation of American society. They wished “to abolish . . . or greatly to modify,
the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, the institution of private
property of all kinds, but especially separate ownership of lands, and the
institution of Christian churches as now existing in America.”21 If they are
successful, Fitzhugh warned, government, law, religion, and marriage would
be among the casualties. Just as abolitionists could not recognize the South
apart from its support for human servitude, Fitzhugh perceived Northern
social ills as by-products of a free society, whose principles were at war with
“all government, all subordination, all order.”22 If slavery is wrong, he rea-
soned, then all human government is wrong. Because opposition to slavery
threatened society’s very survival, Fitzhugh cast abolitionist William Lloyd
Garrison as the “Great Anarch of the North” and abolition itself as a precursor
to “Anarchy, Free Love, Agrarians, &c., &c.”23
In Fitzhugh’s mind, the spread of abolitionism could not be considered
apart from the scourge of infidelity. Claiming that organized opposition to
slavery contributed to universal skepticism, Fitzhugh embellished the truism
that abolitionists were “commonly infidels”:

It is notorious that infidelity appeared in the world, on an extensive scale,

only contemporaneously with the abolition of slavery, and that it is now
limited to countries where no domestic slavery exists. . . . Where there is no
slavery, the minds of men are unsettled on all subjects, and there is, em-
phatically, faith and conviction about nothing. Their moral and social world
is in a chaotic and anarchical state. Order, subordination, and adaptation
have vanished; and with them, the belief in a Deity, the author of all order.24

According to Fitzhugh, social reform was animated by “a universal spirit of

destructiveness, a profane attempt to pull down what God and nature had
92       

built up and to erect ephemeral Utopia in its place.”25 The North was home
to a thousand superstitious and infidel-isms, a land that evinced “faith in
nothing, speculation about everything.” In opposition to these taproots of
disorder and chaos, Fitzhugh placed family, hierarchy, and subordination.
In the antebellum period, the concern for order was paramount not only
for secular slavery apologists like Fitzhugh but also for clergy intellectuals,
who promoted “Bible slavery” and decried abolitionist “fanaticism” and “athe-
ism.” These Southern divines offered a concerted moral defense of “social
inequality, class stratification, male supremacy, and the subordination of the
laboring classes to personal authority.”26 For instance, in an address before
the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States
of America in 1863, James A. Lyon asserted that the patriarchal relation (an
emblem of Bible slavery) had to be tempered by absolute authority, in part
to mitigate the tendency to insubordination. Lyon commended the religious
instruction of slaves by noting that the irreligious servant was harder to govern
and that intelligent slaves were “less likely to engage in insurrectionary and
unlawful enterprises.” Finally, Lyon referred to black thralldom as Provi-
dence’s scheme for subjecting an inferior to a superior race. Slavery would be
necessary, then, until Christianity gained such ascendancy “as to bring the
entire race under the absolute and delightful control of the spirit and prin-
ciples of the Gospel.”27 James H. Thornwell, another Presbyterian reformer,
connected “insurrection, anarchy and bloodshed, revolt against masters, [and]
treason against States.”28 Such religious perspectives on the relation of slavery
and societal order were well suited to white Southerners’ images of themselves
as humane masters devoted to Christianizing the heathen African, benevolent
patriarchs who cared for slaves as family members, and reformers who, if
spared antislavery agitation, would perfect their peculiar institution.
Remarkably, the association of slavery and order in the Southern mind
survived the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. Particularly when
the trauma of defeat and occupation began to subside and “home rule” was
reestablished, there was renewed stress on maintaining social equilibrium.
Wistful recollections of slavery’s role in upholding the old order highlighted
the need for separation and subordination in the postwar world. As Charles
Reagan Wilson observes, before segregation became an accepted substitute for
servitude around 1890, Southern clergy associated with the Lost Cause pro-
claimed that slavery had been a civilizing institution essential to the peace
and welfare of prewar society. These priests of the Lost Cause believed strongly
that “slavery had brought essential order, discipline, and morality in Negro
life.”29 Proof of slavery’s edifying effect on the Negro was found in the faithful
behavior of slaves during wartime and the decline in Negro morality following
emancipation. Some ministers even explained the emergence of the Klan as a
response to the “condition of total lawlessness” that prevailed in the absence
of slavery.
An instructive example of the postbellum perception of slavery as a sta-
bilizing influence on the black community appeared in an 1877 Southern Pres-
          

byterian Review article, “The Colored Man in the South.” The article compared
the behavior of black American Christians to that of their African relatives
and concluded that whatever civilization could be found in the Negro church
was a product of slave discipline. The author expressed surprise that attendees
at a recent black church convention had conducted themselves “in an orderly
manner, under the control of [an efficient] moderator,” in a fashion that is
“sensible,” “practical,” and “systematic.” If there is any governability in the
Negro character, any possibility of improvement for the race, he concluded,
it is thanks to slavery, which did a “wonderful, beneficent work” in converting
“hopeless barbarians into citizens.” Absent the assistance of slavery in making
the African savage “docile, industrious and subordinate,” the white South was
now forced to identify new methods for imposing authority, obedience, and
discipline on its dark brothers.30
Having documented the concern for order that animated the world view
of white Southerners before and after the Civil War, we are prepared to further
explore the distinctive meanings assigned to the tale of Noah’s curse by pro-
slavery Bible readers. We will see that proslavery interpreters reflected their
interest in preserving societal harmony by reading Genesis 9:20–27 as an ep-
isode of primal disorder.

Order and Paradise

The symbolic meaning of Ham’s offense can be gauged only if we note the
setting of his encounter with Noah in the postdiluvian utopia. Proslavery
interpreters of Genesis 9:20–27 emphasized that following the great watery
purge, Noah and his family resided in a pristine world where they lived out
the agrarian ideal in the shadow of Mount Ararat. Drawing on these utopian
images, antebellum Bible readers depicted Noah as a second Adam who en-
joyed unmediated communion with God. In the words of Virginian Robert
L. Dabney, when he uttered the curse, Noah acted “as an inspired prophet,
and also as the divinely chosen, patriarchal head of church and state, which
were then confined to his one family.”31 Leander Ker was another proslavery
author who carefully placed the biblical story in its primordial context:
This crime of Ham was the first transgression recorded after the flood, and
probably the first committed; and you must remember, in the next place,
that Noah now was to the world what Adam was, when created—the official
head—the Viceregent of Heaven—and, therefore, the first deliberate and wil-
ful offence, as in the case of Adam, according to the moral government of
God, must be punished with the utmost rigor of law.32

Other slavery apologists described the Edenic paradise that awaited Noah’s
family as they disembarked after the flood:
The place [Noah] selected, was doubtless, in the great vale which stretches
out southeasterly from the foot of the mountain, where the Ark grounded,
94         

some twenty miles, presenting to the eye an ocean of green foliage, which
had but newly grown, after the receding of the waters, and presented to the
voyagers a rapturous sight. . . . Broad savannas, abounding with all kinds of
beasts, and fowls—the waters with fishes, and the wilderness with berries,
fruits, roots, and esculent herbs. Nuts of all trees, spices, gums, aromatics,
and balms, frankincense, myrrh, cinnamon, and odors, wild honey, grapes
and flowery regions, with perpetual verdure, could but captivate the hearts
of these pioneers. . . . 33

Given his utopian description of the postdiluvian world, it is hardly coinci-

dental that the author locates Noah’s settlement “near the head waters of the
Euphrates,” one of the rivers flowing out of Eden (Gen. 2:14).
No doubt the textual parallels between Genesis 9 and Genesis 2–3—the
divine charge to “be fruitful and multiply,” the placing of a man in paradise
to till the ground, nakedness, servitude, and the imposition of a curse34—
brought the creation story to mind as proslavery Bible readers reflected on
the tale of Noah’s drunkenness. These parallels reinforced their perceptions
that Noah was entrusted with humanity’s second chance and that the events
leading to Ham’s curse were a narrative of the second “fall.”35 And because
his behavior precipitated the end of orderly existence, Ham could be blamed
not only for the ruination of the postdiluvian paradise but also, in much the
same way as Eve, for the world’s fallen state. These associations with cosmic
order and disorder provided the background against which antebellum order-
bound readings of Noah’s curse developed.

Ham, Laughter, and Slave Impudence

The most common order theme in antebellum American readings of Genesis

9:20–27 was laughter. Whence originated the extrabiblical notion that laughter
was an essential aspect of Ham’s contumacy? Although neither asserted nor
implied in the text of Genesis 9, the image of Ham laughing at his father
emerged quite early in the history of interpretation. The ultimate source for
the laughter theme appears to be Josephus, who in Antiquities of the Jews
summarized the encounter between Noah and Ham this way:
Noah, when after the deluge, the earth was resettled in its former condition
set about its cultivation; and when he had planted it with vines, and when
the fruit was ripe, and he had gathered the grapes in their season, and the
wine was ready for use, he offered sacrifices and feasted, and being drunk,
he fell asleep, and lay naked in an unseemly manner. When his youngest
son saw this, he came laughing, and showed him to his brethren; but they
covered their father’s nakedness.36

The theme of Ham’s laughter was subsequently adapted by early Christian

writers, notably Origen, Ambrose, and Sulpicius Severus (ca. 360–420),37 and
          

was featured in medieval legend.38 The leaders of the Reformation made rid-
icule an emblem of Ham’s transgression, and the motif was transmitted by
nineteenth-century commentator Adam Clarke, who declared that “Ham, and
very probably his son Canaan, had treated their father on this occasion with
contempt or reprehensible levity.”39
It is remarkable the number of serious exegetes—Jews, Christians, and
Muslims alike—who have conveyed this extratextual theme.40 Perhaps some-
thing in the textual logic of Genesis 9 steers readers to conclude that Ham
“told his brothers” of Noah’s condition in a jocose or raucous fashion. Yet
despite the motif ’s longevity and range, American affirmations of Ham’s
laughter occupy a distinctive place in the history of interpretation. First, un-
like previous interpreters, proslavery Bible readers adamantly denied that
Noah was deserving of abuse. Second, and more important, outside
nineteenth-century America mockery was never viewed as a sufficient con-
dition for Noah’s curse. In fact, it was routinely supplemented—and
eclipsed—by discussion of iniquities presumably more deserving of perpetual
servitude.41
Condemnatory references to laughter abound in American proslavery lit-
erature. For instance, Leander Ker described Ham’s crime as “insulting and
mocking,”42 and the author of The Governing Race declared that Ham
“mocked at his father.” But the extent to which derisive laughter became a
stock theme in antebellum renderings of Ham’s transgression is best gauged
from popular versions of the curse. In discussing a bill before Congress in
1860, Jefferson Davis invoked Genesis 9 by alleging that when “the low and
vulgar son of Noah, who laughed at his father’s exposure, sunk by debasing
himself and his lineage by a connection with an inferior race of men, he
doomed his descendants to perpetual slavery.” Further evidence of the theme’s
prominence in popular renditions of the curse is found among its victims. In
the 1930s, former slave Gus “Jabbo” Rogers related this account of the biblical
tale for a WPA interviewer:

God gave it [religion] to Adam and took it away from Adam and gave it to
Noah, and you know, Miss, Noah had three sons, and when Noah got drunk
on wine, one of his sons laughed at him, and the other two took a sheet and
walked backwards and threw it over Noah. Noah told the one who laughed,
“Your children will be hewers of wood and drawers of water for the other
two children, and they will be known by their hair and their skin being dark.”
So, Miss, there we are, and that is the way God meant us to be. We have
always had to follow the white folks and do what we saw them do, and that’s
all there is to it. You just can’t get away from what the Lord said.43

In these popular summaries of the biblical story, we perceive the deep

concerns for order that underlie laughter-readings of Ham’s disgrace. For
Rogers the ex-slave, Ham’s disorderly conduct is tied thematically to his de-
scendants’ punishment, which requires that Negro order be reestablished
96         

through emulation of whites. Similarly, in Davis’s mind, Ham’s laughter man-

ifests a disorder that is constitutive of the African character:

In this District of Columbia you have but to go to the jail and find there,
by those who fill it, the result of relieving the negro from that control which
keeps him in his own healthy and useful condition. It is idle to assume that
it is the want of education: it is the natural inferiority of the race; and the
same proof exists wherever that race has been left the master of itself—
sinking into barbarism or into the commission of crime, as it happens to be
isolated or in contact with those upon whom it could prey for subsistence.44

These words indicate how the assumption that Ham must have mocked his
father was dependent on the broader themes of order and disorder, including
the “barbarism” and “crime,” which, in Davis’s view, demanded social control
of an inferior race.
The prominence of the laughter theme in proslavery commentary on
Genesis 9 raises some intriguing questions. First, in that Ham’s laughter lacked
any support in the biblical text (and not a single American advocate of the
curse claimed otherwise), we must ask why it was so widely affirmed in an-
tebellum readings of Genesis 9. Habit is not a sufficient explanation for this
phenomenon, not in a culture that, at least in principle, held that truth was
revealed in the letter of scripture. Rather, Ham’s mockery of Noah must have
communicated something indispensable to proslavery commentary on Gen-
esis 9. Second, how did Ham’s laughter become a sufficient condition for the
curse? Under what conditions does laughter—even explosive, mocking laugh-
ter—come to be regarded as behavior worthy of a perpetual malediction?
Both questions are illuminated by research into the dread of slave insur-
rection that periodically seized the Old South. According to historians, South-
ern fears of slave rebellion were notably disproportionate to the threat; in-
surrection was an “abstract, awesome danger from within” that led whites to
imagine an overturned social order.45 As early as 1822, “A South Carolinian”
defended the peculiar institution by offering a careful review of slave rebel-
lions throughout the South. He wrote that “we regard our negroes as the
‘Jacobins’ of the country, against whom we should always be upon our
guard.”46 Over the next four decades, as slavery came under assault and ab-
olitionist literature infiltrated the South, the fear of slave insurrection inten-
sified until, in the wake of John Brown’s 1859 raid, the region was gripped by
“the most intense terror of slave insurrection [it] ever experienced.”47
Historians also tell us that Southern whites interpreted changes in black
demeanor as harbingers of slave rebellion. When blacks “smile[d] deferentially
and laugh[ed] softly,” the world was deemed orderly and safe. But when
accustomed deference gave way to “unaccustomed disobedience and impu-
dence,” white insecurities were amplified. “A glum stare, a brusque reply to
a question, a reluctant move,” were all taken as clues that rebellion was at
hand.48 Thus, as a “prelude to insurgency,” slave insolence was an emotional
           

trigger for white fears of insurrection, the gravest threat to order in the Amer-
ican slavocracy. The prominence of laughter in proslavery readings of Genesis
9 suggests that in the slaveholding imagination Ham’s mockery functioned
much like slave “impudence”—as a symbol of unruliness in the black char-
acter. Just as whites interpreted slave flippancy as a token of impending social
chaos, they read Genesis 9 as an episode of black impertinence. Especially
when juxtaposed with the quiet and respectful behavior of Shem and Japheth,
Ham’s jocose demeanor became an emblem of the disorder for which the
Negro was notorious in the Anglo-Saxon mind.49

Ham and Black Ungovernability

Many antebellum whites reckoned that because Africans were incapable of

self-rule, servitude was essential to their survival in America.50 Reflecting this
view of black ungovernability, an anonymous proslavery author presented an
imaginary conversation between the first descendants of Ham and Japheth in
North America. The Hamite acknowledges that “we never have been governed
aright . . . [and] cannot govern ourselves.” He then pleads for the white man’s
help: “Take us then and mould us to your will. Think for us: guide us; teach
us our duty to the God whom we have forgotten and who has made you what
you are. Take care of us and our little ones.”51 The conviction among ante-
bellum whites that blacks were virtually ungovernable is significant for our
purposes inasmuch as it elucidates proslavery readings of Genesis 9 that are
otherwise difficult to classify.
For instance, in a tract published in 1823, Frederick Dalcho condemned
Ham’s “abominable wickedness,” while designating Hamites as “peculiarly
wicked, and obnoxious to the wrath of God.” In neither case did Dalcho
describe this purported villainy, but evidence for inferring his view of Ham’s
disgrace can be gleaned from his discussion of a recent slave insurrection.
Dalcho asks why “the late conspiracy” involved no Negroes belonging to the
Protestant Episcopal Church. Is it, he wonders, because
in the sober, rational, sublime and evangelical worship of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, there is nothing to inflame the passions of the ignorant
enthusiast; nothing left to the crude, undigested ideas of illiterate black class-
leaders? Is it because the coloured leaders in that Church, were not permitted
to expound the Scriptures, or to exhort, in words of their own; to use ex-
temporary prayer, and to utter at such times, whatever nonsense and pro-
fanity might happen to come into their minds? Is it because the order and
language of the worship of that Church, being precomposed and arranged,
cannot be perverted or abused to party purposes? . . . Here was nothing to
mislead the weak, excite the passions of the wicked, or impose upon
the credulous. The exercises were rational and pious and the audience decor-
ous. . . . 52
98        

Conversely, Dalcho observes, the recent rebellion “had its origin and seat,
chiefly in the African Church, which was entirely composed of negroes, under
preachers of their own colour.” His conclusion is that “much animal excite-
ment” is to be found in such churches but little real devotion.53 Thus, we can
infer that the “abominable wickedness” Dalcho attaches to Ham and his pu-
tative descendants is intimately related to animal excitement and crude pas-
sions—that is, disorder.
Dalcho further illumines the ties between slavery and order when he
censures Northerners who presume to instruct slaves without appreciating the
South’s “times and laws.” Drawing on personal experience, Dalcho emphasizes
the difficulty of discerning “the real character of Negroes.” “I am likewise
aware,” he continues, “of the measure of prudence which is necessary to
improve their moral and spiritual condition, without deranging the existing
order of society.”54 Concern for the slaves’ well-being, in other words, must
not threaten the maintenance of societal order, and Northerners must not
ignore the “chain which binds together the various orders of our community,
which must not be broken.”55
Louisianan Samuel Cartwright is another proslavery apologist whose con-
cern for order is reflected in his reading of Genesis 9. In his 1843 treatise on
Noah’s curse, Cartwright fails to specify Ham’s sin, but he does identify the
absence of order as one of its consequences. In Cartwright’s view, “the Ethi-
opian” suffers not so much a deficiency of intellect as a lack of “balance
between his animality and intellectuality.” Black animality, according to Cart-
wright,
rules the intellect and chains the mind to slavery—slavery to himself, slavery
to his appetites, and a radical savage in his habits, wherever he is left to
himself. His mind being thus depressed by the excessive development of the
nerves of organic life, nothing but arbitrary power, prescribing and enforcing
temperance in all things, can restrain the excesses of his animal nature and
restore reason to her throne. Certain it is that nothing but compuson [sic]
has ever made him lead a life of industry, temperance and order; and nothing
but compulsion has ever converted him into a civilized being. When the
compulsive hand of arbitrary power is withdrawn, he invariably relapses into
barbarism; proving that when he has his personal liberty, he is not a free
agent to choose the good and avoid the evil—whereas, under that govern-
ment which God ordained for him, the excesses of his animality are kept in
restraint and his free agency is restored.56

In Cartwright’s view, blacks live in figurative slavery to their impulses and

appetites; therefore, literal slavery is necessary to prescribe and enforce tem-
perance among them, to restrain them, and to restore them to reason and
order. Because Cartwright regards Ham as the eponymous ancestor of Afri-
cans, he leads readers to infer that blacks inherited their condition from him.
A postbellum Bible reader who interprets Genesis 9 through the prism
of Negro ungovernability is J. W. Sandell, a Confederate veteran who was
          

extolling the virtues of the Old South as late as 1907.57 Sandell traces directly
to the curse the Negro’s purported lack of fitness for government: “Noah
prophesied the future of his three sons, including all the races in regard to
government through all time. Japheth was the first born: his father said, ‘God
shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan
shall be his servant.’ ”58 Sandell avers that “the spirit of this prophecy has been
manifested in the United States”: “There are races of men who are not fit for
self-government—all may serve, but all cannot govern. The negroes as a race
are not capable of appreciating such a government as the Constitution of the
United States provides for, and as rulers they should not be in the house of
the Lord or government of these States.”59
For Sandell, “the curse upon Canaan has never been absolved and nothing
the race achieved in the early ages of the human family can justify the claim
of the negro to equality with the white man in the government of the world.
The race is prophetically condemned to an inferior relation to that of Shem
and Japheth.”60 In fact, “a people descended from such maledictions as were
put upon Canaan” ought to be content to remain under the protection of a
government that offers it liberty. Sandell’s interpretation of Genesis 9 allies
him with antebellum advocates of the curse. Like them, he regards the dis-
order punished and prophesied by Noah as a perennial gauge of Hamite char-
acter and destiny.

Ham, Disorder, and Amalgamation

Another species of disorder present in antebellum readings of Genesis 9 has

been associated with Ham and his offspring since the start of the common
era. Early Christian Gnostics taught that intermarriage between beings of dif-
ferent orders had been the source of antediluvian corruption.61 This kinship
between miscegenation and divine punishment—dormant for most of inter-
pretive history—was reestablished in 1852 when Louisianan John Fletcher in-
voked “race mixing” as an explanation for Noah’s curse.62
Confident that “God never sanctions a curse without an adequate cause;
a cause under the approbation of his law, sufficient to produce the effect the
curse announces,” Fletcher contended that Ham’s real transgression had to be
located prior to his conflict with Noah. “The ill-manners of Ham no doubt
accelerated the time of the announcement of the curse,” according to Fletcher,
but were not its sole cause.63 That act alone “could not produce so vital, so
interminable a change in the moral and physical condition of his offspring.”
In Fletcher’s mind, “adequate cause for the immediate degradation of an un-
born race” could be only Ham’s marriage with the cursed race of Cain (a
union that transmitted to Ham’s descendants the black skin Cain received
following his act of fratricide).64 Noah’s “prophecy,” then, was properly speak-
ing an announcement. Even without the curse, however, the consequences of
100        

Ham’s iniquity would have manifested themselves soon enough. “Suppose,

even at this day,” Fletcher reasoned, “a descendant of Japheth should choose
to amalgamate with the Negro, could not his father readily foretell the future
destiny of the offspring,—their standing among the rest of his family?”65
For Fletcher, Ham’s sin was the one that nineteenth-century white Amer-
icans regarded as the quintessential violation of order. Because this fear of
race mixing existed in symbiosis with popular conceptions of African sexu-
ality, perhaps Fletcher should be considered a rare example of an antebellum
author who indulged in sexualizing the character of Ham. But there are good
reasons to understand Fletcher’s reading of Genesis 9 as concerned primarily
with order rather than sex. First, Fletcher virtually ignores Ham’s indignity
against Noah, while devoting most of a seventy-page chapter to his prior
marriage to a Cainite woman. Second, for Fletcher intermarriage is not a fruit
of carelessness, lust, or submission to bestial passion but a deliberate attempt
to subvert the order of creation. Thus, whether or not it involves sexual sin,
intermarriage bespeaks rebellion and leads to chaos. As Fletcher writes, [man]
“was placed under the government of laws adapted to his condition. But a
want of conformity to any item of such law necessarily disorganized and
deranged some portion of his original condition.”66
That white concerns with racial amalgamation were rooted in fears of
social chaos is suggested by the work of unrepentant Southerners writing in
the aftermath of the Civil War. For dystopic predictions regarding the effects
of black emancipation, “Ariel’s” The Negro: What is His Ethnological Status?
(1867) is unsurpassed. As this disillusioned Confederate interpreted the un-
folding of American history through the lens of scriptural apocalypse, he
likened the United States to the biblical societies that became subject to divine
wrath. Like them, postbellum America was guilty of racial amalgamation, the
only sin for which there is no atonement: “This crime can not be expiated—it
never has been expiated on earth—and from its nature never can be, and,
consequently, never was forgiven by God, and never will be.”67 Like the gen-
eration of the Deluge, the conspirators at Babel, the inhabitants of Sodom
and Gommorah, and the Canaanites, race-mixing Americans can expect quick
and bitter judgment. For “Ariel,” the choices are clear:

The people of the United States have now thrust upon them, the question
of negro equality, social, political and religious. How will they decide it? If
they decide it one way, then they will make the sixth [actually, the fifth,
unless “Ariel” regards the recent war as an episode of divine chastisement]
cause of invoking God’s wrath once again on the earth. They will begin to
discover this approaching wrath: (1) By God bringing confusion. (2) By his
breaking the government into pieces, or fragments, in which the negro will
go and settle with those that favor this equality. (3) In God pouring out the
fire of his wrath, on this portion of them; but in what way, or in what form,
none can tell until it comes, only that in severity it will equal in intensity
and torture, the destruction of fire burning them up. (4) The states or people
          

that favor this equality and amalgamation of the white and black races, God
will exterminate.68

Will Americans repeat the fatal error committed by their biblical forebears?
“Ariel” fears the worst: “Will you place yourselves . . . against God? All analogy
says you will!” If antebellum proslavery literature connected the Negro with
disorder and rebellion and the prospect of widespread manumission led
Southerners to predict rebellion, race war, and economic disaster, the Eman-
cipation Proclamation and radical reconstruction invested these fears with an
apocalyptic spirit.

Disorder and Ham’s Name

The obsession with Negro rebellion that made laughter a compelling theme
among proslavery advocates of the curse also gave rise to a variety of depic-
tions of Ham that accentuated his disorderly character. Some slavery apolo-
gists even “discovered” disorder in Ham’s name.69 Typical is Josiah Priest, who
wrote that Ham’s cognomen is so apropos of his personality that his parents
“could not well have named that child any thing else but Ham, and keep
within the bounds of the dialect of their language.” The name was prophetic
of his character and fortune, as well as those of his entire race, for Ham “not
only signified black in its literal sense, but pointed out the very disposition
of his mind”:

The word doubtless, has more meanings than we are now acquainted with,
two of which, however, besides the first, we find are heat or violence of
temper, exceedingly prone to acts of ferocity and cruelty, involving murder,
war, butcheries and even cannibalism, including beastly lusts and lascivious-
ness in its worst feature, going beyond the force of these passions, as pos-
sessed in common by the other races of men. Second, the word signifies
deceit, dishonesty, treachery, low mindedness, and malice.70

“What a group of horrors are here,” Priest concludes, “all agreeing in a most
surprising manner with the color of Ham’s skin.”71 Note how many of the
horrors Priest lists as cognates of “Ham”—violence, ferocity, cruelty, and las-
civiousness, for example—reflect white fears of black disorder.

The Symbiosis of Honor and Order

What is the connection between the honor- and order-bound readings of

Genesis 9 surveyed in this and the previous chapter? Although these themes
have been treated independently, this should not obscure the fact that they
informed and reinforced one another in the antebellum biblical imagination.72
102         

In James Sloan’s interpretation of Noah’s curse, for example, honor and

order operate in tandem.73 According to Sloan, Ham’s fault was his failure to
observe God’s command to honor parents. Very simply, “Ham deserved death
for his unfilial and impious conduct.” But there is more: Because Ham sought
to involve his brothers in his unseemly enjoyment, despite their refusal to
participate in the “improper and sinful sport of their brother,” his conduct is
both dishonorable and disorderly. Sloan writes that as punishment for his
transgression “the Great Lawgiver . . . set a mark of degradation on him . . .
that all coming generations might know and respect the laws of God.”74 Thus,
in Sloan’s mind, the concern for honor in Noah’s family is inseparable from
the desire that future generations preserve order by acting in accordance with
divine law. Similarly, Leander Ker’s honor reading of Ham’s offense (in which
he condemns the “conduct of Ham in exposing his father’s shame”) also
resonates with disorder: Ham’s is “the first deliberate and wilful offence
[which] as in the case of Adam, according to the moral government of God,
must be punished with the utmost rigor of law.”75 Finally, the author of African
Servitude, in the midst of a thoroughgoing honor reading of Genesis 9, estab-
lishes this connection between dishonor and disorder: “In refusing to honor
his parent, he refused to honor all governors, natural civil, ecclesiastical, hu-
man, and divine.”76
Once again, the profound link between honor and order in the proslavery
worldview is illumined by Southern historians. Exploring the meaning slave
rebellions took on for Southern men of honor, Kenneth Greenberg observes
that Nat Turner and John Brown could not be perceived as honorable men,
despite their principled and sacrificial actions. Rather than one who preferred
an honorable death over life in bondage, Turner was portrayed as a trickster
and manipulator, an ignorant, superstitious, and cunning man.77 Similarly,
Bertram Wyatt-Brown writes that the antebellum code of honor “not only
affected the way southern whites thought of themselves and others, but also
influenced how they viewed hierarchy, government, and rebelliousness. The
concept of honor was designed to give structure to life and meaning to valor,
hierarchy, and family protection.”78

Conclusion

The Civil War only strengthened resolve among Southern advocates of Noah’s
curse. As late as 1864, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in
the Confederate States of America defiantly proclaimed that “the long con-
tinued agitations of our adversaries have wrought within us a deeper convic-
tion of the divine appointment of domestic servitude, and have led to a clearer
comprehension of the duties we owe to the African race. We hesitate not to
affirm that it is the peculiar mission of the Southern Church to conserve the
institution of slavery, and to make it a blessing both to master and slave.”79
          

But with Union victory came social and political realities that necessitated
psychological adjustment among conquered Southerners. Noah’s curse had
been severely discredited by abolitionist exegesis, by the rise of scientific ra-
cism, and by Confederate defeat. The curse had functioned as a rationale for
black slavery, and now slavery had disappeared, most likely forever. As South-
erners no longer required biblical sanction for their peculiar institution, ref-
erences to Genesis 9 abruptly disappeared from their writings.80 If the curse
was invoked in postbellum discussions of segregation, miscegenation, and
voting rights, allusions were brief and vague. Precisely because Genesis 9:20–
27 was considered so germane to the question of American slavery, it did not
seem applicable to race relations in a free society. Thus, confident references
to Genesis 9 so common in the antebellum period became conspicuously
absent, as proponents of white superiority looked elsewhere to support their
case.
But if the American attachment to Noah’s curse was invisible in the cen-
tury following the Civil War, it was not dead. When legal segregation came
under concerted attack in the 1950s, the first impulse of many white Christians
was to revive the curse to serve as a biblical defense of racial separation.
Perhaps the linchpin in the biblical defense of slavery could be refashioned,
segregationists wagered, for battle with the forces of integration. The most
robust effort to apply Noah’s curse to American segregation appeared in 1959
in Humphrey K. Ezell’s The Christian Problem of Racial Segregation.81 Claiming
to engage in “a careful study of the Bible passages that relate to this subject,”
Ezell offered a gloss on the curse specifically adapted to the needs of the
Christian segregationist. In a chapter titled “The Old Testament Teaches Racial
Segregation,” Ezell quoted Genesis 9:20–27 in its entirety, calling it “an im-
portant passage on racial segregation.”82
The key in applying this passage to the situation at hand was Ezell’s
contention that “in this account God has segregated the races. Shem and
Japheth are to dwell in tents together; but a curse is placed upon Ham and
his descendants, and they are to be servants to Shem and Japheth.”83 Essential
to Ezell’s rehabilitation of Genesis 9 for segregationist use was his assertion
that the white race in America is comprised of the descendants of Japheth
and Shem, whereas the Negro is descended from Ham. To what he regards as
this clear teaching (!) of Genesis 9, Ezell added that “the descendants of both
Shem and Japheth have made far greater contributions to the advancement
of the human race” than have Ham’s. Further, the fact that human beings are
“of one blood” (cf. Acts 17:26) does not remove “the curse of racial segregation
and servitude” that has resulted from “Ham’s sin.” Finding no indication in
either testament that the sentence of servitude upon Ham’s descendants had
been abrogated, Ezell likened the normative relationship between white and
black to that of master and hired servant.
Although Ezell does not characterize Ham’s fault, his description of the
inevitable results of integration and racial mixing resonates with antebellum
104        

themes in the interpretation of Noah’s curse, particularly order and disorder.

Ezell calls attention to the so-called psychological characteristics of Negroes,
which he argues include high emotionality and “childish gaiety”; he laments
the “discord and strife,” “confusion,” “disciplinary problems,” “mob rule,”
and “lawlessness” that integration promises to visit upon American society;
he argues that as a principle of creation, segregation is necessary to maintain
“growth and prosperity,” “domestic tranquility,” and “the general welfare and
health of our people”; he contends that racial separation enables whites to
demonstrate the “efficiency” that is their trademark; and he warns that re-
moving traditional barriers to racial interaction will cause “the downfall of
our nation,” just as surely as Solomon’s alliances with foreign women “laid
the foundation for the downfall of the nation of Israel.”
Because he was virtually alone in looking to Noah’s curse as a primary
rationale for maintaining American apartheid, Ezell’s argument for “Bible seg-
regation” is atypical. However, as his version of the curse traffics in the same
concerns for societal order that inspired segregationists to introduce Nimrod
and his tower to American racial discourse, Ezell’s reading of Genesis 9 pro-
vides a natural segue to our discussion of the curse’s transformation in post-
bellum America.
 6
Grandson of Disorder

Nimrod Comes to America

Now the whole earth had one language and the same
words. And as they migrated from the east, they came
upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And
they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and
burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and
bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build
ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens,
and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall
be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
The L came down to see the city and the tower, which
mortals had built. And the L said, “Look, they are one
people, and they have all one language; and this is only
the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they pro-
pose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us
go down, and confuse their language there, so that they
will not understand one another’s speech.” So the L
scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the
earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was
called Babel, because there the L confused the lan-
guage of all the earth; and from there the L scattered
them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:1–9

   in the previous chapter, slavery apologists developed explanations

of Ham’s transgression that implicated African Americans in a primordial
105
106         

violation of order. The present chapter explores how similar concerns are
reflected in the portrait of Nimrod sketched by American Bible readers during
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Americans embellished Nimrod’s leg-
end in distinctive ways, including a darkening of his portrait. Analyzing Amer-
ican versions of Nimrod’s unauthorized biography will reveal how Bible read-
ers have appropriated the leitmotifs of rebellion and disorder forged in
antebellum readings of Noah’s curse.

Ham and Nimrod

One of the strange ironies associated with Nimrod’s legend is that it originated
in a portion of scripture notably lacking in anti-African sentiment. Because
the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 follows immediately upon Noah’s curse,
we might expect anti-Hamite prejudice to be inscribed there. However, as
Gene Rice notes, “not only are such feelings absent, but all peoples are con-
sciously and deliberately related to each other as brothers. No one, not even
Israel, is elevated above anyone else and no disparaging remark is made about
any people, not even the enemies of Israel.”1 Yet, while the Table of Nations
may evoke images of equality and coexistence, its canonical proximity to
Genesis 9:20–27 has encouraged Bible readers to make fast distinctions be-
tween Noah’s descendants. If a brief and undisparaging allusion to Nimrod
as a “mighty hunter before the Lord” gave rise to the profoundly vilifying
interpretive tradition reviewed in chapter 3, this was due in part to the fact
that Nimrod was only one generation removed from Ham.
In the history of interpretation, Ham shadowed, but never eclipsed, Nim-
rod. The two figures remained remarkably distinct in European readings of
Genesis, and occasionally Nimrod’s qualities were reflected onto Ham. But in
the American biblical imagination, Nimrod has never escaped the contours
of the Hamite character imagined in proslavery readings of Genesis 9. This
fact has determined two aspects of Nimrod’s American portrait: his depiction
as a black man and as an archrebel. Nimrod’s racial identity was based in the
assumption that Ham was the progenitor of the African race and in influential
texts—most notably Priest’s Slavery and Hislop’s The Two Babylons—that
consciously racialized his grandson. Perceptions of Nimrod’s rebellious char-
acter were rooted in the history of interpretation2 and in order readings of
Genesis 9. A brief history of Hamite disorder was sketched by Josiah Priest
in 1843: “After Ham makes a mockery of him whom he ought to have re-
spected . . . he leaves his father and his godly brothers and sets up a new
kingdom for himself on the earth. Finally his oldest son presents him with a
grandson, Nimrod, who, after setting up his power through tyranny, afflicts
the godly descendants of Noah in various ways, establishes a kingdom for
himself, and assumes sole sovereignty over it.”3 Priest moves from Ham’s
laughter to Nimrod’s tyranny in just two sentences. While most American
           

Bible readers did not make the transition so swiftly, their portraits of Nimrod
were profoundly influenced by the proslavery tradition of Hamite disorder.
As this chapter reveals, postbellum Americans refused to relinquish Genesis
9–11 as a resource for comprehending their nation’s history and destiny. Al-
though the credibility of Noah’s curse had been radically diminished, they
preserved the Bible’s relevance for American race relations by displacing Ham
with Nimrod, who became the true patriarch of rebellion, the genuine per-
sonification of Hamite disorder.

Antebellum Period

The most important biographers of Nimrod in antebellum America were Jo-

siah Priest and Jerome Holgate. Priest’s Slavery as It Relates to the Negro or
African Race, well known for its discussion of Ham and his curse, also in-
cluded an influential treatment of Nimrod.4 Priest averred that the Tower of
Babel “was intended, under the administration of the ferocious Nimrod, as
the nucleus of a kingdom of Idolatry”5 and declared that Hamites alone were
responsible for constructing the tower. None of the other “people of the house
of Noah” were involved, nor were they affected by the resulting confusion of
languages. Priest inferred these things from the biblical statement that Babel
was the beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom and “the natural antipathy of the
children of Shem toward the blacks.”
Priest ascribed responsibility for this enmity to Nimrod himself: The
Hamites “rebelled against the religion of Noah and Shem, and the other pa-
triarchs, under the rule of the terrible Nimrod . . . the black king of Babel . . .
the first sovereign and tyrant of the age, as well as the abettor of idolatry.”6
Furthermore, it is from “the great rebel against God and his religion” that
Africans inherit their “marked opposition to the religion of Noah, more than
. . . the opposition of all the other nations of the earth put together.”7 Ac-
cording to Priest, Nimrod’s spiritual rebellion was designed to “produce and
consolidate a power, by which to protect his race against the threatened ser-
vitude of Noah . . . as well as to establish a contrary system of religion, which
would subserve the same end.”8 As charges of rebellion and idolatry naturally
invite association with the father of rebellion and idolatry, Priest likened Nim-
rod to “Satan among the fallen angels.”
In Priest’s conception of the Hamite character, idolatry is symptomatic
of a lack of self-restraint. Whereas the white man views liberty as a path to
moral and physical improvement, to “government of the passions” and a “well
ordered society”; for the Negro—slave or free—“the idea of liberty is but the
idea of a holyday, in which they are to be let loose from all restraint without
control; they are to play, work or sleep, as may suit their inclination, following
out to the utmost, the perfect indulgence of indolence, stupidity, and the
animal passions.”9 Nimrod is the very embodiment of these qualities, as an
108        

illustration in Priest’s book attests: Dressed in an animal skin, Nimrod wields

a club against wild beasts. Priest embellishes this portrait of Nimrod’s physical
potency by drawing on the history of biblical interpretation, as well as secular
mythology: “As to Nimrod, the hero of Babel, being the great type of all the
Herculeses of the ancient nations, there can be no doubt; for the legends of
every country who have claimed him to be a god, represent him as always
being armed with a club of enormous size, with which he slew the monsters
of the earth—dreadful serpents, wild beasts, &c.”10
Anticipating the use to which Nimrod’s legend would be put later in
American history,11 Priest notes that “a grand law of God in nature” is the
adaptation of men or animals to their proper location. He maintains that the
providence which led “blacks” to settle in the south, “whites” in the north,
and “reds” in between “was in exact conformity with their several physical
characters and constitutions, as well as a remarkable adaptation to their re-
spective complexions. . . . If there was not a Divine hand in all this, why did
. . . each division of the three sources of mankind studiously [keep] themselves
apart in a great measure, and doubtless, far more so in the first ages?”12 Here
we have an American expression of the traditional notion that God directed
the sons of Noah to prearranged spots on the globe and that Nimrod and the
Hamites resisted this dispersion by squatting in territory reserved for Semites.
Priest’s Nimrod is a fascinating admixture of biblical and mythological
attributes, including brute strength, idolatrous rebellion, and Mephistophelean
ingenuity. Yet Priest never loses sight of the genealogical link between Nimrod
and his grandfather, the putative recipient of Noah’s curse. To highlight the
connection, Priest depicts Ham and Nimrod as contemporaries. According to
Priest, it was Ham who left Noah’s tents near Ararat and migrated toward the
plain of Shinar, where Nimrod founded his empire, and it was “Ham and all
the race” who participated in building the tower. Clearly, Priest’s interest in
Nimrod’s legend is a function of its usefulness in depicting Ham’s descendants
as a beastly, uncivilized lot, suited for slavery. But Nimrod confronts him with
the same paradox that had faced earlier Bible readers: How can a man as
ferocious, mighty, and clever as Nimrod—a “gigantic and fierce” leader who
becomes an object of popular veneration13—represent a race destined for
servitude? Priest’s answer seems to be that Nimrod’s physical prowess repre-
sents another compelling reason to enslave American Negroes. In Priest’s pic-
ture of Nimrod, we encounter the ambivalence of proslavery thought toward
the African American, whose docility was celebrated precisely because he pos-
sessed inchoate power and a proclivity for resisting authority.
A different sort of portrayal of Nimrod is found in Jerome B. Holgate’s
1860 novel, Noachidae: or, Noah, and His Descendants. This 350-page work was
a fictionalized retelling of Genesis 6–11 (that is, accounts of the Flood and its
immediate aftermath).14 Although Ham’s infidelity and disobedience are a ma-
jor theme, the novel’s real villain is Orion15 (Nimrod), to whom an entire
chapter is devoted. Orion is introduced as
          

a son of Cush, a gigantic youth, who was at least a head taller than his
brethren of the same age. He was not only taller and larger, but proportion-
ately stouter. He had the skin of a lion, which he had killed with his own
hands, fastened around his loins, and his head was covered with eagle’s feath-
ers, and those of other birds, which he had killed. His bow was equal to his
fathers [sic] in size and force. To the families of Shem and Japhet he was an
object of considerable curiosity, and at first was quite a hero among them,
but his disposition was morose and overbearing. He was hardly known to
laugh, and if much pleased, or excited any way, would usually give vent to
his emotions, by a guttural ejaculation much like a whoop, or ugh, forced
up unwillingly, while his large dark eyes would blaze up and send out ser-
pentine gleams of light. . . . He was fond of hunting, rambling for days
among the woods and hills, crouching among the rocks and shooting at the
wild beasts as they passed.16

This description includes many references to the history of interpretation,

particularly Nimrod’s prodigious size and strength, his success as a hunter,
his aggressive and unrefined character and his lack of intelligence. Adept at
fighting hordes of wild animals with a javelin and bow, Holgate’s Orion is
quite similar to—and may have been influenced by—the Nimrod of Josiah
Priest.17
Not surprisingly, Holgate assumes Orion to have been the architect of the
infamous Tower of Babel. After departing Ararat, the Hamites experience mis-
adventure and famine until Nimrod convinces them to set out in pursuit of
Eden. In search of the garden, they arrive on the Plain of Shinar, where they
encounter Semites from the family of Asshur, to whom Noah has assigned
this region. Asshur asks Nimrod how “it could ever become necessary for one
branch of our father Noah’s family to employ force to compel another branch
of it to obey his decrees.”18 But Nimrod will not acknowledge Noah’s role as
God’s vice-regent in the postdiluvian world; he rationalizes that defying his
great-grandfather is quite different from disobeying God.
The Semites know they are the land’s rightful heirs, yet they cannot resist
the mighty Orion’s appeal. The young men gather around him and exclaim,
“We will do as you say!” as Orion looks “on the excited crowd, with an
emotion visible in his countenance, and a smoky, smiling gleam of the eye.”19
He encourages the sons of Shem to join the Hamites in constructing a city
and “a big tower, that will be above the waters.” Young men from the families
of Lud and Arphaxad gather round him, forming “a kind of armed force, that
live[s], not so much by agricultural pursuits as by a shepherd’s life, and by
hunting.”20 Others, coming near to catch a glimpse of the tower, are “be-
witched” by Nimrod and join the building campaign.
Even before completing the square structure that will measure eight hun-
dred feet on each side, Orion is using it as an altar to the sun. Hearing of
this, Noah opines that “the foolish Hamites, rebelling against the Almighty in
one case, do not receive his spirit, and, being open to the attacks of Satan,
110         

they are liable to be seduced away into some act of disobedience, as our poor
mother Eve was.”21 In one scene, Orion ascends the tower with a sacrificial
horse; Noah arrives to denounce this idolatry and to note that “Satan is mak-
ing a speculation out of your conceit, my son.” The tower’s demise is realized
when it is enveloped in a “column of phosphorescent light” and its upper
portion tumbles to the ground “shaking the earth for miles around.”22 Al-
though the rumor circulates that “the Almighty has killed Nimrod,” hunters
visiting the site a few days later discover a man crawling out of a hole in the
ruins. The book concludes with the ominous words, “it was Nimrod.”
If Holgate’s Ham is a relatively benign character, his Nimrod is incorri-
gibly wicked. He and his work are described again and again as “wicked,” and
he embodies the perpetuation of antediluvian corruption in the post-Flood
world. He is a gigantic and brutal man who boasts, “See how potent I am!”
before performing feats of strength. He has a penchant for violence, as well
as “a strong relish for the juice of the grape.” He is the mastermind behind
the ill-fated Tower of Babel and a blatant idolater. Noah calls Nimrod a “Ti-
tan—earth-born, carnal, without the spirit of the Almighty,” his open revolt
against God making him “conspicuously Titan.” Nimrod represents a different
brand of humanity than the “heaven-born,—spiritual men” who constitute
the rest of Noah’s family.23 In Holgate’s Dantean depiction, Nimrod is a “gi-
ant” not only in stature but also in his spiritless carnality. To complete this
demonic portrait, Nimrod’s mother confides to her son that she has always
believed he was “the promised seed.”
Significantly, Nimrod exemplifies Hamite evil not through sexuality, dis-
honor, violence, or idolatry, but through rebellion and disorder. He recognizes
his obligation to leave the territory occupied by the descendants of Shem, but
Noah’s curse leads him to devise a rebellious plan. If we scatter and divide as
our father Noah commands, Orion warns, we will become servants just as he
predicted. Instead, he says, “we must make ourselves strong by union, and
who’ll make servants of us then? . . . This country given to Shem, eh? . . . Who
told our father Noah to give it to him? We should have been consulted,—we
are an item! Ugh! . . . let us build a city, and tower that will reach unto heaven,
and keep together, and make ourselves strong; then who will make slaves of
us?”24 Throughout the novel, the narrator condemns this Hamite contempt
for the divinely appointed ordering of the world. For instance, as construction
begins on the tower, a Semite woman appears to convince Nimrod that the
dispersion of Noah’s sons must be strictly enforced:
The Almighty knows best what is for our interest. Our father Noah says,
his children must be distributed over the earth, so as to prevent their
interfering with one another. It might answer very well for a little while,
but in time, if they are not widely separated, it will bring trouble. There
will be no end of it, he says, when they once begin; so you are setting
yourself directly against his decrees, and he may drown you all with an-
other flood. . . . 25
          

Because he personifies resistance to this dispersion of the “races,” Nimrod is

a primordial threat to the world’s order. Thus, Noachidae is primary con-
cerned not with the curse on Ham’s descendants but with the need for human
dispersion and the Hamites’ propensity for rebellion.
Occasional references to Nimrod in the writings of proslavery intellectuals
confirm that his role as exemplar of Hamite disorder was well established
during the antebellum period. In 1823, Frederick Dalcho asserted that “the
sons of Canaan usurped Palestine, as well as the sons of Cush, under Nimrod,
the land of Shinar, or Babel.”26 Two decades later, Thomas Smyth, Presbyte-
rian divine of South Carolina, used Nimrod’s behavior to illustrate the effects
of the curse. In a vigorous defense of the biblical view of creation, Smyth
averred that “the 10th and 11th chapters of Genesis are unquestionably the
best ethnographical document on the face of the earth.” According to Smyth,
this document teaches that the descendants of Ham “refused to abide by the
allotment of God, and under the arch-rebel Nimrod, drove out Asshur and
his sons, who had been located in the plains of Shinar (Chap x. 11).”27 In
reiterating this ancient dimension of the Nimrod legend, Smyth and Dalcho
confirm that among antebellum proslavery intellectuals Cush’s son was viewed
as an exemplar of Hamite rebellion.28
Nimrod was also featured in the works of abolitionist writers who relied
on Ham’s grandson to advance the case for anti-slavery.29 For example, Joseph
P. Thompson wrote in 1856 that since “NIMROD [was] . . . the founder of
that Assyrian empire which for ages ruled all western Asia, . . . the growth of
all this grandeur and power . . . surely does not verify the curse of perpetual
bondage said to have been pronounced upon the posterity of Ham.”30 Another
opponent of slavery who employed Nimrod to cast doubt on Ham’s curse
was William Henry Brisbane. In 1847, Brisbane asked his readers to recall that
Noah’s malediction did not fall upon all of Ham’s posterity. In fact, “the very
first man mentioned as a mighty one in the earth was Nimrod, a descendant
from Ham. In the same lineal descent from Ham was Asshur, who built
Nineveh. The posterity of Abraham who descended from Shem were carried
captive into Assyria of which Nineveh was the capital.”31
Nimrod was put to quite another use by black abolitionist James W. C.
Pennington, who invoked Ham’s grandson to explain the historic degrada-
tion of the African people. Although Pennington contended that blacks
were descendants of Cush and Mizraim, he felt obliged to explain why Af-
ricans had strayed so far from the pure religion of Noah. The culprit, ac-
cording to Pennington, was “the doctrine invented by Nimrod, [which] be-
gan to prevail immediately after his death, as he was worshipped by his
posterity. He is the Belus or Baal of sacred history. This doctrine was
adopted by the Ethiopians of the second generation, and became firmly in-
corporated into their theology, their government, and their literature.”32
Pennington found the legend of Nimrod useful for explaining the immor-
ality, heathenism, idolatry, and ancestor worship current in Africa during
112          

his own day. Thompson and Brisbane utilized Nimrod as a foil to Ham’s
curse. But each inadvertently transmitted Nimrod’s legend, including aspects
that could be put to racist use.

Postbellum Period

The first postbellum author to give Nimrod prominence in a published dis-

cussion of racial matters was Buckner H. Payne, who wrote under the pen
name Ariel a forty-eight-page pamphlet titled The Negro: What Is His Eth-
nological Status? (1867) that confirms Eugene Genovese’s observation that fol-
lowing the Civil War Southerners were increasingly receptive to “scientific”
arguments for black inferiority. “Ariel” contends that his opinions are guided
solely by the Bible, history, and the “logic of facts.” Yet he dissents dramatically
from prewar tradition by defending “the maligned and slandered Ham” and
insisting that the Negro is a pre-Adamite beast of the field who was preserved
on the ark. According to “Ariel,” Negroes entered the ark with the other
creatures, probably by sevens.
While his desire to dehumanize blacks forces him to relinquish Noah’s
curse, “Ariel” ingeniously preserves the stigma of Nimrod and his tower. He
replaces the genetic link between the Adamite Ham and the beastly Negro
with an associative link between Nimrod and his followers, whom he char-
acterizes as “mostly negroes.” How do we know that “the great multitude that
assembled on the Plain of Shinar,” a multitude “assembled by his arbitrary
power, and other inducements,” were primarily blacks? The “facts” are stated
in Genesis 10: Nimrod “must have resorted to [negroes] to get the multitude
that he assembled on the Plain of Shinar; for the Bible plainly tells us where
the other descendants of Noah’s children went, including those of Nimrod’s
immediate relations; and from the Bible account where they did go to, it is
evident that they did not go with Nimrod to Shinar.”33 “Ariel” finds further
support for his theory in the observation that the Negro, “when unrestrained,
never inhabits mountainous districts or countries; and therefore we readily
find him in the level Plain of Shinar.”34
Despite his commitment to an “ethnological” theory of black identity,
“Ariel’s” picture of Nimrod is profoundly reliant on the history of biblical
interpretation.35 Nimrod is portrayed as a tyrant, “the first on earth who began
to monopolize power and play the despot,” a hunter of men as well as wild
animals. “Ariel” even connects Nimrod with the biblical Flood narrative, com-
bining the ancient view that the Tower of Babel was a scheme to protect the
builders from another deluge with the notion—popularized in the 1850s by
John Fletcher—that the Flood represented God’s reaction to the sin of race
mixing.36 Combining these disparate strands of tradition, “Ariel” reasons that
if Nimrod expected a flood he must have intended to perpetuate the same sin
for which the first deluge was unleashed—amalgamation between Adamites
         

and soulless beasts. Clearly, “Nimrod was not entirely cured, by the flood, of
this antediluvian love for and miscegenation with negroes.”37 Otherwise, why
build such a tower? “Ariel” also retrieves the tradition that the tower builders
resisted the postdiluvian dispersion, though he adapts it to his theory of black
origins. Because the “Babel-builders knew they were but beasts . . . [and that]
it was the very nature of beasts to be scattered over the earth,” they sought a
name for themselves by constructing the tower. The conspirators also pro-
posed to build a city where their power could be concentrated, making it
impossible for Noah’s descendants to subdue the earth. It was precisely “to
prevent this concentration of power and numbers, that God confounded their
language, broke them into bands, overthrew their tower, stopped the building
of their city, and scattered or dispersed them over the earth.”38
Despite his ambitious attempt to refashion white racism in “scientific”
terms, “Ariel” remained dependent on the legend of Nimrod and its associ-
ation with Hamite disorder. On one hand, Nimrod subdues Negroes “for the
purposes of rebellion against God,” and his identity as a “mighty hunter . . .
against the Lord” is intimately related to this fact. On the other hand, Nim-
rod’s tyranny becomes a racial crime in itself: “Kingly power had its origin in
love for and association with the negro. Beware!” Thus, the ancient conception
of Nimrod as the primordial human rebel and the modern view of Nimrod
as a shameless miscegenist are carefully combined in “Ariel’s” portrait of the
grandson of disorder.
Writing forty years after “Ariel,” the Mississippi cleric and Confederate
war veteran J. W. Sandell reflects a similar shift from Genesis 9:20–27 to
Genesis 10–11 as the epicenter of American racial readings of Genesis. In The
United States in Scripture, Sandell reiterates the efficacy of Noah’s curse,
though four decades after the Emancipation Proclamation he is obliged to
view it in terms of ungovernability rather than servitude. Sandell interprets
the curse to mean that the Negro race was “prophetically condemned to an
inferior relation to that of Shem and Japheth, was not fit for self-government
and should not rule in either church or state.”39 In much the same way as
“Ariel,” Sandell exploits Nimrod’s legend, although he focuses on its potential
as a biblical rationale for racial segregation. “It is an outrage upon nature,”
Sandell writes, “to undertake to force the extremes of the races to equality
with each other.” This was demonstrated in the sinful attempt to construct
the Tower of Babel, which symbolizes “the desire to be great and to have a
name as one great nation.” Because “the ambition for a great central govern-
ment with one fallible human creature as supreme ruler is not at all pleasing
to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, . . . God has divided the races of men
and they are scattered over the face of the earth.”40 For Sandell, the tower
symbolizes what die-hard Confederates regarded as the chief threat to human
freedom—a centralized and self-aggrandizing federal government. Sandell
compared such governments to Babel (Genesis 11) and Babylon (Revelation)
alike.
114       

American society underwent momentous changes between 1843 (when

Priest presented his portrait of Nimrod), 1867 (when “Ariel” completed his
own portrayal), and 1907 (when Sandell rendered his). Curiously, though,
while these authors differed fundamentally on the origin and ethnological
status of blacks, they agreed that the Tower of Babel was the product of a
Negro-led or executed rebellion that was a threat to human survival in the
past and a warning to Americans in the present. This consensus anticipated
the pivotal role Nimrod and his tower would play in white perceptions of the
African American during the twentieth century.

Twentieth Century

As we have seen, despite the diminished potency of Noah’s curse that naturally
accompanied slavery’s demise, in the second half of the nineteenth century
Genesis 10 and 11 figured prominently in American discussions of black in-
feriority and the necessity of racial segregation. In the first half of the twentieth
century, when segregation and racial hierarchy were largely uncontested, ar-
guments claiming biblical sanction for black subjugation were less likely to
find their way into print. During this period, the legend of Nimrod and his
tower was kept alive in popular biblical commentaries and preaching aids.
While ignoring the question of Nimrod’s racial identity, these works reiterated
aspects of the interpretive tradition that were foundational to American ver-
sions of his legend:

• The postdiluvian chapters of the primeval history (Genesis 9–11) set

out the principles upon which our world is founded.
• God willed that after the Flood Noah’s descendants should disperse
and repopulate the world.
• Those who resisted this dispersion were very likely led by Nimrod,
whose name means “let us rebel.”41
• The emblems of this postdiluvian defiance were the Hamite usurpa-
tion of Semitic land and the building of the Tower of Babel.42
• Nimrod, like Ham and Canaan, forsook the religion of Noah and en-
couraged idolatry.
• Nimrod was a hunter of men, “a cruel oppressor and bloody war-
rior,” who renewed the practice of war.
• Nimrod was the first tyrant and the first to found and rule a world
empire.43
• God thwarted the rebellion at Babel and dispersed the builders ac-
cording to the original divine scheme.

Some biblical expositors found in Nimrod’s legend an edifying message

in the otherwise tedious genealogical tables of Genesis 10. Joseph Exell, for
         

example, presented the mighty hunter as a model for “gospel archery.” Imag-
ining the hero with “broad shoulders and shaggy apparel and sun-browned
face, and arm bunched with muscle,” Exell asked, “if it is such a grand thing
and such a brave thing to clear wild beasts out of a country,” is it not a better
thing “to hunt down and destroy those great evils of society that are stalking
the land with the fierce eye and bloody paw, and sharp tusk and quick
spring.”44 Arthur Pink fashioned Nimrod as a forerunner of “the last great
World-Ruler” who precedes Christ’s Second Coming. Among seven parallels
between Nimrod and the coming Antichrist, Pink noted their names (cf. “The
Rebel” and “The Lawless One”), their rebellions (both head great confeder-
acies in open revolt against God), their identities as “king,” their occupations
as “hunters of men,” and their inordinate desire for fame.45 In his description
of this “complete typical picture” of Antichrist, Pink merged the interpretive
tradition and modern premillennial eschatology:
In Nimrod and his schemes we see Satan’s initial attempt to raise up a
universal ruler of men. In his inordinate desire for fame, in the mighty power
which he wielded, in his ruthless and brutal methods—suggested by the word
“hunter”; in his blatant defiance of the Creator (seen in his utter disregard
for His command to replenish the earth) by determining to prevent his
subjects from being scattered abroad; in his founding of the kingdom of
Babylon—the Gate of god—thus arrogating to himself Divine honors;. . . .
and finally, in the fact that the destruction of his kingdom is described in
the words, “Let us go down and there confound their language” (11:7—fore-
shadowing so marvelously the descent of Christ from Heaven . . . ).46
Other Christian authors writing in the first half of the twentieth century,
equally uninterested in racializing the biblical patriarchs, applied the legend
of Nimrod to contemporary world politics. In God and the Nations (1947),
Harry Lacey advanced the familiar argument that following the Deluge God
moved each race “to its own appointed region with its particular character
and climate.”47 God prepared each land, Lacey argued, “with a view toward
separating the sons of Adam,” that each nation might live out its national
experience before God. Lacey identified a clear lesson for postwar America in
God’s decision to divide the human race “rather than communising it.”48 It
may appear desirable, Lacey wrote, to “unite mankind in federation, working
as one to accomplish human ambitions.” But Lacey contended that such “ar-
ranged federations” would lead not to true human fellowship, but to “uni-
formity or monotonous sameness.”49 Attempts to abolish national or racial
distinctions would not prevent wars, Lacey warned. In fact, that current at-
tempts to unify humankind are but the forerunners of greater and more
ambitious schemes is clearly revealed in the word of God. Although these
attempts may gain some measure of success, they “will be as anti-God in
[their] object and prove as disastrous in [their] end as original Babel was.”50
For Lacey, Genesis 10–11 validated the separate existence of nations while
cautioning against schemes of international confederation. In a shrinking
116         

postwar world defined by the cold war, the tower became the “symbol of
human unity so signally confounded by Divine intervention.”51

Defending Segregation
Racial readings of Genesis 9–11 reemerged with a vergeance during the seg-
regation debates of the 1950s and 1960s. Not surprisingly, the story of Noah
and his sons played a symbolic role in these debates. For instance, in his
contribution to a 534-hour Senate filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia read the Authorized Version of Genesis
9:18–27 into the Congressional Record, remarking that “Noah apparently saw
fit to discriminate against Ham’s descendants in that he placed a curse upon
Canaan.”52 Ingeniously, Byrd applied Noah’s curse to the impending Civil
Rights legislation by recasting it as a biblical rationale for “discrimination.”
Further indications of the curse’s popularity during the civil rights era
can be gleaned from the writings of moderate Christians who assailed the
biblical and theological bases of segregation.53 Indeed, religious integrationists
writing during the second half of the 1950s identified Genesis 9:20–27 as a
fundamental underpinning of segregationist sentiment. According to T. B.
Maston, who in The Bible and Race devoted an entire chapter to Noah’s
curse, proponents interpreted the curse to mean “that the Negro, as a de-
scendant of Ham, is destined by God to fill permanently a subservient place
in society, that he should never be considered an equal by the white man. On
the basis of the curse, some even contend that the Negro is innately inferior
and that he can never lift himself or be lifted to the intellectual, cultural, or
even moral level of other races.”54 Progressive authors such as Maston, em-
barrassed by the curse’s enduring popularity in the churches, took up the ab-
olitionists’ mantle in an effort to loosen the curse’s grip on the Christian
mind.55 Yet they virtually ignored Nimrod and his tower as sources for a re-
ligious defense of racial separation.56 To the extent that they were unaware of
the potent connection between Ham, Nimrod, and Babel, their assault on
“Bible segregation” was misplaced, for thoughtful Christians in search of a
biblical rationale for separation concluded that, like Nimrod’s kingdom, they
should begin at Babel.
Published justifications of segregation that relied on racial readings of
Nimrod and his tower began to appear in the immediate aftermath of the
1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Among the first
to enter the fray was Rev. T. G. Gillespie, a Southern Presbyterian who was
President of Bellhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi. In a celebrated address
entitled “A Christian View of Segregation,” Gillespie explored the biblical
foundations for racial separation.57 Gillespie emphasized an argument popu-
larized in nineteenth-century American racial discourse: Following the Deluge,
Noah’s three sons “became the progenitors of three distinct racial groups,
which were to repeople and overspread the earth.” According to Gillespie, the
          

descendants of Shem occupied most of Asia, the progeny of Japheth traveled

west toward Europe, and the children of Ham moved southward in the di-
rection of the tropics and the continent of Africa. This biblical record of
human dispersion, which Gillespie maintained had not been successfully dis-
puted by anthropologists or ethnologists, implied “that an all-wise Providence
has ‘determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habita-
tion’ [Acts 17:26].” This same Providence was “responsible for the distinct
racial characteristics which seem to have become fixed in prehistoric times,
and which are chiefly responsible for the segregation of racial groups across
the centuries and in our time.”58
According to Gillespie, the confusion of tongues at Babel and the con-
sequent scattering of peoples was “an act of special Divine Providence to
frustrate the mistaken efforts of godless men to assure the permanent inte-
gration of the peoples of the earth.” Incidentally, he argued, the development
of different languages also became an effective means of preserving the sep-
arate existence of racial groups. Interpretations of this and other biblical texts
(he treats twelve, four of them from Genesis) comprise the heart of Gillespie’s
argument that racial segregation is fully compatible with Christianity. Al-
though Gillespie does not name Nimrod, his argument is based on precisely
the same fears—black rebellion and disorder—that white Bible readers saw
personified in the figures of Ham and his grandson.59
In 1956, Kenneth R. Kinney presented a similar argument for segregation
in The Baptist Bulletin.60 Titled “The Segregation Issue,” Kinney’s article pro-
claimed his “firm conviction that God ordained, for the period of man’s life
on earth, the segregation (which term is the equivalent of the familiar Biblical
term ‘separation’) of the three lines which descended from the sons of Noah—
that is, the Japhetic, the Shemitic and the Hamitic.”61 Leaning on these biblical
precedents, Kinney counseled his readers to “face the fact that God drew the
lines of segregation (or separation) according to His purpose.” Kinney em-
phasized, however, the profound historical reality that one of these three seg-
regated groups—the Hamitic—possessed “a spirit of rebellion.” According to
Kinney, this spirit was manifest in Hamite occupation of the Semites’ inher-
itance in the land of Shinar. “The judgment of Babel,” then, came as a result
of resistance to God’s decree that Noah’s descendants separate and disperse
according to plan. Each group would be under the blessing of God as long
as it observed “the bounds of their habitation.” That the Hamites did not and
have not done so may well account for their inferior position in society,
Kinney opined. However,
the correction of their condition is not to be found in falling in with the
spirit of Hamitic rebellion, but for them to return to the proper observation
of God’s order; thus to develop their own culture. Thus, we believe, to return
to the principle of separate but equal cultures. . . . [I]t would seem that as it
was the Hamitic family of old which rebelled against God’s “order,” so their
descendants are doing today, aided and abetted by spurious liberals whose
118       

bleeding hearts are likely more concerned about votes than about the people
involved.62

“What this orderly line of segregation would have meant to the world,”
Kinney laments, “was never to be seen because of the disorderly conduct of
the Hamitic family.” Segregation is Kinney’s prescription for ensuring order
in the future. In fact, because God intended that the three original groups
should maintain familial and national identity, the descendants of these groups
are scripturally bound to do the same. Furthermore, intermarriage between
“Japhetic (European), Shemitic (Oriental) and Hamitic (African) groups”
ought to be forbidden. Like Gillespie, Kinney does not mention Nimrod by
name. But he does refer parenthetically to Genesis 10:6–9 and 11:1–9, the very
passages earlier Bible readers had used to link Nimrod with the rebellion at
Babel. These authors demonstrate that in the wake of the momentous Su-
preme Court decision that struck down “separate but equal” public schools,
the rhetoric of rebellion and disorder that figured so prominently in
nineteenth-century racial readings of Genesis 9–11 reanimated conservative
religious discourse.
Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, first published in 1963 by Georgian Finis
Jennings Dake, includes a long annotation on Nimrod and his tower. It begins
with the observation that Nimrod’s name is derived from the Hebrew “marad,
to rebel, or ‘we will rebel.’ It points to some violent and open rebellion against
God. . . . His rebellion is associated with the beginning of his kingdom and
suggests that his hunting and mighty deeds were related primarily to hunting
men by tyranny and force.” In his “despotic rule over men,” Nimrod became
a great leader, taught men to centralize, and defied God to send another flood.
Nimrod “established the first kingdom and the first great universal false re-
ligion opposing God. . . . That is why God, when He came down to see Babel,
took action to counteract the rebellion of Nimrod (11:1–9).” Here we see the
beginning of empires among men, writes Dake, “the achievements of lawless
tyrants who taught men to revolt against divine laws and duly constituted
authority.”63 Dake discusses the tower in a short article entitled “Separation
in Scripture”:
God made “all nations of men” from “one blood”; [Acts 17:27] also speaks
of “the bounds of their habitation.” In spite of a common ancestry, from
Adam first and later Noah, it was God’s will for man to scatter over the
earth, to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28; 8:17; 9:1). Man’s failure to
obey caused God to confuse his language (Gen. 11:1–9) and to physically
separate the nations by dividing the earth into continents (Gen. 10:25). Both
physically and spiritually, separation has been a consistent theme for God’s
people.64

In presenting racial segregation as God’s will and Nimrod as a rebellious

Negro in the line of Ham,65 Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible combines the
elements of Nimrod’s legend that were embraced by white Christians who
resisted the civil rights movement.
          

By the mid-1960s, the legal status of segregation had been settled in Amer-
ica’s courts and political chambers. But segregation’s staunchest proponents
continued to fight, insisting that integration was the leading edge of a social
revolution bent on “overthrowing God’s established order.”66 As conservative
Christians reacted to what they regarded as perilous change, they pressed
Nimrod’s legend into service. One example is Corey Daniel of Dallas, a Baptist
preacher who utilized the legend to depict integration as part of a demonic
social scheme. More explicitly than Gillespie or Kinney, Daniel combined race
and disorder in his portrait of Nimrod, “the Negro leader of the Babel-
builders (Gen 10:6–10), whose name means ‘Rebel.’ ”67
Evidence of a divine blueprint for separation Daniel located in the cre-
ation story,68 as well as in the tripartite division of humankind after the Flood:

Just as the good Lord assigned three different habitations—air, sea and
land—to the fowls, the fish and the animals, so He assigned three parts of
the earth (proportionate with their future numbers) to the three sons of
Noah and their families. That is why we are told that “When the most High
gave the nations (or races) their inheritance, when he separated the children
of men, HE SET THE BOUNDS OF THE PEOPLE according (in propor-
tion) to the number of children of Israel” (Deut. 32:3 A.S.V.).69

According to Daniel, this segregationist pattern is inscribed in the books of

nature and scripture alike. Just as the Bible “repeatedly forbids the co-
mingling of the children of Shem, Ham and Japheth, so Mother Nature with
her huge barriers of oceans, deserts and gigantic mountain ranges clearly
confirms the same lesson.”70
The Tower of Babel was built in open defiance of God’s plan of separa-
tion.71 Daniel’s description of the tower centers on Nimrod (“Let us Rebel”),
a powerful leader who commanded the tower builders. In terms reminiscent
of the interpretive tradition, Daniel casts Nimrod as “a twofold rebel, a
double-dyed anarchist,” who resisted both God’s plan of salvation and God’s
scheme of racial segregation. All this may be inferred, Daniel believes, from
the reasons given for building the tower: “FIRST, TO ‘MAKE US A NAME.’
Nimrod ignored the ‘name Above Every Name,’ the Lord Jesus Christ. . . .
SECONDLY, ‘LEST WE BE SCATTERED ABROAD UPON THE FACE OF
THE WHOLE EARTH.’ That was just exactly what the Lord had told them
to do many years before then—to scatter and separate from one another
racially. When they persistently refused to do so GOD HIMSELF scattered
them.”72 According to Daniel, God confounded the speech of the tower build-
ers in an effort to resegregate the “three races” and to remove all temptation
toward reunion.
A novel contribution to the legend of Nimrod and his tower is Daniel’s
discussion of Habakkuk 3:6–7:
He stopped and shook the earth;
he looked and made the nations tremble.
120         

The eternal mountains were shattered;

along his ancient pathways
the everlasting hills sank low.
I saw the tents of Cushan under affliction;
the tent-curtains of the land of Midian trembled.
According to Daniel, this passage refers to God’s condemnation of the Babel
builders; its theme “is God’s wrath at the integration of the Babel-builders
and His forcible separation of the ‘nations,’ the three major races, at the Tower
of Babel. Then it was that ‘the tents of Cushan’ (the descendants of Cush, the
father of Nimrod) were in affliction.”73 Daniel regards this as “God’s poetic
way of saying that all nature united to express its approval of His three-fold
division of the human family.” He adds that Ham’s grandson “was so obvi-
ously the mouthpiece of the Devil that I might have done better if I had
entitled this section [of the sermon] ‘Satan the Original Integrationist.’ ”
Like many Southern conservatives, Daniel associated the campaign for
civil rights with socialism, internationalism, and revolutionary dictatorship.
In fact, the alliance between integration and the loss of individual freedom is
exceedingly close in Daniel’s mind.74 Using epithets such as “those first unholy
one worlders” and “the United Nations’ modern tower of Babel,” Daniel ap-
plies Genesis 11 to popular anxieties about America’s role in a changing world.
In another reference to Habbakuk 3, he claims that “the tents of Cushan” are
“the headquarters of the rebellious opposition [to God’s will] which was de-
termined to keep all the people of the world integrated when God wanted
them segregated (Gen. 10:32 to 11:1–9). . . . In ‘driving asunder’ that first un-
holy bunch of One-Worlders, God has given us a fairly good idea of what He
thinks about the present-day bunch and of what he plans eventually to do
with them.”75 In the United Nations, Daniel perceives “an amazing parallel”
to the tower. Like the Babel-builders, the UN seeks to integrate races and
governments, “lest [they] be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole
earth.” Again like the architects of that ancient UN, the modern internation-
alists “are ignoring, when they are not actively blaspheming, the Lord Jesus
Christ and His glorious gospel blood redemption.”76 Thus, in Daniel’s view,
Nimrod is the patriarch of all schemes to consolidate in rebellion against God.
In Place of Race (1965), C. E. McLain connected the Tower of Babel with
the “sons of God” of Genesis 6:1. McLain reasoned that because “Babel”
means “gateway to the gods,” the tower builders of chapter 11 must be iden-
tical with the Nephilim mentioned in chapter 6. Drawing on the interpretive
tradition, McLain combined the image of a giant Nimrod with the assumption
that the “sons of God” (⫽ Nephilim) were prodigious beings as well.77 Bab-
ylon’s founder was Nimrod, whom scripture refers to as “a mighty hunter
before the Lord” because he was a “hunter of men to the subversion of the
soul.” Nimrod’s name offers insight into his character. In fact, the Bible’s
description of Ham’s grandson comprises a “portrait of the world’s first hu-
man dictator. The Scriptures as well as the facts of history reveal that Nimrod
          

did the most complete job of brainwashing that the world has ever known.”78
In a chapter titled “Straight Ahead Lies Babel,” McLain identifies Karl Marx
and Charles Darwin as modern counterparts to the Nimrod of old, and he
opines that we are still living in “the days of Noah,” whose signs include
“twentieth-century Babel (one-worldism).”
In McLain and Daniel, we encounter versions of Nimrod’s biography that
address both the specific challenge of government-mandated integration and
the intellectual and political forces dreaded by conservatives in post-1960s
America. Viewed as the original project of human consolidation, Nimrod’s
tower is an emblem of modern social ills, including intermarriage, interna-
tionalism, socialism, communism, evolution, and church unification.79 Unit-
ing these threats and connecting them with Genesis 9–11 is the theme of
“rebellion,” a term that becomes synonymous with Nimrod’s name and char-
acter.

Conclusion

Our explorations in this chapter indicate that the traditions linking Nimrod
and the Tower of Babel have attracted white American Bible readers in four
distinct cultural milieux. Nimrod’s legend was first embraced by nineteenth-
century proslavery intellectuals, some of whom saw in the archetypal warrior
an embodiment of black disorder, others a vision of primal rebellion useful
in condemning federal “tyranny.” In both cases, the significance of Nimrod
and his tower were determined by proslavery readings of Genesis 9, the re-
bellion of Ham’s grandson reflecting white fears of slave insurrection. During
the first half of the twentieth century, the legend of a deracialized Nimrod
was transmitted in popular Bible commentaries and devotional aids. Then, in
the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, a Negro Nimrod reemerged in the
writings of white segregationists, who portrayed him as the personification of
rebellion against legitimate order and his tower as a symbol of integrationist
schemes. Finally, since the mid-1960s, the tradition of Nimrod’s tower has
been favored by conservative, separatist Christians who are instinctively fearful
of ecumenical and international movements. This is illuminating evidence of
the process by which Bible readers have seized upon Ham’s mysterious grand-
son to interpret their experiences and project their fears. In the portrait of
Nimrod that emerges in American readings of Genesis between the antebel-
lum period and the end of the twentieth century, his character and career are
transparent expressions of American cultural concerns.
 III
NOAH’S CAMERA
 7
Noah’s Sons in New Orleans

Genesis 9–11 and Benjamin Morgan Palmer

If we ascend the stream of history to its source, we shall

discover God dividing the earth between the sons of Noah,
“every one after his tongue, after their families, in their
nations”; and with such remarkable precision that to this
day we can trace “the bounds of their habitations,” even
as they were originally appointed. Indeed, the outspread-
ing landscape of all history is embraced within the camera
of Noah’s brief prophecy; showing how from the begin-
ning God not only distributed them upon the face of the
earth, but impressed upon each branch the type of charac-
ter fitting it for its mission.
Benjamin M. Palmer, 1863

 .  was the “founding father” of the Southern Presbyte-

rian church, one of New Orleans’s most esteemed citizens during the second
half of the nineteenth century, and among the great pulpit orators of his
generation.1 He is credited by friend and foe alike with tipping the scales in
favor of secession in Louisiana and with boosting the Confederacy’s moral
legitimacy in the Old Southwest. As one recent study has concluded, “no
Southern clergyman outdid Palmer . . . in bellicosity from the pulpit in the
early months of 1861 and throughout the next four years.”2
These facts are acknowledged by all who assess Palmer’s career; yet schol-
ars have failed to gauge the centrality of Genesis 9–11 in the thought of this
Southern clergy intellectual. It is well documented that Palmer was an influ-

125
126         

ential and unrepentant advocate of slavery prior to 1861. What is overlooked

is that he regarded Noah’s curse as a rationale not only for slavery in general
but also for the enslavement of Africans in particular. Eugene D. Genovese
has argued that the basic Southern religious argument for slavery had little to
do with race and that many antebellum divines regarded the Noahic curse as
“feeble.”3 Neither was true of Palmer, in whose mind Noah’s curse had every-
thing to do with “race” and with the racial hierarchy that fueled American
destiny. Scholars have also failed to note the abiding significance of Genesis
9–11 for Palmer’s understanding of church and society following the Civil War.
Although “scientific” racism did exercise an influence upon his reading of the
Bible, Palmer turned again and again to Genesis 9–11 when called upon to
apply the biblical witness to crucial societal issues during and after Recon-
struction. Genovese has written that following the demise of slavery Southern
divines opposed integration “with arguments grounded in politics rather than
Scripture.”4 Again, this generalization does not apply to Palmer, who failed
to embrace secular arguments to sustain his social and political views. In fact,
Palmer may be unique insofar as his attention to Genesis 9–11 and its impli-
cations for race relations intensified during and after the Civil War.
Thus, assessment of Palmer’s use of Genesis 9–11 between 1855 and 1901
elucidates our study of Noah’s curse in several important ways. First, because
Palmer survived the Civil War to become a religious leader of great stature,
he allows us to glimpse some of the continuities in the American biblical
imagination. Second, Palmer’s writings provide a unique opportunity to ob-
serve the unfolding of religious racism within a single mind. The evolution
of his racial discourse is particularly helpful in clarifying the transition be-
tween Ham and Nimrod in the application of scripture to American race
relations. As we have seen, for those who sought in Genesis a blueprint for
the organization of American society, the Civil War marked a shift in focus
from Noah’s curse to Nimrod’s tower. This is confirmed in Palmer’s case, with
the center of gravity in his interpretation of Genesis moving from curse to
dispersion sometime in 1863.
Third, careful analysis of Palmer’s writings enables us to identify some
of the intellectual currents that have buttressed antiblack biblical interpreta-
tion in American history. For Palmer, these were the Schlegelian concepts of
historic and unhistoric nations, the notion that societies are organic entities
invested with divine trusts, “scientific” speculation concerning racial differ-
ence, and white common sense. As Mark Noll has noted, the spirit of biblical
interpretation that dominated nineteenth-century America was “a hermeneu-
tic compounded of reformed theological instincts and commonsense literal-
ism.”5 However, among advocates of slavery, common sense often was re-
placed by racist instincts or intuitions. “On slavery, exegetes stood for a
commonsense reading of the Bible. On race, exegetes forsook the Bible and
relied on common sense.”6 This “intuitive racism” is particularly clear in Pal-
mer’s case, as he used history and science to confirm a racial hierarchy that
is foreign to scripture. The various ingredients in Palmer’s racial discourse—a
              

romantic philosophy of history, a view of Providence in which God guides

the character and history of nations, scientific racism, and white common
sense—were combined in various measures depending on the time, place,
and audience Palmer was addressing. Yet the fact that he did not alter his
basic hermeneutical recipe after the 1850s is testimony to the remarkable flex-
ibility of Genesis 9–11 as a source of American racism.
Finally, Palmer’s career is instructive because students of postbellum
America have concluded that the twenty-five-year period between the end of
the war and the full implementation of legal segregation around 1890 repre-
sented a unique window of opportunity for the creation of an integrated
South.7 Because Palmer was “at the summit of his powers and productivity”
during this period, he might have made a mighty contribution toward the
goal of a truly new South, had he been compelled to do so. However, between
1865 and 1890 Palmer devoted tremendous energy and moral capital to en-
suring that God’s economy of racial separation and Anglo-Saxon domination
were reflected in church and society alike.
The preeminent role Genesis 9–11 played in Palmer’s worldview is sug-
gested by the image he was fond of applying to Noah’s pronouncement in
Genesis 9:25–27. Palmer claimed that “the outspreading landscape of all his-
tory is embraced within the camera of Noah’s brief prophecy.” As we shall
see, Noah’s camera was the lens through which Palmer consistently viewed
American history during the second half of the nineteenth century. As such,
it is also a lens for clarifying the effects of biblical faith in American history.
This chapter surveys Palmer’s evolving interpretation of Genesis 9–11 between
1855 and 1902 and explores how he applied these chapters to emerging episodes
in American racial history, particularly when they could no longer be applied
to the defense of slavery.

Palmer’s Life and Times

As pastor of First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans from 1856 until his
death in 1902, Benjamin M. Palmer was New Orleans’s preeminent clergyman.
He was a moving force in the Southern Presbyterian church from its inception
in 1861, was elected to chairs at leading academic institutions, and was called
to moderate several of his denomination’s general assemblies. In addition,
Palmer was a founding editor of both Southern Presbyterian Review and South-
western Presbyterian. Due largely to his skill as a pulpit orator, Palmer’s First
Presbyterian Church of New Orleans was the largest in the Synod of Missis-
sippi and the fourth largest in the denomination. And his vociferous advocacy
of the Confederacy’s cause gained him the reputation of being one of the
South’s staunchest patriots.
When he mounted the First Church pulpit in New Orleans’s Lafayette
Square, Palmer’s congregation of two hundred swelled to as many as a thou-
sand. From that spot, Palmer delivered a series of influential homilies, in-
128       

cluding the “Thanksgiving Sermon” of November 1860, the “National Re-

sponsibility before God” sermon of June 1861, and the “Century Sermon” of
January 1901. Each of these addresses has been anthologized by scholars of
American religious history and celebrated by advocates of Palmer’s legacy.8
Exiled from New Orleans when Federal forces occupied the Crescent City
in 1862, Palmer traversed the South, rallying Confederate troops and stoking
the passions of a dispirited populace. Palmer ministered to Confederate sol-
diers behind the battle lines and addressed Albert Sidney Johnson’s army as
they prepared for the Battle of Shiloh. In 1863, when Palmer’s church ap-
pointed him to serve as a commissioner to the Army of Tennessee, he
“preach[ed] in all the brigades and most of the regiments of this army corps
until the army fell back to Chattanooga.”9 Otherwise, Palmer spent the war
years in Columbia, South Carolina, whose destruction by Sherman’s army he
witnessed in February 1865. Following the war, Palmer returned to New Or-
leans, steadfastly assuring its citizens that the South’s cause had been God’s
own.

Genesis and America’s Historic Mission

Soon after his arrival in New Orleans in 1856, Palmer made a series of proc-
lamations regarding slavery and the relationship of the “races.” These ad-
dresses are significant because they indicate the centrality of the Bible’s pri-
meval history (Genesis 1–11) for Palmer’s understanding of God’s relationship
to humanity.
In “The Import of Hebrew History,” an essay that appeared in Southern
Presbyterian Review in 1856, Palmer introduced what would become distinctive
elements in his perception of the providential ordering of societies.10 Accord-
ing to Palmer, Hebrew history reveals the formation of a people apart from
others and thus confirms the normative role of disunity in human commu-
nities. Palmer wrote that “to prevent admixture of races, these are separated
by the occupancy of distinct territory, by opposition of manners, employment
and religion, and still more by the power of caste which, as now in India,
clearly defined and rendered impassable the boundaries of social life.”11 Later
in this essay, Palmer commented on an aspect of history that “possesses great
attractions for the philosophic historian,” and affords “further illustration of
the design of this whole economy”: “It is a striking proof of the divine wis-
dom,” Palmer noted, “that society is broken up into these small and inde-
pendent communities, where the human will is first subdued, and obedience
to authority enforced, under the mild despotism of the family. Hence, in the
original formation of society, the Patriarchal rule must be held as preceding
every other . . .”12 Here Palmer adumbrates the “law of separation,” which he
regarded as a fundamental principle in God’s administration of the world
following the Flood.
              

In 1858, when Palmer was invited to speak at La Grange Synodical College

in Tennessee,13 he set out to delineate the American people’s providential role
in world history in an address titled “Our Historic Mission.” In this allocution
Palmer referred explicitly to Genesis 9–11. He did so by commending the
notion of “a lively French writer”—the Swiss “historical geographer” F. de
Rougemont—“that each of the three divisions into which the human family
was separated after the Flood, has been occupied with a distinct mission
throughout the entire tract of their history.” According to Palmer’s reading of
Rougemont,

the race of Shem was providentially selected as the channel for transmitting
religion and worship; . . . Japhet and his race . . . seem designated to be the
organ of human civilization, in cultivating the intellectual powers. . . . The
Japhetic whites, spreading over the diversified continent of Europe, through
a protracted discipline develope [sic] the higher powers of the soul in politics,
jurisprudence, science and art: while the Asiatic Japhetites dispersed over a
more monotonous continent, embark in those pursuits of industry fitted to
the lower capacities of our nature. The descendants of Ham, on the contrary,
in whom the sensual and corporeal appetites predominate, are driven like
an infected race beyond the deserts of Sahara, where under a glowing sky
nature harmonizes with their brutal and savage disposition.14

In the published version of “Our Historic Mission,” Palmer acknowledged

another intellectual debt—to German philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel and
his idea that historic peoples are the principal actors in the drama of world
history. Following Schlegel, Palmer remarked that “every truly historic people
is marked by its own characteristic traits; and will contribute its quota to
complete the civilization which is the joint product and property of them
all.”15
Significantly, Palmer rejected Schlegel’s opinion that America is a “de-
pendency, the mere continuation of old Europe on the other side of the At-
lantic.”16 While acknowledging that the American “race” is a “confluence of
all the tribes and tongues of Europe,” Palmer maintained that this people
bears traits that are “national and distinctive.”17 Furthermore, he insisted that
the Creator has assigned the American people a unique historic mission and
that “never, since the institution of civil magistracy in the death-penalty com-
manded to Noah [that is, since the Flood] has a nation existed upon the face
of the globe under conditions so favorable for working out the problems of
the historic calculus and giving its grand equation to the world.”18 Among
these are the “economic” problem, the essence of which is determination of
the proper relationship between capital and labor. Palmer contends that “there
is no people beneath the arch of heaven under conditions so favorable to
grapple with [this problem’s] difficulties and to master its dangers.” This is
because “in the patriarchal form in which [slavery] exits amongst us, it does
reconcile, so far as it goes, this mighty conflict between capital and labor.”19
130        

In “Our Historic Mission”—and in many of the sermons and addresses

that would follow—Palmer cultivated a perspective on the history of nations
that was simultaneously philosophical, biblical, and thoroughly American.20
As he forged a philosophy of history in which America held pride of place,
Schlegel’s conviction that only a few of the world’s nations are “historic”
proved particularly useful.21 Assigning America its proper place in the stream
of history, Palmer would argue that Americans are indeed a historic people;
that the limits of their cultural achievements are as yet unknown; that they
have been entrusted with a special mission, the fulfillment of which represents
their contribution to the organic body of human civilization; and that part
of this mission is to preserve human servitude in its biblical form. In the
conclusion to “Our Historic Mission,” Palmer expressed these sentiments this
way:

Let us say, with all the distinctness and emphasis with which words of destiny
are ever uttered, that we will conserve this institution of domestic servitude,
not only from the pressure of necessity and from the instinct of interest—
not only from a feeling of trusteeship over the race thus providentially com-
mitted to us—not even at last from a general conviction of the righteousness
of our course—but also from a special sense of duty to mankind.22

Following the outbreak of war, Palmer would reaffirm this defense of the
South’s peculiar institution. But increasingly after 1860, he would attempt to
justify the South’s cause with reference to passages in Genesis 9–11.

Genesis, Secession, and War

Palmer’s first address to gain wide acclaim was the “Thanksgiving Sermon”
he delivered in New Orleans on November 29, 1860. By this time, Palmer had
earned a considerable reputation among the citizens of New Orleans, both
for his pulpit skills and for his brave pastoral service during the Yellow Fever
epidemic of 1858.23 Yet his two-hour Thanksgiving oration “catapulted Palmer
into South-wide fame overnight.”24 According to H. Shelton Smith, “the New
Orleans Daily Delta, a zealous advocate of secession, published the entire
discourse three times within a period of four days, and many other papers
throughout the South published all or large portions of it. It was distributed
by the thousands in pamphlet form. As a generator of disunion sentiment, it
excelled every other pulpit deliverance of southern clergy.”25 Mitchell Snay
observes that Palmer’s “Thanksgiving Sermon” is “perhaps the best text” for
understanding the secessionist argument in its original form, for “it illustrates
as well as any other text the religious understanding of the sectional conflict.”26
By late December, news of Palmer’s rhetorical coup had reached Princeton,
New Jersey.27 In mid-January, a Boston newspaper featured a front-page re-
view of the published version.28
                 

On November 29, a thousand people packed the First Presbyterian

Church auditorium to hear the forty-two-year-old divine address the looming
national crisis, and they were not disappointed. Palmer began by noting that
it was not his habit to meddle in politics, but “at a juncture so solemn as the
present, with the destiny of a great people waiting upon the decision of an
hour, it is not lawful to be still.” Palmer’s response to destiny’s call was a
forceful expression of the view he had advanced in 1858—that the historic
mission of Southern whites consisted of a “providential trust . . . to conserve
and to perpetuate the institution of slavery as now existing . . . a trust to pre-
serve and transmit our existing system of domestic servitude, with the right,
unchallenged by man, to go and root itself wherever Providence and nature
may carry it.”29 Palmer in fact reaffirmed many of the arguments he had
advanced during the 1850s: that “a nation often has a character as well defined
and intense as that of an individual,” that it is based in “the original traits
which distinguish its stock from which it springs,” and that this character
alone “makes any people truly historic, competent to work out its specific
mission, and to become a factor in the world’s progress.” He added that
because a people’s particular trust becomes their pledge of divine protection,
the South would relinquish its peculiar institution at the cost of its very sur-
vival. Interestingly, while Palmer referred to Genesis several times in this ser-
mon, he did not invoke Noah’s curse as a rationale for human servitude.30
It is not surprising that in 1860 Palmer publicly welcomed military con-
flict and did his best to sanctify it in the minds of Southerners. Yet during
the first year of the war, Palmer’s proclamations reflected an increasingly re-
fined apology for civil strife as part of the divine will, indeed, as integral to
the South’s exercise of its providential trust. In a special Sabbath sermon
delivered to the Crescent Rifles in May 1861, Palmer emphasized that “in the
comprehensive government of Jehovah nations have their assigned mission,
which they must execute through the conflicts which Providence may ordain
for them.”31 That same month, addressing members of the Washington Ar-
tillery from the steps of City Hall before more than five thousand onlookers,
Palmer affirmed that “history reads to us of wars which have been baptized
as holy; but she enters upon her records none that is holier than this in which
you have embarked.”32 Nor was Palmer’s fervor diminished by the failure of
the South’s holy warriors to score a quick victory. “What nation,” Palmer
asked at the end of 1862, “save Judah alone, ever had such trusts committed
to its hands?”33 In Palmer’s view, resistance and conflict only confirmed the
Confederacy’s role in the divine plan and served to remind Southerners that
the preservation of slavery was a divine trust. For a while at least, this bellicose
perception of history allowed Palmer to maintain the rectitude of the South’s
cause through the reversals of war. Even in 1863, Palmer could respond to the
Confederacy’s declining military fortunes by citing the necessity of “duty in
the face of trial.”
According to Wayne C. Eubank, “no other southern sermon on slavery
and secession received greater acclaim or wider attention”34 than Palmer’s
132         

“Thanksgiving Sermon” of 1860. Not far behind, however, was the homily
“National Responsibility before God,” delivered June 13, 1861, two months
after the commencement of hostilities. This sermon is often cited for the
dramatic parallel Palmer draws between seceding Southerners and the children
of Israel fleeing oppression in Egypt.35 But it also contains the first explicit
invocation of Ham’s curse in Palmer’s published writings. Although Palmer
had previously indicated the influence of Genesis 9 on his thinking, it was
not until the war was under way that he held up Noah’s curse as a prophetic
blueprint for the destinies of the “white,” “black,” and “red” peoples.
In “National Responsibility before God,” Palmer relied on Noah’s curse
to explain the historical position of the African, to confirm the dependency
of the American Negro, and to provide a theological justification for slavery.
He established the importance of Genesis 9 by noting that “if we ascend the
stream of history to its source, we find in Noah’s prophetic utterances to his
three sons, the fortunes of mankind presented in perfect outline.”36 The ben-
ediction given to Shem, Palmer writes, marks him for a “destiny predomi-
nantly religious,” and the divine trust of the Hebrew Semites until the time
of Christ was to “testify for the unity of God against the idolatry of mankind.”
Turning to the descendants of Noah’s son Japheth, Palmer contends that the
“enlargement” promised him in Noah’s blessing can be seen in “the hardy
and aggressive families of this stock [that] have spread over the larger portion
of the earth’s surface, fulfilling their mission as the organ of human civiliza-
tion.” According to Palmer, the task of civilizing the world, assigned first to
Greeks and Romans and later to the various nations of Europe, has been
realized through Japhetic achievements in the scientific, artistic, and public
realms. Finally, Palmer delineates the fortunes of Ham as indicated in Noah’s
prophecy:

Upon Ham was pronounced the doom of perpetual servitude—proclaimed

with double emphasis, as it is twice repeated that he shall be the servant of
Japheth and the servant of Shem. Accordingly, history records not a single
example of any member of this group lifting itself, by any process of self-
development, above the savage condition. From first to last their mental and
moral characteristics, together with the guidance of Providence, have marked
them for servitude; while their comparative advance in civilization and their
participation in the blessings of salvation, have ever been suspended upon
this decreed connexion with Japhet and with Shem.37

Palmer concludes that “these facts are beyond impeachment; and nothing can
be more instructive than to see the outspreading landscape of all history em-
braced thus within the camera of Noah’s brief prophecy.”38
Significantly, Palmer observes that Noah’s oracle reveals “the hand of God
upon nations—not only ‘appointing the bounds of their habitations,’ but
impressing upon each the type of character that fits it for its mission.” Thus,
by the middle of 1861, Palmer was linking Noah’s prophecy with physical
              

separation (God’s appointment of the bounds of human habitation). Most

antebellum proslavery intellectuals did not strike this theme, and the post-
bellum thinkers who associated the curse with separation tended, as Palmer
eventually did, to invoke Nimrod and his tower in the process. But in his
earliest direct reference to Genesis 9, Palmer perceived in Noah’s utterance
not only a description of the distinct roles Providence had prepared for hu-
man beings but also a decree for their physical separation. This is a reflection
of the consistency with which Palmer invoked Genesis 9–11 before and after
the Civil War.
After the capture of New Orleans by Federal forces in 1862, Palmer was
exiled from his pulpit. The wartime orations he delivered to Confederate
troops have been lost to posterity, and his sermons in Columbia and elsewhere
are attested only in the diaries of those who heard them.39 But during 1863,
the pivotal year of the war, Palmer was invited to address legislative bodies
in Georgia and South Carolina on official holidays of “fasting, humiliation
and prayer.” The texts of Palmer’s comments before the Legislature of Georgia
(March 27) and the General Assembly of South Carolina (December 10) have
been preserved, and both addresses bear on our topic.40
In his “Georgia Fast Day Sermon,” Palmer sought to establish the rele-
vance of Genesis 9–11 for clarifying the South’s noble path. He averred that
in their political isolation Southerners were called to defend God’s “govern-
ment of the universe” revealed so clearly following the flood.41 And what does
the biblical record of postdiluvian history reveal about God’s design for hu-
man societies? First, Palmer affirmed

that in the organic law under which human governments were constituted
by God, not consolidation but separation is recognized as the regulative and
determining principle. If we ascend the stream of history to its source, we
shall discover God dividing the earth between the sons of Noah, “every one
after his tongue, after their families, in their nations” [Gen. 10:5, 20, 31]; and
with such remarkable precision that to this day we can trace “the bounds of
their habitations,” even as they were originally appointed. Indeed, the out-
spreading landscape of all history is embraced within the camera of Noah’s
brief prophecy; showing how from the beginning God not only distributed
them upon the face of the earth, but impressed upon each branch the type
of character fitting it for its mission.42

Thus, the American schism is only “a new application of the law by which
God has ever governed the world; that of breaking in two a nation which has
grown too strong for its virtue, in order to its preservation and continuance.”
Next, Palmer briefly delineated the character of each of Noah’s sons, refining
the lines he sketched in the late 1850s: “Shem as the conservator of religious
truth; Japhet, as the organ of human civilization; and Ham as the drudge,
upon whom rested the doom of perpetual servitude.” Significantly, Palmer’s
prewar description of Ham’s descendants as possessing a “brutal and savage
134         

disposition” was revised to fit the contours of Noah’s curse. Finally, Palmer
introduced a novel element into his reading of Genesis:

Let it be observed, moreover, that the first public and recorded crime of
Postdiluvian history was the attempt to thwart God’s revealed purpose of
separation, and to construct upon the plains of Shinar a consolidated Empire
whose colossal magnitude should overshadow the Earth. “Go to,” said they,
“let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and
let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the
whole Earth.” The insane enterprise was only checked by the immediate
intervention of Jehovah, breaking the unity of human speech, and thus sep-
arating the conspirators by the most impassable of all barriers.43

In the very midst of civil war, Palmer employed the Babel episode to place
the American conflict in biblical perspective: While the South was faithfully
conserving the societal structures initiated through Noah the planter patriarch,
an urbanized, industrialized Northern empire was replicating the primordial
rebellion at Babel. Thus, the war between the states was cast as a conflict of
biblical scale, with the opposing sides representing the forces of righteousness
and rebellion that have been at odds since the beginning of time.
His “Georgia Fast Day Sermon” indicates that by early 1863 Palmer had
found in Genesis 9 more than a divine sanction for Hamite servitude. The
question of slavery aside, Palmer viewed Noah as a “second Adam” who fore-
saw the character and destiny of his descendants and against whose authority
humanity would fatefully rebel. In Palmer’s mind, Noah’s prophecy continued
to signify the righteousness of slavery, but with increasing relevance it illu-
mined the “regulative and determining principle” of separation that was the
logos of God’s re-creation after the Deluge—a structure implemented in the
division of the world among Noah’s sons and reiterated in God’s dispersion
of the conspirators at Babel. As we shall see, the conclusions Palmer wished
to draw from the providential ordering of human society in the days of Noah
would shift over time. But in this address to Georgia legislators, he utilized
Genesis 9–11 to argue that whoever might regard Southerners as “rebels” ought
to “ascend to that fundamental law, by which in the first organization of
society God constituted civil government.” They will be forced to conclude,
Palmer argued, that “this law of separation is that ‘law of nature and of
nature’s God which entitles us to assume a separate and equal station among
the powers of the earth.’ ”44 In other words, the right of Southern states to
secede from the Union was rooted in neither political documents nor intel-
lectual presuppositions, but in the original pattern of separation determined
by the Creator and revealed in scripture.45
At the end of 1863, Palmer addressed the general assembly of his home
state of South Carolina. His tone was chastened and subdued, unmistakably
reflecting the course of the war since the previous summer. Palmer’s text,
Psalm 60:1–4, is a lament that resonates with the spirit of the time: “O! God,
thou hast cast us off; thou hast scattered us; thou has been displeased: O! turn
              

thyself to us again. Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken
it: heal the breaches thereof, for it shaketh. Thou hast showed thy people hard
things; thou has made us to drink the wine of astonishment; thou has given
a banner to them that feared thee, that it may be displayed because of the
truth.”46 While echoing the Confederacy’s dubious future, Palmer’s “South
Carolina Fast Day Sermon” again elaborated the pattern of divinely willed
separation so wonderfully revealed in Genesis. Palmer celebrated “the perfect
isolation in which the Southern Confederacy [was] now battling for those
rights which are so dear to the human heart”47 and evinced puzzlement at the
opponents of slavery who “have presumptuously pronounced against the Di-
vine administration from the beginning of time.”48 With irony, Palmer noted
that “whilst slavery has existed in every variety of form through the whole
tract of human history, it has been reserved to our times to beat up a crusade
against it under precisely that patriarchal form in which it is sanctioned in
the word of God, and in which it has never been found since the overthrow
of the Hebrew empire, until now.”49 Palmer also revisited the theme of divine
trust that had figured so prominently in his writings leading up to the war.
He claimed that “in the comprehensive scheme of Divine providence, all such
[historic] nations have an assigned work, and are preserved in being till that
work is done.”50 Palmer then reminded his audience that because the South’s
commission “binds her to duty in the face of trial,” she must not “shrink
from the discipline to which all nations are subjected in working out their
allotted destiny.”51
Palmer alluded to the racial question by offering the hope that the war
would “teach mankind that the allotment of God, in the original distribution
of destinies to the sons of Noah, must continue,”52 and by referring to the
Hamites’ “native condition of fetishism and barbarism.” Even when in contact
with superior races, Palmer asserted, blacks “have never been stimulated to
become a self-supporting people, under well regulated institutions and laws”;
invariably, they lapse into “their original state of degradation and imbecility.”
Despite his emphasis on the innate inferiority of African Americans, Palmer
did not insist on their perpetual bondage. He did reiterate, however, that the
evidence of prophecy and history points in this direction: “All the attributes
of the negro character, and . . . the whole history of God’s dealings towards
him, and . . . all the light shed upon his destiny from the sacred Scriptures”
lead to the conclusion that the Negro’s “true normal position” is as a servant
of servants. This reference to Genesis 9 indicates that, at least through 1863,
Noah’s curse and its satellite texts remained the foundation for Palmer’s the-
ological superstructure of race, history, and destiny.

Genesis and Societal Segregation

When hostilities ceased in 1865, Palmer made his way again to New Orleans
and resumed pastoral duties among a defeated and frightened populace.
136         

Though some greeted his return with surprise, Palmer’s wartime efforts on
behalf of the Confederacy led the city to warmly embrace him.53 During Re-
construction, Palmer’s stature as a Southern patriot and paragon of clerical
virtue grew as he became a leader in commemorating the South’s Lost Cause.
One of Palmer’s chief concerns during this period was the education of South-
ern whites. In April 1870, under pressure from the Reconstruction legislature,
the New Orleans Board of Education admitted black pupils to white public
schools. The city’s Presbyterians responded swiftly, and First Church led the
way. One of Palmer’s parishioners oversaw the development of a system of
white parochial schools, with the suggestion to do so probably coming from
Palmer himself.54 Between 1870 and 1877 (when the public schools were once
again racially segregated), eight institutions enrolling eight hundred students
were operated by the Presbyterian churches of New Orleans. Palmer’s con-
gregation housed the Sylvester Larned Institute for girls.55
Also illustrative of his convictions regarding race were Palmer’s public
statements during this period. In a much celebrated eulogy for Robert E. Lee
delivered in 1870, Palmer asked how it was that the leaders of both the first
and second American revolutions hailed from Virginia. In answer, he asserted
that “unquestionably . . . there is in this problem the element of race; for he
is blind to all the truths of history, to all the revelations of the past, who does
not recognize a select race as we recognize a select individual of a race, to
make all history.”56 Significantly, the term race has replaced nation in Palmer’s
description of how history is made. Would Palmer now rely on secular lan-
guage to describe the South’s future, or would he continue to invoke the “law
of separation” laid out in Genesis 9–11? For an answer to this question, we
turn to “The Present Crisis and Its Issue,” a speech Palmer delivered at Wash-
ington and Lee College in June 1872.57
Addressing the student body at this “center for Lost Cause orations,”
Palmer announced that he was “making a pilgrimage to [his] country’s
shrine.”58 In this hallowed space, Palmer offered a meditation on the tragedy
of the South’s recent past and its uncertain future. The future would have to
be segregated, Palmer observed, because the problem of race is paramount
“in adjusting the relations between two distinct peoples that must occupy the
same soil.” To support this argument, Palmer revisited the philosophy of his-
tory he had elaborated in the 1850s, though he referred to historic “peoples”
and “races” rather than “nations.” He boasted that when speaking to repre-
sentatives of the black race, he preaches that “if you are to be a historic people,
you must work out your own destiny upon your own foundation. . . . If you
have no power of development from within, you lack the first quality of a
historic race, and must, sooner or later, go to the wall.”59 Although each race
seeks “the opportunity . . . to work out its mission,” society must be governed
by strict segregation. In fact, “the true policy of both races is, that they shall
stand apart in their own social grade, in their own schools, in their own
ecclesiastical organizations, under their own teachers and guides.”
               

Palmer’s hope that the details of social segregation would be worked out
“under the direction of a wise Providence which still holds the destines of the
two together” should not obscure the preponderance of secular terminology
in this address. “As I can understand the teachings of history,” Palmer says,
“there is one underlying principle which must control the question. It is in-
dispensable that the purity of race shall be preserved on either side; for it is
the condition of life to the one, as much as to the other.”60 Phrases such as
“the teachings of history” and “the purity of race” evince a turn toward secular
phraseology. Nevertheless, Palmer emphasizes that the new South must be
modeled on the biblical pattern revealed in Genesis.

The argument for this I base upon the declared policy of the Divine Ad-
ministration from the days of Noah until now. The sacred writings clearly
teach that, to prevent the amazing wickedness which brought upon the earth
the purgation of the Deluge, God saw fit to break the human family into
sections. He separated them by destroying the unity of speech; then by the
actual dispersion, appointing the bounds of their habitation, to which they
were conducted by the mysterious guidance of his will.61

In the wake of defeat and Reconstruction, Palmer explicitly racializes the

divine command for dispersion. The “one underlying principle” inferred from
Genesis 9–11 is no longer separation per se but “racial purity.” Also significant
is that, following the transition evident in his addresses of 1863, Palmer iden-
tifies the paragon for divine action in Genesis 11 (where God “destroy[s] the
unity of speech”) rather than Genesis 10 (where “God divid[es] the earth
between the sons of Noah, ‘every one after his tongue, after their families, in
their nations’ ”). God now disperses the human family not to ensure societal
order in a world where each nation possesses a unique character and mission,
but as a hedge against humanity’s sinful tendencies. Finally, the narrative voice
in which Palmer relates the message of Genesis 9–11 assumes a new tone.
When Palmer elucidated the postdiluvian divine economy in the spring of
1863, God had “divided” the earth with remarkable precision, “appointed” the
bounds of human habitation, and “distributed” the nations according to his
will. In 1872, the same process is described in judgmental and even apocalyptic
terms: God “breaks” the human family into sections, “destroys” the unity of
speech, “disperses” and “separates” people.62 Just as Palmer’s claim to find a
rationale for “racial purity” in Genesis 9–11 reflected the fear of amalgamation
that seized white Southerners after the Civil War, the stark and punitive tone
in which he describes God’s organization of human society echoes the South-
ern mind-set during the “dark days” of Reconstruction.
In keeping with this more pessimistic view of the human condition are
Palmer’s comments on Genesis 11 at Washington and Lee. Palmer avers that
“the first pronounced insurrection against [God’s] supremacy, was the attempt
by Nimrod to oppose and defeat this policy [of divine separation]; and the
successive efforts of all the great kingdoms to achieve universal conquest have
138        

been but the continuation of that primary rebellion—always attended by the

same overwhelming failure that marked the first.”63 Palmer had referred to
the Babel episode nine years earlier, but his emphasis then was on “the im-
mediate intervention of Jehovah, breaking the unity of human speech, and
thus separating the conspirators by the most impassable of all barriers.” In
1872, the “conspirators” at Babel are replaced by Nimrod the primordial ty-
rant, who personifies the intent of “great kingdoms to achieve universal con-
quest.”64 Undoubtedly, Palmer has in mind the U.S. government in its recent
“war of aggression” against the Southern states. In Palmer’s thinly veiled cri-
tique of the federal government, Northerners are the true “rebels,” and their
recent conquest the latest chapter in an anarchist tradition of “primary re-
bellion.”
Palmer’s published comments during Reconstruction indicate that he was
assimilating secular racial rhetoric while remaining steadfast in his conviction
that Genesis 9–11 contained both a blueprint for the ideal postdiluvian society
and a record of the forces that threaten it. In “The Present Crisis and Its
Issue,” Palmer cleverly applied this section of the Bible to the societal issues
at hand in 1872, merging Nimrod’s “rebellion” with the desire to forcibly
convene distinct races:
There is no escape from the corresponding testimony, biblical and historical,
that the human family, originally one, has been divided into certain large
groups, for the purpose of being kept historically distinct. And all attempts,
in every age of the world, and from whatever motives, whether of ambitious
dominion or of an infidel humanitarianism, to force these together, are iden-
tical in aim and parallel in guilt with the usurpation and insurrection of the
first Nimrod.65

In 1872, Southerners would have heard this reading of history in light of

Genesis as an allusion to the racial policies of Reconstruction, which were
nothing if not an attempt to “force . . . together” distinct groups by a mixture
of “ambitious dominion” and “infidel humanitarianism.”

Genesis and Ecclesiastical Separation

Following the death of James Henley Thornwell in 1862, Palmer became the
undisputed intellectual and emotional leader of the Presbyterian Church in
the Confederate States of America (after 1865, the Presbyterian Church in the
United States). Following the war, Palmer was repeatedly elected to chair or
moderate bodies charged with establishing the church’s racial policy. In this
way, Palmer was able to make the church a mouthpiece for his own reading
of scripture.
For instance, Palmer was the animating force behind an overture sub-
mitted to the PCUS General Assembly in 1874.66 The overture noted that since
               

the end of the war Southern Presbyterians had “been steadily moving” toward
a separate Negro church, a pattern preferred by the blacks themselves. Fur-
thermore, the exodus of African Americans from the white churches had been
prompted by “the most controlling sentiment known to the human heart—
the instinct of race.” This separatist solution to racial diversity in the church
would “quietly” shelve “all those thorny questions which arise from the com-
mingling of two dissimilar races, and which no amount of diplomatic skill
can harmoniously adjust.”67 The overture, which in tenor and diction alike
resounds with Palmer’s voice, was adopted by the 1874 assembly.
The debate over “organic union” with Northern Presbyterians provides
another example of the way Palmer’s outlook came to dominate the church’s
stance on racial issues. Two decades after Appomatox, there was considerable
support in the Southern church for reunion of the Presbyterian bodies that
had split in 1861. However, at the 1887 PCUS General Assembly, Palmer re-
minded the advocates of consolidation that “the race problem” constituted
“an insuperable barrier” to reunification with Northern Presbyterians. Pre-
dictably, Palmer invoked Genesis 9–11:
It cannot be denied that God has divided the human race into several distinct
groups, for the sake of keeping them apart. When the promise was given to
Noah that the world should not be again destroyed with a flood, it became
necessary to restrain the wickedness of man that it should not rise to the
same height as in the ante-diluvian period. Hence the unity of human speech
was broken, and “so the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the
face of all the earth” [Gen. 11:9].68

Facing a rising tide of proreunion sentiment, Palmer stood fast on the scrip-
tural ground he had occupied since the 1850s. He alleged that the postdiluvian
dispensation in human history is regulated by a divine law of separation
designed to forestall human wickedness. But he supplemented this familiar
argument of separation as divine will with the rhetoric of physical distinction
as empirical fact:
Now co-ordinate with this “confusion of tongues,” we find these groups
distinguished by certain physical characteristics—and that, too, as far back
as history carries us. We are not warranted in affirming that this differen-
tiation through color and otherwise was accomplished at the same time, and
as part of the same process, with the “confusion of tongues;” but since the
distinction exists from a period in the past of which history takes no note,
and since science fails to trace the natural causes by which it could be pro-
duced, the inference is justified which regards it as fixed by the hand of
Jehovah himself.69

Palmer is very careful here. Addressing his church’s largest governing body,
he must maintain the appearance of orthodoxy and eschew suspicions that he
is relying on secular arguments. Nevertheless, it is clear that nineteenth-
century American racial discourse has become a hermeneutical key for Pal-
140         

mer’s reading of the Bible. What he calls the “stubborn facts lying on the face
of history” are actually the views prevailing among the racial theorists of his
day. Palmer is aware that current knowledge of human origins does not allow
him to confidently racialize the Babel episode, but because science has not
established the how or when of human difference, he does not hesitate to
depict racial diversity as a providential intervention of God.
The conclusion to Palmer’s 1887 address reflects this careful merging of
biblical and scientific arguments. Invoking both the rebellion at Babel and
white concerns for “purity of blood,” Palmer maintains that “all the attempts
to restore the original unity of the race by the amalgamation of these severed
parts have been providentially and signally rebuked.”70

Genesis and the Lost Cause

After the Civil War, New Orleans became a center for activities of the Lost
Cause. When the Southern Historical Society formally organized in the Cres-
cent City in 1869 and named Palmer its first president, he effectively became
high priest in the new religion.71 In return for his devotion to the cause,
Palmer received the undying admiration of Confederate veterans. According
to a testimonial signed by soldiers who had known him, Palmer was an “Ex-
emplar for Southern Youth and Manhood” who, like Lee himself, knew no
grander word than “Duty.” He bears to us, the testimonial continued, “and
to the Historic Cause, in which we were gloriously associated with him, a
unique and inseparable relation.” Palmer’s sacerdotal role was to preserve “the
Ark, containing our sacred canons of Justice, Liberty and Truth.” His tragic
death in 1902 removed from the South “the greatest recent Exponent of our
Case, and among the greatest ever connected with it.”72
Palmer earned such veneration in recognition of his eloquent advocacy
of the cause. Particularly after 1880, Palmer was called on to speak at public
gatherings that were civic rather than ecclesiastical in nature. In these ad-
dresses, several of which were published in the Southern Historical Society
Papers, the official Lost Cause journal, Palmer reassured his auditors that
despite the results and opinions stemming from the “late revolution,” the
tribunal of history would vindicate the South, the honor of its soldiers, and
the character of its people. In these secular sermons, Palmer did not refer
explicitly to Genesis 9–11. However, by revisiting the notions of historic people
and divine trust, he reasserted the tripartite division of humankind under
Noah that formed the basis of his biblical worldview.
At a New Orleans fundraiser for the Southern Historical Society in 1882,
Palmer concluded a raft of speakers that featured Jefferson Davis. The sixty-
four-year-old divine introduced his comments by asking a packed opera house
whether the society and its work were necessary. Palmer answered this rhe-
torical question by observing that “the history of every historic people should
               

be fully written,” especially in that “but a very small portion of the earth’s
surface and few of its nations are historic.” Instead of citing the South’s cre-
dentials as historic, Palmer proceeded to systematically disqualify the non-
European nations from historic nation status. “You may, for example, throw
all Africa overboard, except its Mediterranean coast and a small portion that
lies upon the delta of the Nile. In like manner, nearly the whole of the massive
and monotonous continent of Asia may be discounted.”73 Palmer reassured
his audience that in contrast to the unhistoric peoples that clutter the pages
of world history, “we who have dwelt on this continent for the last 300 or
400 years are the descendants of nations that are historic.” Thus, although he
did not cite the Bible, Palmer’s reading of world history adhered to the pattern
he saw set down in Genesis 9–11: Japheth (Europe/America) is ever destined
to dominate Ham (Africa) and Shem (Asia).
In addressing a group of Confederate veterans in 1890, Palmer assessed
world history by revisiting the notion that God invests nations with unique
trusts.74 According to Palmer, every organized society possesses such a trust,
for which it is held responsible before God. However, not all societies become
stewards of the divine gift by making history:

Why, there is China, with her four hundred millions of people—nearly one-
half the population of the globe—yet without adding a fraction to the general
history of the world. There is Africa, stretching its length between the Tropics
and beyond them, occupied for thousands of years by naked savages engaged
in internecine and tribal wars; yet, so far as the broad record of mankind is
concerned, the Dark Continent might just as well have been sunk in the
depths of the two oceans which wash its borders—utterly dead, without a
history.75

And because the American continent had been dominated by Shem’s posterity
until the arrival of the Japhetic European, “so far as history is involved it
might as well have emerged only three hundred years ago from the waters of
the sea to become the home of a ripe civilization of its immortal records.”76
Again, Palmer neither refers to scripture nor invokes the division of human-
kind under Noah, yet his interpretation of history is rooted ultimately in his
reading of Genesis 9–11. Maintaining the hierarchy of Noah’s sons with the
language of divine trust and historic mission, Palmer reaffirms the unfavored
status of Shem (China) and Ham (Africa).
In the face of postwar challenges—the emancipation of millions of freed
slaves, the forced integration of Southern society and institutions, the push
for closer relations with Northern Presbyterians, and the need to sustain the
South’s Lost Cause—Palmer relied on the same biblical texts he had utilized
in the antebellum era to justify racial inequality, slavery, secession, and war.
In the postbellum era, Palmer’s thinking reflected American intellectual cur-
rents regarding race and race mixing more clearly than Romanticism and
Southern nationalism, yet the biblical principle that guided his reading of
142       

ancient and contemporary history was the same: Following the Flood, God
ordained the separate existence of nations, established a law of separation that
human beings would violate at their peril, invested nations with specific trusts,
and determined through prophecy that Asia and Africa would be eclipsed by
the “enlargement” of Europe and America.

Genesis and the American Century

Just over a year before his death, his health failing at the age of eighty-three,
Palmer preached one of his most celebrated homilies. The “Century Sermon,”
delivered on New Year’s Day of 1901, was a civic event in the Crescent City.
The lead headline in the January 2 Daily Picayune announced:
  
  . 
At the Request of Prominent Citizens, Irre-
spective of Creed
A Magnificent Audience Gathering at First
Presbyterian Church
To Hear the Patriarchal Man of God Trace the
Divine Purpose
Through Different Civilizations and Epochs, Until
the New Era’s Dawn Brings Nearer
Peace and Good Will on Earth
According to press reports, the throng of two thousand souls that crowded
First Church to hear Palmer’s ninety-minute oration included “Methodists,
Baptists, Episcopalians, Jews, German Protestants, Lutherans, merchants,
scholars, professional men, representatives of the great business and railroad
interests, shipping people, strangers in the city, young men and women, old
men and women, some of them as old as the venerable pastor himself, and
little children.”77 But as the “Century Sermon” addressed God’s design in “the
new era’s dawn,” it sounded the very themes Palmer had elaborated through-
out the second half of the nineteenth century. Specifically, the sermon sought
“to trace the hand of God in history, the part that the historical peoples have
severally played, in the great drama, according to the Divine economy,”78
discussed the God-given mission of the American people, and employed the
postdiluvian narratives of Genesis. Given “how little use [Palmer] made of
old speeches, notwithstanding the pressure of years and the burdens of his
office,”79 his reliance on these themes in 1901 is further evidence of their
centrality in his thought.
The “Century Sermon” contains two extended references to Genesis 9–
11. In the first, Palmer asserts that “the history of this world is an organic
whole, and all of its parts are connected together by a holy and divine pur-
pose.” In amplifying this statement, he observes that
                 

almost before the waters of the deluge had subsided from the face of the
earth, you have the tripartite division of the human race, all of it yet to be
born, signalized in the destinies assigned to the three sons of Noah. “Cursed
be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” “God shall
enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.” “Blessed be the
Lord God of Shem.” Servitude to the first, enlargement to the second, and
a sort of priestly function assigned to the third, fulfilled in the fact that his
seed were first put in possession of the oracles of God through which the
whole human race is finally to be blessed.80

Remarkably, this passage includes the only quotation of Genesis 9:25–27 in all
of Palmer’s published writings. Clearly, the “new era’s dawn” had not dimin-
ished Palmer’s confidence in the relevance of Noah’s curse. Furthermore, Pal-
mer assumes that his auditors will grasp the prophecy’s import: “I need not
pause upon this remarkably prophetic outline of all human history, for there
is not an intelligent hearer in this audience that does not know how punctually
each one [of these destinies] has been fulfilled in the whole history of man-
kind.”81
But in his invocation of Noah’s curse for a new era, Palmer expresses
more interest in Shem and Japheth than in Canaan or Ham. As Thomas
Peterson has noted, Shem became a major actor in the sacred drama of Ham’s
myth as American Bible readers wished to relate the “growth of the American
nation in terms of manifest destiny by explaining that the red man’s demise
was part of the divine will.”82 This is precisely Palmer’s goal when he an-
nounces that “we who are gathered here in this assemblage on this first day
of the century, are dwelling to-day in the tents of Shem.” This clause served
to link Palmer’s auditors with Noah’s son Japheth, while identifying the Amer-
ican continent with the “tents of Shem.” After directing his hearers to Genesis
10’s Table of Nations (and its presumed confirmation in Acts 17),83 Palmer
returns to develop this link between Noah’s prophecy and America’s conquest
by the Anglo-Saxon. In relating the fate of America’s “wild native Indians,”
Palmer briefly summarizes Native American history:
During all the past, as far back as any knowledge of time goes, this vast
continent was inhabited by tribes of wild native Indians. Nothing was heard
in all those vast primeval forests, in conjunction with the roar of the wild
beasts, save the savage war cries of these naked and painted Indian tribes,
engaged in their internecine wars. What do we see to-day? The Indian prac-
tically extinct; the vast forests through which he pursued his game leveled to
the earth, and the fertile bosom of the soil receiving culture and yielding its
fruit a thousand-fold to the industry of man. Instead of the war-whoop of
the Indian, we hear the chimes of Sabbath bells, and songs of praise issuing
from myriads of Christian homes to the glory of that God “who hath pre-
pared his throne in the heavens, and whose kingdom ruleth over all.”84

So that his congregation will perceive the hand of Providence in this mo-
mentous departure of a people from the stage of history, Palmer reminds
144        

them that “the God who reigns in the heavens is the God of supreme justice,
and that he has judgments for all that neglect or reject him.” The preacher
finds an apt analogy in scripture:
It was in the way of a judgment, strictly retributive in character, that [God]
swept the old Canaanites into the pathless deserts surrounding their land, in
order to find room for his chosen people; and when the Indians had, for
countless centuries, neglected the soil, had no worship to offer to the true
God, with scarcely any serious occupation but murderous inter-tribal wars,
the time came at length when, as I view it, in the just judgment of a righteous
and holy God, although it may have been worked out through the simple
avarice and voracity of the race that subdued them, the Indian has been
swept from the earth, and a great Christian nation, over 75,000,000 strong,
rises up on this . . . [day].85
Palmer was certainly not the first to assert that Native Americans’ dis-
placement by Europeans was an act of Providence.86 Nevertheless, it is fasci-
nating to observe him applying a text that was pivotal in American debates
regarding the destinies of Africans and Europeans to illumine the fate of the
American Indian. As a Christian rhetorician, Palmer’s goal was to demonstrate
that the “practical extinction” of Native Americans under the pressure of an
expanding white civilization was in conformity with the divine plan revealed
in scripture. To do so, he incorporated this historical development in the
“outspreading landscape of Noah’s brief prophecy.” Relying on the popular
belief that Anglo-Saxons were descendants of Japheth, Palmer suggested that
Noah’s plea that God “make space for [or enlarge] Japheth and let him live
in the tents of Shem” (Gen. 9:27) was a prophetic reference to the displace-
ment of the red man by the white in North America.
But even if Palmer has correctly interpreted this mysterious prediction,
Noah’s curse could not be applied to the situation of Native Americans with-
out allusion to the divinely approved destruction of an indigenous people.
Faced with the challenge of justifying the utter elimination of those who once
dwelt in Shem’s tents, how would Palmer proceed? Through the history of
Christian interpretation, two traditions—one historical and the other spiri-
tual—had developed with respect to Noah’s prayer for the enlargement of
Japheth in the tents of Shem.87 Neither, however, was serviceable for applying
this text to the experience of Anglo-Saxons in America. So Palmer wove a
novel reading of Genesis 9:27 from two disparate strands of tradition: the
belief that Native Americans were Semites mysteriously separated from their
“red” brothers in Asia (perhaps they were even the “lost tribes” of Israel) and
the alternate and conflicting “Canaanite ideology,” which cast Native Ameri-
cans as a savage and idolatrous race, interlopers in the American promised
land.88 To advocate a literal application of Genesis 9:27 to Native Americans’
disappearance from history, Palmer was compelled to employ both traditions,
conflicting though they were. The European descendants of Japheth, he
claimed, were now dwelling in the “tents” of red Semites, from which they
                 

had been expelled during the previous century. But the Indians’ metaphorical
identity as “Canaanites” justified their extinction as well.
Of course, within the logic of Noah’s prophecy, it was not possible to
view Native Americans as Semites and Canaanites. After all, Canaan was a
son of Ham, not Shem. Portraying American Indians as Hamites (through
Canaan) might make them fit for servitude but not for extermination. Then
again, to call Native Americans descendants of Shem was to link them with
an original recipient of Noah’s blessing and an ancestor of Christ. Indeed, as
Semites, Indians were cousins of the chosen people for whom Christians gen-
erally—and Palmer in particular—had great respect. But the pressure of Pal-
mer’s need to view the European conquest of North America in light of Noah’s
curse blurred this familial distinction. To accept the textual desideratum that
predicted Japheth would dwell in Shem’s “tents,” Palmer had to affirm the
identity of Native Americans as descendants of Shem, but to establish a bib-
lical rationale for their extermination, Palmer had to call upon the more
popular designation of Native Americans as “Canaanites,” whose removal
could be compared to that of the savage idolaters ousted from their habita-
tions by the Israelites. Thus, Palmer fed heterogeneous interpretive strands
into the mythical loom of Noah’s prophecy and fashioned a seamless reading
of Genesis that justified the history of American conquest in North America
as the fulfillment of a divine mission. That doing so was difficult rhetorical
work confirms the strength of Palmer’s devotion to the scriptural texts that
formed the basis for his vision of God’s activity in history.
In Palmer’s evolving understanding of Genesis 9–11 as a blueprint of God’s
design for America, we glimpse an unrepentant advocate of Noah’s curse eager
to apply the myth to successive episodes in the struggle between whites and
people of color—first to justify the enslavement of blacks; then to discover
divine sanction for the law of separation as it applied to political secession,
civic segregation, and ecclesiastical separation; and finally as a warrant for the
“practical extinction” of Native Americans. Palmer’s use of these biblical nar-
ratives over a period of fifty years elucidates both their role in American racial
discourse and their remarkable flexibility in the hands of someone in search
of a transcendent warrant for racial hierarchy.
 8
Honor, Order, and Mastery in
Palmer’s Biblical Imagination

I am willing, at the call of my honor and my liberty to die

a freeman. I’ll never, no never, live a slave; and the alter-
native now presented by our enemies is secession or slav-
ery. Let it be liberty or death.
Benjamin M. Palmer, 1860

   , throughout his long and distinguished public career,

Benjamin M. Palmer utilized Genesis 9–11 to explicate God’s ways with hu-
mankind, interpret American history, and proclaim the gospel of Southern—
and, later, Anglo-Saxon—election. And yet, despite his reliance on Noah’s
prophecy as an intellectual touchstone, Palmer never gave the slightest indi-
cation of how he understood the transgression that had occasioned it. Chapter
4 noted that antebellum proslavery readings of the curse fall into three general
categories: those that cite the story, those that paraphrase or recount it but
fail to characterize Ham’s offense, and those that retell the story while de-
scribing or intimating the nature of Ham’s misdeed. Without question, Pal-
mer’s references to Genesis 9 fall into the first category; despite referring to
Noah’s prophecy in addresses and published writings across his career, he
never even alluded to Noah’s drunkenness or Ham’s response. Thus, if we are
to sustain the thesis that proslavery readings of Genesis 9 were influenced by
white concerns for honor and order, the case of Benjamin M. Palmer poses
a challenge. This chapter presents evidence that, like his fellow proslavery
intellectuals, Palmer instinctively understood Genesis 9 in terms of honor and
order.

146
                  

Honor
Honor in Palmer’s Vindication
of Slavery and Secession
Palmer’s rhetoric provides one index of honor’s pivotal role in his weltan-
schauung. Very simply, honor is a dominant motif in his best known sermons
and addresses. For instance, in the “Thanksgiving Sermon” of 1860, Palmer
proclaimed that he was “willing, at the call of my honor and my liberty to
die a freeman. I’ll never, no never, live a slave; and the alternative now pre-
sented by our enemies is secession or slavery. Let it be liberty or death.” This
homiletic paean to Southern honor did not go uncompensated. The New
Orleans Daily Delta applauded the “manly and patriotic position taken by Dr.
Palmer” and editorialized that Palmer “acted the part of a Christian gentleman
and scholar, of a Southern patriot, of a frank, earnest, brave and high-souled
man.”1
To illustrate how “traditional sensibilities about manhood and glory” sup-
plemented biblical themes in the Southern case for secession, Bertram Wyatt-
Brown explores the language of Palmer’s “Thanksgiving Sermon.” It is prime
evidence, he observes, that in the Southern discourse of secession “honor to
God and honor to self were closely bound together. As a result, it was possible
for church-goers to reconcile the traditional ethic and evangelical belief.”2
When Palmer adopted the secessionist cause, he made “rhetorical use of
southern adherence to the ancient ethic.”3 Wyatt-Brown quotes from the
“Thanksgiving Sermon” to illustrate Palmer’s conviction that in response to
Northern fanaticism in electing a sectional candidate, Southerners were obli-
gated “to uphold and perpetuate what they cannot resign without dishonor
and palpable ruin.” Wyatt-Brown credits Palmer with providing

the basis for the dramatic turn that soon overwhelmed the Whiggish clergy,
even outside the lower South. He challenged Unionists like [Robert J.] Breck-
enridge of Kentucky, who contended that the federal executive was not the
servant of the sovereign states but their master. “Had the Constitution been
regarded as a compact whose bonds were mutual honor and good faith,”
Palmer concluded, “the apprehension of a rupture would have been the sur-
est guaranty of its observance.” The northerners’ “numerical majority” en-
couraged their aggression and imperialist ambitions, whereas a loose bond
of states would have upheld “every consideration of honor and interest.”
Such sentiments as these led the clergy of the lower South into the secessionist
ranks as their states left the Union in the early months of 1861.4

Given Palmer’s avid support for secession, it is not surprising that the first
clerical authority to propose disunion in 1860 was Southern Presbyterian, the
journal Palmer had cofounded in Columbia, South Carolina, before departing
for New Orleans.5
148         

Palmer’s celebration of honor—“ ‘the lingua franca’ of Southern section-

alism”6 —was not limited to his “Thanksgiving Sermon.” In “National Re-
sponsibility before God” (June 1861), the preacher proclaimed that “liberty is
better than gold, and honor more precious than fortune.”7 And a few months
earlier, in a review of works by Robert J. Breckenridge, professor at Danville
Theological Seminary, Palmer linked honor and slavery in an attack on ab-
olitionism: “In the great impending crisis, the South would be recreant to
every obligation of duty and to every principle of honor, and to every instinct
of interest if she did not effectively contradict and rebuke the insufferable
arrogance of those who assume into their hands the prerogatives of Divine
legislation.”8 Thus, during the secession crisis, when Noah’s prophecy provided
a biblical foundation for his defense of slavery, Palmer revealed his profound
attachment to Southern honor.
Palmer’s rhetoric of honor during this period cannot be appreciated apart
from the images being broadcast by his clerical opponents. In ecclesiastical
debates regarding the moral status of Southern secession, there were strenuous
attempts to cast the South’s position as one of disloyalty, treachery, and re-
bellion. Palmer himself, in fact, was described with these very epithets.9 Thus,
Palmer’s embrace of honor was no doubt a response to the shameful stigma
his opponents were attaching to slavery, secession, and the “men of God” who
defended them. Particularly opprobrious in Palmer’s mind was the charge of
“rebellion.” The controversy came to a head among Old School Presbyterians
when the notorious “Spring Resolutions” were adopted by that church’s gen-
eral assembly in May 1861. The resolutions declared it the church’s duty “to
promote and perpetrate, so far as in them lay, the integrity of the United
States, and to strengthen, uphold, and encourage the Federal Government in
the exercise of its functions under the Constitution.”10 Southerners and their
sympathizers opposed the Spring Resolutions, ostensibly because they placed
the church in a position that was subordinate to the state. On an emotional
level, however, the resolutions rankled because they made allegiance to the
United States a condition of church membership and equated the sectional
impulse with disloyalty. For his part, Palmer relentlessly countered the alle-
gation of Southern rebellion by claiming that the South’s course was the hon-
orable path of “revolution.”
The depth of Palmer’s convictions regarding honor and secession may be
gauged from his published response to the work of Robert J. Breckenridge.
In early 1861, Breckenridge published two works accusing the South of inde-
fensible rebellion. In a passionate article, “A Vindication of Secession and the
South,” Palmer offered his rejoinder.11 According to Palmer, the “great rev-
olution” (not rebellion!) under way in the South had been made necessary
by an overwhelming and hopeless despotism. Because Breckenridge assumes
“this is a consolidated nation,” Palmer wrote, he is forced to denounce se-
cession “as sedition, anarchy and rebellion, which must be crushed by the
central authority.”12 No greater insult could one Southerner pronounce upon
                  

another: “Anarchy, disloyalty, revolt, revolution, rebellion, fanaticism, sedi-

tion, for the alphabet of an almost exhaustless invective, which, by endless
transposition and iteration, make up a description so hideous that its very
deformity should prove it a caricature.”13 For his part, Palmer detects not a
hint of anarchy in the Southern cause; the right of secession antedates Amer-
ican history, for it is a “prerogative of sovereignty” that was exercised “not
against law, but in accordance with a law which was deemed by the parties
both fundamental and organic.” Breckenridge “affirms secession to be rebel-
lion, which must be suppressed at every hazard: we, that it is an inherent
right of sovereignty.”14
Not surprisingly, biblical images are scattered throughout this “review.”
Palmer alleges that Breckenridge is kept from acknowledging the law of sep-
aration by “his idolatry of the empire—that great image of Nebuchadnezzar,
set up on the plain of Dura.”15 Further on, Palmer writes that the division of
America was inevitable, “simply because, from the beginning, two nations
have with us been in the womb—and the birth, however long delayed, must
come at length.”16 For Palmer, the fundamental fallacy pervading Brecken-
ridge’s argument is his “misconception that [the union] is a consolidated
popular Government, instead of being a Congress of Republics.”17 The term
consolidated, of course, anticipates the language Palmer would use in 1863 and
after to describe the “primary rebellion” of Nimrod.
After the war commenced, Palmer continued to dispute the charge that
Southerners were engaged in rebellion. Preaching at a funeral service for Gen-
eral Maxcy Gregg in late 1862, he attempted to set the record straight: “Should
every thing be lost, and the base foot of an insolent invader tread upon our
high and beautiful places,” Palmer preached, “we will rally around the tombs
of our dead, and fight the last battle of freedom over their honored dust.”
Never, he continued, shall our country’s foe “be suffered to erase our inscrip-
tions of love upon their tombs, and write the word ‘rebel’ upon their sacred
dust. Beside this bier we take the irrevocable oath to die upon his grave, ere
it shall be thus desecrated.”18 In February 1863, while in exile in South Car-
olina, Palmer managed to publish a pamphlet titled “Oath of Allegiance,” in
which he defended the citizens of Louisiana who were refusing to comply with
General Benjamin Butler’s infamous Order No. 28 requiring an oath of loyalty
to the Federal government.
Palmer’s tract is primarily concerned with the stigma of dishonor and
rebellion that some attached to Southerners’ refusal to recognize the Union.
He accuses the Federals of attempting to disgrace a people it cannot conquer.
He expresses deep sympathy for those who have been subjected to the “dis-
aster of a dishonored name,” as well as burning anger toward their captors.
He refutes the Northern view that “the South has embarked in a wicked
rebellion, upon crushing which, the very life of the nation depends.” The truth
is that “a monstrous despotism has grown up” that “brands with the infamy
of rebellion” the bravery of a great people. In “Oath of Allegiance,” Palmer
150        

turns the tables on those who view Southern resistance as disloyalty by refer-
ring to Louisianans who have acquiesced in Butler’s oath as “traitors to the
South.” He urges these recreants to recover their manhood: “There is no al-
ternative but that of a dishonored name, cleaving to you and to your children
as long as history shall last.”19
As we have seen, when sentiment for reunification with Northern Pres-
byterians gained momentum in the 1880s, Palmer led the Southern church’s
opposition. Significantly, the biblical basis for Palmer’s resistance was a par-
aphrase of Genesis 9–11: “It cannot be denied that God has divided the human
race into several distinct groups, for the sake of keeping them apart,” he
maintained. “When the promise was given to Noah that the world should not
be again destroyed with a flood, it became necessary to restrain the wickedness
of man that it should not rise to the same height as in the ante-diluvian
period. Hence the unity of human speech was broken, and ‘so the Lord scat-
tered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth.’ ” Yet there is
evidence that Palmer’s opposition to reunion was based in wounded honor
as much as in theological conviction.
In 1870, when the establishment of official “correspondence” between the
two ecclesiastical bodies was proposed, Palmer emphasized the lingering
wound of dishonor inflicted upon Southerners in 1861. In the “Pastoral Letter
of 1870” authored by Palmer for the church’s general assembly, a condition
of correspondence with Northern Presbyterians was “the unequivocal retrac-
tion of the imputations against ourselves, industriously circulated throughout
Christendom.” This requirement was “compelled by a proper sense of self-
respect, and a due regard to the honour of our own Church.”20 Specifically,
former statements accusing the Southern church of “heresy and blasphemy”
had to be canceled, because “any form of intercourse, while they remain upon
record, would be a tacit acquiescence in the same, and a submission to the
dishonour which has been cast upon the name of our people and or our
Church.”21 One who witnessed Palmer’s comments on this issue before the
Louisville Assembly called it “the most pathetic, soul-stirring utterance to
which I ever listened.”22
During the Civil War, Northern Presbyterians charged that the country’s
peace had been destroyed by “treason, rebellion, anarchy, fraud, and violence”
contrary to all religion and morality.23 For years afterward, they accused
Southern Presbyterians of “wicked rebellion” and called them to repent. Thus,
it is not at all surprising that whenever Palmer discussed slavery, secession,
war, or defeat, he witnessed to his conviction that Southerners had acted
honorably, while their opponents were guilty of impugning Southern honor.

Honor in Palmer’s Character

The centrality of honor is evident not only in Palmer’s rhetoric but also in
his life and legend. To many who knew him, Palmer personified the code he
so frequently invoked. Proof was offered in stories of a dramatic incident
                 

occurring during Palmer’s second year at Amherst College. According to the

account recorded by Thomas Carey Johnson, Palmer belonged to an Amherst
literary society,
the members of which were bound by a solemn pledge not to disclose what
occurred at its meetings. One of the exercises consisted of the reading by
the secretary of anonymous papers which had been deposited in a box at
the door. A paper was read at one of the meetings which contained caustic
but humorous criticisms of the professors. A divinity student betrayed his
fellow-members by informing the Faculty. At the next meeting of the society,
an order was read forbidding the exercise, whereupon Palmer, then about 16
years of age, moved that the paper conveying the order be tabled indefinitely,
alleging that the Faculty could not know of the exercises except through the
treachery of one of the students, and that it was unworthy of the dignity of
the professors to accept perjured testimony as evidence. The president was
afraid to put the motion to vote, but two members held him in the chair
while the question was put and carried.24

The Amherst faculty sought to uncover the offender’s identity by requiring

society members to swear their innocence. When Palmer was summoned, “he
informed that body that he was in honor bound to take no part in disclosing
what went on in a society the members of which were pledged to secrecy.”
Threatened with expulsion, Palmer responded: “Well, sirs. I will take expulsion
at your hands rather than trample upon my sense of honor.”25 According to
a version of the story recorded after Palmer’s death, the treacherous “divinity
student” was future abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, who “true to the in-
stincts of his nature . . . betrayed his fellow members by informing the fac-
ulty.”26 The narrator contrasts the two men’s behavior, noting that the story
exemplifies “the lack of moral principle so noticeable in [Beecher’s] whole
career.” Over time this dramatic tale became emblematic of Southern honor
and Northern treachery among the caretakers of Palmer’s legacy.
Before Palmer could return from Massachusetts to South Carolina, his
honor was assaulted by Northern perfidy once again. As Palmer sojourned in
New York City before sailing for home, he entered a secondhand bookstore
and attempted to make a purchase with a fifty-dollar note. When a clerk left
the store in search of change, Palmer patiently awaited his return until it
became apparent he had been robbed. “In grim desperation he resolved to
stay in that store as long as it should be possible that he might confront the
scoundrel upon his return. After six weary hours had passed the man cau-
tiously ventured back to the neighborhood. . . . While the knave was trying to
discover whether the coast was clear of the purchaser, that severely tried young
man caught sight of him, dashed upon him, when for very shame the shabby
fellow gave up the money.”27 According to Palmer’s biographer, this episode
exerted a lasting influence on the young man.
The place of honor in Palmer’s adult identity is indicated in his private
correspondence with Princeton divine Charles Hodge. In 1860, Palmer was
unanimously elected by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church
152       

(Old School) to occupy a professorial chair at Princeton Seminary. Although

the invitation to join the faculty of his church’s flagship institution was a great
tribute, Palmer was compelled to turn it down. In a letter to Hodge, he
explained that the decision was based upon neither sectional feelings nor
family obligations. Rather, it was honor that held him in New Orleans:

In the first place then, I am restrained by a sentiment of honor from ac-

cepting the post to which the Assembly has invited me. The sole office upon
which, four years ago, the Synod of South Carolina consented to sunder my
connexion with the Columbia Seminary, was, that I did not feel called to a
scholastic life. . . . The acceptance therefore of a position at Princeton would
not only expose me to the charge of inconsistency and fickleness, but might
be construed as a breach of faith towards my brethren in Carolina. This may
seem to some the mere prudishness of honor; but the sentiment sticks to
me and rules out every solicitation to embark in academic labour.28

In public and in private, Palmer defended himself, his church, and his
country by claiming that all were guided by the instinct honor. In this sense,
he reflects the values of the antebellum evangelical preachers recently exam-
ined by Christine Leigh Heyrman. Aspiring to be treated as gentlemen, these
men accepted “the most basic assumption of the code of honor . . . the axiom
that the measure of a man is his reputation—the public judgment of his
outward performance, particularly his behavior in the company of other mas-
ters.”29 According to Heyrman, these clergymen accommodated themselves to
the culture of honor by creating “idealized masculine selves.” Like Baptists
and Methodists who were “primed by decades of proving themselves men of
honor in recognizably southern ways,” Palmer, too, “rose readily to defend
slavery in the 1830s, secession in the 1850s, and the holy cause of upholding
both with force of arms in 1861.”30

Order
Order in Palmer’s Defense of Slavery
The association between Palmer’s advocacy of slavery and his concern for
order is evident primarily in his insistence that slavery as it existed in the
South was “domestic” and “patriarchal.” Slavery was domestic inasmuch as
the slaveholder was required to protect as well as extract labor from servants
in his extended family. It was patriarchal because it was modeled on the ideal
family structure revealed in the early chapters of Genesis and celebrated in
the South. At the beginning of history, Palmer and other Southerners believed,
God had enumerated the normative structure of society by simultaneously
instituting family and church. As Palmer wrote in 1872, the close tie between
these institutions was iterated at three crucial junctures in biblical history: in
the first family, where Adam served as priest; in the family of Noah, where,
                 

after the Flood the patriarch “offered sacrifices for his combined household”;
and in the first century, when the church took its final form and “was again
founded in the house.”31
Related to the conviction that slavery was essential to domestic order was
Palmer’s perception of slaves as children. In his “Thanksgiving Sermon,” Pal-
mer averred that “my servant, whether born in my house or bought with my
money, stands to me in the relation of a child. Though providentially owing
me service, which, providentially, I am bound to exact, he is, nevertheless, my
brother and my friend, and I am to him a guardian and a father.” This
relationship, Palmer maintained, “binds upon us the providential duty of pre-
serving the relation that we may save him from a doom worse than death.”32
As disorderly and ungovernable children, blacks benefitted from slavery as
much as whites. In fact, according to Palmer, the Southern Negro owed his
very existence to this providential institution; if returned to Africa blacks
would lapse into “primitive barbarism,” and if liberated in America they
would be overtaken by “rapid extermination before they had time to waste
away through listlessness, filth and vice.”33
Significantly, the nexus between order and servitude persisted in Palmer’s
mind long after slavery itself had disappeared. In a popular work titled The
Family, in Its Civil and Churchly Aspects (1876), Palmer addressed the “au-
thority of masters” and the “subjection of servants.” While not wishing to
“perplex [his] discussion by so much as touching the vexed question of slav-
ery,” Palmer supposed that “in some one of its many forms, servitude is a
permanent relation, in all the conditions of human society.”34 The vital con-
nection between family, order, and servitude Palmer expressed in a number
of ways. First, he insisted that the family serves “as the primary state instituted
for the purpose of establishing order. It is the first government under which
will is placed, that it may be broken in and taught obedience.” With family,
Palmer continued, “vanishes the last hope of order, government and law in
society at large.”35 Further, Palmer alleged that servitude protects society from
the antagonism of the classes and is necessary because servants are naturally
prone to a spirit of anarchy and insubordination. The theology of family
articulated by Palmer in the 1870s testified to his enduring belief that servitude
was as essential to human order as family or church.

Order in Palmer’s Vindication of Secession

In a passage rife with the language of “yoke,” “vassalage,” and “oppression,”
Palmer declared in his “Thanksgiving Sermon” that “no despotism is more
absolute than that of an unprincipled democracy, and no tyranny more galling
than that exercised through constitutional formulas.”36 In “National Respon-
sibility before God,” he charged that the true rebels were Northerners who
rejected both the Constitution and “organic law.” Characterizing the Federal
government as a “tyranny” behind the president and “a despotism under
154         

which we cannot consent to live,” Palmer upheld the Confederacy as the last
hope of self-government on the continent. He declared that “the spirit of
insubordination is . . . the highest treason” and blamed the dissolution of the
American nation on leaders who were “tinctured with the free-thinking and
infidel spirit” that animated the French Revolution. In decrying the “despot-
ism of the mob,” Palmer condemned those who had “sinned in a grievous
want of reverence for the authority and majesty of law.”37
Later in 1861, Palmer had a guiding hand in the pastoral letter composed
by founding members of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States.
This document, titled “To All the Churches of Jesus Christ throughout the
Earth . . . ,” contended that the Southern church possessed a right of existence
that corresponded to that of a distinct Southern nation. In exercising these
rights, both had embarked on natural and orderly paths. Separate existence,
the letter stressed, did not spell disorder in the ecclesiastical realm. “We should
be sorry to be regarded by our brethren in any part of the world as guilty of
schism. . . . Our aim has been to promote the unity of the Spirit in the bonds
of peace.” It became necessary to pursue the path of disunion, the letter
continued, when the church adopted a political theory that “made secession
a crime, the seceding States rebellious and the citizens who obeyed them
traitors.” Under these conditions, Southern Presbyterians were forced to go
their own way precisely to maintain order and avoid “a mournful spectacle
of strife and debate.”38
As we have seen, beginning in 1863 Palmer invoked Nimrod and his tower
to argue that Northerners were engaged in sinful rebellion. According to Pal-
mer, the political consolidation sought by advocates of the Union was a clear
violation of divine law that reiterated Nimrod’s rebellion on the Plain of
Shinar. In other words, at the very time Palmer was affirming Noah’s curse
as a rationale for slavery, he was accusing the North of rebellion and defending
Southerners as apostles of order.

Disorder and Abolition

The link in Palmer’s mind between slavery and order is also evident in his
relentless diatribes on the immorality of abolitionism. For Palmer, antislavery
was synonymous with infidelity, rebellion, and chaos. Relying on well-
established proslavery conventions, Palmer incessantly conjoined abolitionism
and the dissolution of society. For example, his sermons were punctuated with
frightening references to the slave insurrection in Santo Domingo (Haiti). If
the South misses its sublime moment and does not save itself, Palmer pre-
dicted in 1860, “within five and twenty years the history of St. Domingo will
be the record of Louisiana.”39 This was a classic trope of proslavery orators,
one repeated many times following the late-eighteenth-century Haitian up-
rising.40
                 

Another proslavery rhetorical strategy was to associate the assault on slav-

ery with apocalypse. Palmer adopted this tactic in his “Thanksgiving Sermon,”
proclaiming that “we have fallen upon times when there are ‘signs in the sun,
and in the moon, and in the stars; upon the earth distress of nations, with
perplexities; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear
and for looking after those whinings which are coming’ in the near yet gloomy
future.”41 Similarly, in “National Responsibility before God” Palmer thanked
his Maker for the storm of war, for “it has come in time to redeem us from
ruin. Though the heavens be overcast, and lurid lightnings gleam from the
bosom of each dark cloud, the moral atmosphere will be purged—and from
our heroism shall spring sons and daughters capable of immortal destinies.”42
Another proslavery expedient was the charge that abolition was, without re-
mainder, moral rebellion and infidelity. We encounter this allegation through-
out Palmer’s writings of the 1850s and 1860s, but particularly in his crisis
sermons of 1860 and 1861.
When Palmer characterized abolitionism as infidelity, he was articulating
beliefs that were simultaneously personal, regional, and denominational. As
Thomas Peterson has pointed out, slavery dampened the religious enthusiasm
associated with the Second Great Awakening and caused Southerners to as-
sociate revivals in other parts of the country with sects, utopian communities,
and the “isms” that threatened societal stability.43 Fears that revivalism threat-
ened the slavocracy were confirmed when Northern revivalists joined the an-
tislavery campaign. Among Presbyterians, the 1837 split between “Old School”
and “New School” reflected concerns over revivalism and antislavery. Thus,
as an Old School Presbyterian and a Southerner, Palmer naturally associated
abolition with religious enthusiasm and “fanaticism.” His conviction that an-
tislavery sentiment could be traced to the European Enlightenment led him
to identify this fanaticism with infidelity; and his assumption that slavery
safeguarded the social order caused him to connect both with rebellion.
Following fellow South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, Palmer maintained
that the spurious Enlightenment doctrine of human equality had created an-
archy in Europe and threatened to do the same in America. Calhoun taught
that because humanity’s “individual affections” tend toward anarchy, they
must be checked by government.44 Similarly, in his “Thanksgiving Sermon”
Palmer described abolitionism as a “reckless radicalism which seeks for the
subversion of all that is ancient and stable, and a furious fanaticism which
drives on its ill-considered conclusions with utter disregard of the evil it en-
genders.”45 Later in the same address, Palmer invoked the specter of the French
Revolution and its spirit of “discord and schism”:
The abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic. The demon which erected its
throne up on the guillotine in the days of Robespierre and Marat, which
abolished the Sabbath and worshipped reason in the person of a harlot, yet
survives to work other horrors, of which those of the French Revolution are
but the type. . . . From a thousand Jacobin clubs here, as in France, the decree
156         

has gone forth which strikes at God by striking at all subordination and
law.46

In forgetting that Providence must govern human beings, abolitionists dis-

regarded “the delicate mechanism of Providence, which moves on, wheels
within wheels, with pivots and balances and springs, which the great Designer
alone can control.” They war against “constitutions and laws and compacts,
against Sabbaths and sanctuaries, against the family, the State, and the
Church.” In other words, they wreak chaos and disorder.
In “National Responsibility before God,” Palmer struck a similarly dra-
matic chord. “Like the attraction of gravitation in physics, law binds together
all the spheres of human duty and holds them fast to the throne of God. In
all the concentric circles of society, obedience is man’s first obligation. . . . The
spirit of insubordination is therefore the highest treason, for it breaks the tie
which binds the universe of moral beings together.”47 In the same sermon,
Palmer extended his critique of abolitionism to the American Constitution,
whose authors, he claimed, were “tinctured with the free-thinking and infidel
spirit which swept like a pestilence over Europe in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries, and which brought forth at last its bitter fruit in the horrors
of the French Revolution.”48
Of course, abolitionists responded to the charge of infidelity with equal
vehemence. In The “Infidelity” of Abolitionism (1860), William Lloyd Garrison
wrote:
If therefore, [the American Anti-slavery Society] be an infidel Society, it is
so only in the sense in which Jesus was a blasphemer, and the Apostles were
pestilent and seditious fellows, seeking to turn the world upside down. It is
infidel to Satan, the enslaver; it is loyal to Christ, the redeemer. It is infidel
to a Gospel which makes man the property of man; it is bound up with the
Gospel which requires us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to call no
man master. . . . It is infidel to the Bible as a pro-slavery interpreted volume;
it is faithful to it as construed on the side of justice and humanity.49

Garrison’s response indicates how fundamental the charge of infidelity was to

the religious proslavery argument.

Order and American Racism

Even as Palmer began to assimilate “scientific” concepts after the Civil War,
his racial rhetoric trafficked in themes of order and disorder. For instance,
when he turned to the question of African destiny in his 1863 address before
the South Carolina Assembly, Palmer emphasized “facts” he believed had been
“grievously overlooked by [slavery’s] fanatical assailants.”50 Among these were
that “the negro race . . . has never in any period of history been able to lift
itself above its native condition of fetishism and barbarism . . . except as it has
indirectly contributed by servile labor to human progress”; “that the highest
                

type of character, ever developed among [Negroes], has been in the condition
of servitude”; and “that, in the fairest portions of the earth, after the advantage
of a long discipline to systematic toil, emancipation has converted them in-
stantly from productive laborers into the most indolent and squalid wretches
to be found upon the globe.”51 In other words, slavery was necessary to protect
the free Anglo-Saxon, the African slave, and the earth itself from the results
of Hamite disorder and ineptitude. It was difficult for Palmer to envision any
alternative to black thralldom: “My individual belief,” he offered, “is, that
servitude, in some one of its forms, is the allotted destiny of this race and
that the form most beneficial to the negro himself is precisely that which
obtains with us.52
In 1887, in his campaign to block the reunion of Northern and Southern
Presbyterians, Palmer invoked disorder in terms that resonate with modern
racial stereotypes. He stressed that “upon no point are the Southern people
more sensitive, to no danger are they more alive, than this of the amalga-
mation of the two races thrown so closely together and threatening the de-
terioration of both.”53 Presbyterians in the North may be untroubled by the
Negro problem, Palmer wrote, because “the infusion of two or three drops
of ink into a tumbler of water will not discolor it.” Perhaps there is little
danger that the Northern church will be ruled by a Negro majority, “fastening
their crude superstitions and fantastic usages upon those so far superior to
them in intelligence and virtue.” But, Palmer warned, the situation is much
different in the South, where “Negro churches could be multiplied of infini-
tesimal proportions, packing our courts with Presbyters of that race to whom
the entire Church would be in hopeless subjection.” Palmer then referred
obliquely to the social peril implied in the prospect of ecclesiastical reunion:
How can the two races be brought together in nearly equal numbers in those
confidential and sacred relations which belong to the ministry of the Word,
without entailing that personal intimacy between ministers and people which
must end in the general amalgamation of discordant races? We simply hint
at evils which we do not desire to discuss in detail: the mere suggestion of
them will put the readers of this paper upon their own line of reflection,
filling out the argument to its due proportion.54

For Palmer, the specter of racial amalgamation eclipsed even the benefit of
white control over black churches.

Genesis 9–11, Mastery, and Victimhood

Christine Heyrman’s analysis of evangelical Southern clergymen illumines the

way these antebellum preachers embraced the cultural ideal of mastery. Heyr-
man does not relate the aspiration for mastery to the Southern clergy’s fond-
ness for Noah’s curse, but the connection is compelling. Whether they iden-
158        

tified with Noah the patriarch or Japheth the eponymous white man, Southern
divines read Genesis 9 in a fashion that could only buoy their self-perception
as masters. Noah’s divine authority, the language of “enlargement” applied to
the first European, and the perennial servitude predicted for Ham no doubt
combined to bolster the ambition of Southern clergy to be counted among
their society’s masters. Likewise, the historical events that spelled an end to
Southern white ascendancy provide a background for clarifying the transition
from Ham to Nimrod in the white biblical imagination.
Remarkably, Nimrod emerged in Palmer’s racial discourse precisely at the
moment he began to express sentiments of victimhood. From the 1850s
through the early years of the war, Palmer referred often to Ham (and Noah’s
other sons) but made no mention of Nimrod. Conversely, from 1863 through
the 1880s, Nimrod and his tower were staples in Palmer’s rhetoric, as Ham
became virtually absent. In other words, Ham remained an integral part of
Palmer’s worldview as long as he sought to validate the claim that Southern
whites had both a right and responsibility to master the “sons of Ham.” Even
after their region was invaded by Federal troops, Southerners retained con-
fidence in the righteousness of the Confederacy and the inevitability of its
victory. But this confidence, which sustained Southerners’ self-perception as
masters rather than victims of history, waned with pivotal defeats at Gettys-
burg and Vicksburg.
It was precisely at this time—late 1863—that Palmer came to rely on
Genesis 10 and 11 to defend the South’s cause. As he began to portray himself
and his countrymen as victims of occupation, usurpation, tyranny, and cru-
elty, Palmer invoked the menacing image of Nimrod. Palmer’s first public
reference to Ham’s grandson appeared in his “South Carolina Fast Day Ser-
mon” (December 1863), whose tone unmistakably echoed the Confederacy’s
martial setbacks of that year. When Palmer proclaimed that “the first pro-
nounced insurrection against [God’s] supremacy, was the attempt by Nimrod
to oppose and defeat this policy [of divine separation]; and the successive
efforts of all the great kingdoms to achieve universal conquest have been but
the continuation of that primary rebellion—always attended by the same
overwhelming failure that marked the first,” he was portraying the Union as
an empire bent on conquest and the South as its pitiable victim.55
Nimrod figured prominently once again in “The Present Crisis and Its
Issue” (1872), when Palmer offered a theological rationale for racial separation.
In this address, Palmer located the fountainhead of segregation in “the im-
mediate intervention of Jehovah, breaking the unity of human speech, and
thus separating the conspirators by the most impassable of all barriers,” and
its necessity in the “usurpation and insurrection of the first Nimrod,” which
was emblematic of the desire of “great kingdoms to achieve universal con-
quest.” Nimrod materialized yet again in 1887 in Palmer’s response to the
campaign for reunification with Northern Presbyterians. Compelled to thwart
his church’s attempts at ecclesiastical unification, Palmer appealed to the Babel
episode to certify that separation was God’s will for human societies.
                   

In other words, on the occasions when Palmer applied Nimrod and his
legend to American history he also intimated the South’s victim status. When
Palmer and other Southerners were confident in their role as masters, Noah’s
prophecy seemed to indicate why and how. When they began to regard them-
selves as history’s righteous victims, the legend of Nimrod and his tower elu-
cidated the reasons for this condition. In Palmer’s maturing interpretation of
Genesis 9–11, we glimpse some of the emotional dynamics that accompanied
the transition from Ham to Nimrod in Southern racial discourse following
the Civil War.

Palmer as Patriarch and Dishonorable Son

Benjamin Palmer, we have argued, was drawn to Noah’s prophecy by the same
forces that attracted other antebellum Southerners—honor, order, and mas-
tery. But if we examine his biography, it is possible to discern an ever deeper
connection between Palmer and the biblical passage that gripped him. Biog-
raphers have described Benjamin’s relationship with his father as a happy one
characterized by mutual admiration. A letter penned on the occasion of his
father’s birthday contains evidence of Benjamin’s esteem: “What a clear, bright
day has your life been on earth . . . It has been a long life, undimmed by a
single reproach—as it seems to us, not obscured by a single mistake. . . .”56
Yet there are also indications that father and son experienced serious conflicts.
One occasion for conflict was the crisis precipitated by Benjamin’s abrupt
departure from Amherst in 1834. When Palmer arrived home unannounced
following his expulsion, Edward Palmer’s reaction led Benjamin’s mother “to
act as mediator in order to avoid a permanent break between father and
son.”57 Another episode in Palmer’s childhood must have generated unresolved
feelings in the young boy. In 1821, when Benjamin was only three, Edward
Palmer left home and family to enroll at Andover Seminary in Massachusetts.
We can imagine the young Benjamin’s sense of abandonment during his fa-
ther’s two-year absence; we know that Edward’s departure was dramatic and
memorable. Biographers record that as the elder Palmer departed from South
Carolina, he raised Benjamin in his arms and announced: “My poor little
Benny, I suppose I shall never see you again in this world. You will hardly
live to pass your fifth year.”58 Such a remarkable prophecy could only intensify
the young Palmer’s sense of desertion. Indeed, to the three-year-old Benjamin,
his father’s farewell must have seemed a parental curse. In that the dispiriting
prediction had the authority of the family’s patriarch, it might as well have
come from the mouth of God.
Genesis 9 is inscribed with ambiguity as to whether Noah’s curse is aimed
at his son Ham or grandson Canaan. And so it was in the Palmer family. If
Benjamin defiantly resisted his father’s prediction of an early death by living
into his eighties, his own son could not escape the patriarchal curse. Several
160        

decades later Palmer’s own son Benjamin would succumb to a slow and ag-
onizing demise before reaching the age of two. Given his conflicted relation-
ship to paternity, it is not surprising that Palmer lived for more than forty
years with the image of Benjamin Blakely languishing like a “breathing skel-
eton” upon his mother’s lap.
 9
Beyond Slavery, Beyond Race

Noah’s Camera in the Twentieth Century

God has separated people for His own purpose. He has

erected barriers between the nations, not only land and
sea barriers, but also ethnic, cultural, and language barri-
ers. God has made people different one from another and
intends those differences to remain.
Letter to James Landrith from
Bob Jones University, 1998

  , buildings, streets, parks, schools, and orphanages

bear Benjamin Palmer’s name, but it is doubtful that anyone associates these
monuments with his legacy of religious racism. Palmer’s influence was certainly
evident in clerical resistance to integration during the 1950s. When Southern
Presbyterians such as Thomas Gillespie declared that segregation represented the
providential pattern for human relations, they were asserting an updated version
of Palmer’s hermeneutic of separation.1 Today, however, the caretakers of Pal-
mer’s legacy do not advance biblical warrants for racial discrimination. Palmer is
honored as an apostle of evangelical Christianity, his sermons are posted on the
World Wide Web, an edition of his biography published in 1906 remains in print,
a recent book celebrates him as a paragon of Christian preaching,2 and a promi-
nent Southern institution of higher learning honors him as “the father of [the] in-
stitution.”3 But he is no longer associated with the biblical justifications for white
supremacy on which he labored for decades.
Yet given the longevity and flexibility of the American interpretive
traditions surrounding Genesis 9–11, it would be naive to conclude that they

161
162         

do not survive in some form. In fact, just as postbellum Bible readers trans-
formed Noah’s curse by applying it to racial segregation, more recently Noah’s
prophecy has been salvaged by Christians seeking to rehabilitate Genesis 9–
11 for a postracist age. In doing so, they have sustained the legacy of Benjamin
Palmer in the largest sense, by asserting the relevance of Noah’s curse and its
satellite passages to life in contemporary America.

Beyond Slavery

Palmer symbolized his enduring conviction that God’s intentions for the hu-
man family were revealed in Genesis 9:25–27 by invoking the image of “Noah’s
camera.”4 Palmer was able to salvage Noah’s camera despite Confederate de-
feat and slave emancipation because he had avoided defining just what Ham’s
curse entailed. He spoke of servitude in relation to Genesis 9 but not slavery
as such. For Palmer, Noah’s prophecy was a poetic description of the way
God would “divide the earth between the sons of Noah.” The great message
of the curse was not thralldan per se but the destinies of Japheth, Shem, and
Ham, who were assumed to correspond with the red, black, and white “races”
identified by nineteenth-century common sense. When the prophecy’s con-
nection with chattel slavery fell away after the Civil War, its racial dimension
survived. In fact, Palmer affirmed this dimension of Noah’s camera until the
end of his life.
What distinguishes Palmer among former slavery apologists—his stub-
born refusal to relinquish the curse’s relevance to American race relations—
is something he shares with American Bible readers more generally. To wit,
Palmer represents the American penchant for reading Genesis 9–11 as a man-
ifesto of racial destiny quite apart from the question of slavery. Another
nineteenth-century American author whose work is indicative of this popular
fascination with Noah’s family is Jerome Holgate. In 1860, this New Yorker
wrote Noachidae: or, Noah, and his Descendants, a fictional re-creation of the
stories and genealogies contained in Genesis 9–11—from Noah’s disembar-
kation to God’s judgment on the Tower of Babel. Assuming the historicity of
this material, Holgate sought to communicate its message for the modern
American reader.5
As it ultimately was for Palmer, for Holgate Genesis 9–11 was about the
distinctive and indelible characters inherited by modern racial groups from
their eponymous ancestors. In Noachidae, Ham is an infidel who doubts God
and has little respect for creation. His diminutive faith is rooted in a small
mind. As Japhet remarks: “Ham believes what he knows; and knowing very
little, has very little faith. . . .”6 Holgate sets the stage for Noah’s malediction
this way: “Ham started for his encampment, and passing his father’s tent,
stopped, looked in for a moment, and then turning back, went up to his
brothers, saying something, while a lurid smile played upon his visage. Shem
and Japhet, with looks of indignation, turning round, went up to their father’s
          ,      

tent, and taking down a woolen mantle, hanging there, spread it out behind
them, going backward, and disappeared, for a moment, within the tent.”7 When
Noah awakes the following morning, he examines the wine he had imbibed
the night before and complains that “it had a most extraordinary effect upon
me; I think something unusual must have got in it . . . I was very thirsty, and
drank immoderately of it.”8 As the family gathers for morning worship, Noah
turns “slowly and with dignity toward Ham,” saying, “disrespect to parents is
disrespect to the Almighty. . . . The Almighty has given you also, in connection
with your brethren, this beautiful earth. Should you not be thankful for it?”9
When the young Canaan replies that “we did not ask the Almighty to give it
to us,” a shudder runs through the families of Shem and Japhet. Calling them
“ungrateful children,” Noah announces that Ham and his descendants
will enjoy the poorest portion of the earth. I see it; I see trouble. You will
seek to rule, but you will be slaves; for the Almighty humbles the proud.
Beware! Ambition, covetousness will be the ruin of your race, and of every
race . . . that gives way to them. . . . [I]n Canaan will your own passions and
disobedience meet their speediest recompense. Foolish children . . . to rebel
against the Almighty—against your own father that has in his hands all
goodness. Shem . . . the Almighty will bless you. But these blessings will be
more spiritual than physical, at first, and Canaan shall be your servant. . . .
Japhet, in physical good you will be blest. The largest portion of the earth
will be yours, and Shem shall administer to your spiritual comfort. Expand-
ing, you shall expand and Canaan shall be subordinate to you. . . . My chil-
dren . . . the Almighty rules.10

Although Holgate does not present Noah’s sons as progenitors of separate

“races” in the modern sense,11 he makes it clear that Ham and his descendants
have been assigned to dwell in Africa. Yet more essential than racial identities
are the distinctive characters of Noah’s sons. Following a tradition embraced
by Palmer and other nineteenth-century writers, Holgate connects the post-
diluvian dispersion with the sons’ unique roles in civilization building: Sem-
ites have received spiritual blessings and responsibilities through which they
are to “administer to [the] spiritual comfort” of others; Japhethites have been
blessed physically, intellectually, and geographically. Hamites, meanwhile, are
incorrigibly proud, ambitious, covetous, passionate, disobedient, and rebel-
lious. These traits are so fundamental to Holgate’s conception of Noah’s sons
that they appear throughout his narrative. For instance, while Noah conducts
a religious ceremony,
Shem and Elisheba [his wife] were the most devotional; Asia appeared more
so than Japhet, yet his air and manner was that of profound reverence and
respect, yet there was a certain wandering of the eye and vacant expression
of the countenance that indicated not quite so much devotion as was exhib-
ited by his younger brother; still this might have been the result of temper-
ament and an active imagination. But Ham’s demeanor was different. He
was restless and uneasy in his manner, and the expression of his countenance
indicated a distaste for the whole ceremony.12
164         

Holgate’s Ham is neither the irredeemably evil figure previous interpreters

had made him nor the quintessential Negro he became for proslavery apol-
ogists. Rather, he is a living canvass whose personal traits become a portrait
of the nations that will spring from him.
Testifying to the depth at which Genesis 9 informed the popular imagi-
nation in the nineteenth century are African American divines who read
Noah’s prophecy as predicting a unique historical role for the children of
Ham. Among these men was Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1912), who in 1862
proclaimed that
Africa will furnish a development of civilization which the world has never
yet witnessed. Its great peculiarity will be its moral element. The Gospel is
to achieve some of its most beautiful triumphs in that land. “God shall
enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem,” was the blessing
upon the European and Asiatic races. Wonderfully have these predictions
been fulfilled. . . . The promise to Ethiopia, or Ham, like that to Shem, is of
a spiritual kind. It refers not to physical strength, not to large and extensive
domains, not to foreign conquests, not to wide-spread dominions, but to
the possession of spiritual qualities, to the elevation of the soul heavenward,
to spiritual aspirations and divine communications. “Ethiopia shall stretch
forth her hands unto God” [Ps. 68:31]. Blessed, glorious promise! Our trust
is not to be in chariots or horses, not in our own skill or power, but our
help is to be in the name of the Lord.13
Blyden declared that because God had so faithfully fulfilled Noah’s prediction
of enlargement to Japheth, the realization of the later promise to Ham (in
Psalm 68) was inevitable as well.14
In 1884, Bishop James Theodore Holly evolved a similar theological in-
terpretation of Genesis 9 in which he posited separate ages of humanity cor-
responding to Noah’s three sons. In “The Divine Plan of Human Redemption,
In Its Ethnological Development,” Holly used Genesis 9–11 to forge a dispen-
sational schema in which the children of Ham complete the work of salvation
previously assigned to Shem and Japheth:
In the development of the Divine Plan of Human Redemption the Semitic
race had the formulating, the committing to writing and the primal guard-
ianship of the Holy Scriptures during the Hebrew dispensation. The Japhetic
race had the task committed to them of translating, publishing and prom-
ulgating broadcast the same Holy Scriptures. . . . But neither the one nor the
other of those two races have entered into or carried out the spirit of those
Scriptures. This crowning work of the will of God is reserved for the mil-
lennial phase of Christianity, when Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands di-
rectly unto God. . . . [Both Semitic and Japhetic races] alike await the forth-
coming ministry of the Hamitic race to reduce to practical ACTION that
spoken word, that written thought.15
The extent to which this tripartite historical schema structured Holly’s theo-
logical vision is evident in a prayer he offered at London’s Westminster Abbey
in 1878:
          ,      

O Jesus, Son of the living God; who when thou was spurned and rejected
and delivered into the hands of sinful men, by the Jews, of the race of Shem;
and, who, when thou wast mocked and cruelly ill treated by Pontius Pilate
and the Roman soldiers of the race of Japheth; had’st thy ponderous cross
borne to the summit of Golgotha on the stalwart shoulders of Simon of
Cyrene, of the race of Ham; remember this poor, forlorn, and despised race
when thou art come into thy Kingdom. And give me, not a place at thy
right, nor at thy left, but as a door keeper, that I may see the redeemed of
my race sweeping into the New Jerusalem, with the children of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. Amen.16

Holly’s son Alonzo Potter Burgess Holly extended this tradition of interpre-
tation into the twentieth century when he wrote that God placed the sons of
Japheth in a superior position not to enslave or despise blacks but to exercise
“the stewardship of training and developing the Children of Ham for their
prophetic mission on Earth, according to the Divine Plan for the Redemption
of Africa.”17
In these black revisions of Noah’s curse, Ham’s future glory is perceived
as an extension of Shem’s trust involving “spiritual aspirations and divine
communications” or as a new ministry that will “reduce to practical action”
what Semites and Japhethites have only recorded and reflected upon. Yet the
formal similarities with white readings of Genesis 9 during the same era are
profound. In the vein of Palmer and Holgate, Noah’s words are invested with
prophetic status, are a preview of human interrelationships in future ages,
and confirm that each of his descendants has been endowed with a unique
mission.

Beyond Race

In the nineteenth century, Noah’s prophecy was believed to specify any num-
ber of past and future racial hierarchies.18 After 1900, however, race receded
into the background of mainstream American commentary on Genesis 9–11.
During the first half of the twentieth century, a few religious publications
applied “the curse of Canaan” to race relations,19 but these were rare before
the mid-1950s, when it began to be invoked in connection with the nascent
struggle for black civil rights. More common were treatments of Genesis 9
that assiduously avoided questions of slavery and race while seeking to inspire
devotion for the Old Testament.20
Quite common in these Christian commentaries and preaching aids is
the designation of Genesis 9:20–27 as “Noah’s Fall.” A link with the original
Fall (Genesis 2–3) is often established via references to Noah as the second
Adam.21 Noah’s drunkenness is occasionally construed as “the believer’s fall,”
since it communicates a universal moral lesson regarding the susceptibility of
the righteous to sin—even when they are advanced in age, have not sinned
previously, or have earned the appellation “God’s saint.”22 The evils of drink
166        

are commonly recited, as is the axiom that “the sins of intemperance and
impurity are twin sisters.”23 Yet despite their refusal to overlook Noah’s cul-
pability before God, pious commentators in the first half of the twentieth
century regarded the patriarch’s drunkenness as an occasion for revealing “the
hearts of his sons”24 and the character of their descendants. In this way, Noah’s
prophecy became an inspired “sketch of the future history of the world” that
delineated the character of “the founders of the three great branches of the
human family.” In these six or seven sentences, “we have an epitome of the
world’s history.”
As Arthur Pink put it in 1950, Noah’s prophecy is “a remarkable unfolding
of the future destinies of the new humanity”:

Noah’s prediction contains an outline sketch of the history of the nations of

the world. The great races of the earth are here seen in their embryonic
condition: they are traced to their common source, through Shem, Ham and
Japheth, back to Noah. The nature of the stream is determined by the char-
acter of the fountain—a bitter fountain cannot send forth sweet waters. . . .
A history that started with Ham’s shameful impropriety can have only one
course and end.25

For the discerning reader, Noah’s “remarkable prophecy” is not a reflection

of the patriarch’s ire at his son or grandson, nor is it a “hasty ejaculation”
provoked by humiliation or temporary resentment. Rather, it is a revelatory
statement whose divine provenance is wonderfully confirmed in its historical
fulfillment: “Being so accurate a delineation of the future of the three branches
of the human family as we shall find this word to be, it approves itself to the
thinking man as a truly prophetic utterance.” For, “who but He who knows
the end from the beginning could have outlined the whole course of the three
great divisions of the postdiluvian race so tersely and so accurately!”26 Of
course, the conviction that Noahs words contain a capsule of subsequent
history must influence interpretation of the narrative that precedes the proph-
ecy. Although Shem and Japheth alike are praised for their behavior, Shem’s
blessing is realized in the spiritual and Japheth’s in the material realm—per-
haps in Europe’s cultural achievements and colonial empires. Unless, that is,
Anglo-Saxons are viewed as the “true Israel,” in which case Shem’s blessing
becomes the earthly kingdom traditionally associated with Japhet.27
These pious Christian commentators who celebrate Noah’s prophecy as
a God’s-eye view of human history are careful to neither support nor con-
demn slavery. The curse on Ham is treated with spiritual bromides (“sin
always reduces a sinner to slavery”),28 historicized with the argument that
Noah’s prediction of enslavement was fulfilled in biblical history, or passed
over with the observation that the curse was realized in modern racial slav-
ery.29 Rare indeed is the affirmation that Noah’s malediction “still rests upon
the race.”30 Thus, despite a studied lack of interest in the history of interpre-
tation and a refusal to discuss the morality of slavery, American devotional
         ,      

commentaries from the first half of the twentieth century extend the tradition
of viewing Noah’s prophecy as a unique statement on the origin, character,
and destiny of postdiluvian humanity.31

Noah’s Camera Revisited

In the post–civil rights era, writers in the religious mainstream have even more
conscientiously distanced themselves from racist readings of the curse. Yet
rather than ignoring Genesis 9’s antiblack legacy, they have contended that
Noah’s malediction applies only to one branch of the Hamite family, that it
expired centuries ago, that cursed Canaanites have no connection with Africa,
or that, emerging from a drunken stupor, Noah was in no condition to speak
for God.32 Yet these same authors defend Genesis 9–11’s historical reliability
and theological salience and, in the process, reveal how steeped they are in
the interpretive tradition. On one hand, they reiterate crucial elements of
interpretive history, claiming, for instance, that Canaan may have encouraged
his grandfather to become intoxicated or to commit some unnatural sexual
act; that Ham’s behavior was “dastardly,” that he symbolically castrated his
father, or that he is the progenitor of paganism; that the ministry of Shem
and Japheth is “the ministry of the family to itself in the midst of shame—a
ministry of protection, a surrounding sense of comfort and restored dignity”;
that Noah was “completely conscious and capable of sober reflection”; or that
his malediction was “spoken by the Spirit of God.”33 On the other hand, they
reflect the American compulsion to view Genesis 9–11 as a telescopic image
of subsequent history.
A fine example is Arthur C. Custance’s Noah’s Three Sons (1975). Custance
revises traditional interpretations of Noah’s curse by citing examples of Ham-
ites’ “inventive genius” (an attribute ascribed to all the “colored races”). Nev-
ertheless, he reaffirms the curse and makes Hamites responsible for erecting
the Tower of Babel. Custance perceives in the “threefold framework” of Gen-
esis 9:24–27 a revelation of distinct characters among the major divisions of
humankind. He calls the tenth chapter of Genesis
a completely authentic statement of how the present world population orig-
inated and spread after the Flood in the three families headed respectively
by Shem, Ham and Japheth. I further propose that a kind of division of
responsibilities to care for the specific needs of man at three fundamental
levels (the spiritual, the physical, and the intellectual) was divinely appointed
to each of these three branches of Noah’s family. History subsequently bears
out this thesis in a remarkable way. . . . Rightly understood, the thesis is a
key that proves to be an exciting tool of research into the spiritual, the
technological, and the intellectual history of mankind since the Flood.34
Another recapitulation of Noah’s prophecy as a biblical camera for be-
holding human history appeared in the evangelical weekly Christianity Today
168         

in 1973.35 Titled “The Curse of Ham—Capsule of Ancient History,” this article

evinced popular Christianity’s enduring fascination with Noah’s prophecy. Af-
ter quoting Genesis 9:25–27, author Robert Brow opined “that the curse of
Ham cannot be applied to black people is easily shown from the text itself.
[But] what is usually missed is the astonishing unfolding of world history
that the words of this oracle refer to.”36 Brow then embarked on a complex
defense of the historicity of Genesis 10’s “outline of racial origins.” The “tre-
mendous significance” of Noah’s curse, according to Brow, is elucidated in
light of the Table of Nations’s window on human beginnings. Noah’s prophecy
predicts three historical phenomena that would disastrously affect the Ca-
naanite nations: the enslavement of Canaanites by brother Hamites (Egypt),
by the Shemites (Israel), and by Japhethites (Greece under Alexander). Brow
argued that Noah’s “capsule prophecy” is too important for “crankish misuse
by racists” because it demonstrates so effectively that “God is in control of
the empires of men.” Other Christian authors writing at about this time af-
firmed Brow’s contention that Noah uttered a “sane, sensible prophecy of
what the Lord intended to do in each life,” leaving us in Genesis a preview
of the relative destinies of Noah’s descendants.37
In 1980, Allen P. Ross offered a more scholarly treatment of Noah’s
prophecy, but one resonating with similar themes. Ross denied that “the bi-
zarre little story” from which the “curse of Canaan” is derived has any rele-
vance for American race relations, yet he noted that “Ham’s impropriety to-
ward his father prompted an oracle with far-reaching implications.”38 Ross
perceived in Noah’s prophecy the “vast movements of ancient peoples.” And
like Brow, who saw in Noah’s curse “the unfolding of world history,” Ross
updated the tradition of viewing Genesis 9:25–27 as a resume of virtues and
vices among “the families of the world.” The purpose of this section of Genesis
was to portray “the characteristics of the three branches of the human race
in relation to blessing and cursing. In pronouncing the oracle, Noah discerned
the traits of his sons and, in a moment of insight, determined that the at-
tributes of their descendants were embodied in their personalities.”39
These American Christian authors share telling assumptions with regard
to the meaning of Genesis 9 in post–civil rights America. While refusing to
exploit Noah’s prophecy as a rationale for the subordination of African Amer-
icans, they invest his words with remarkable prophetic efficacy. In doing so,
they demonstrate anew the American biblical imagination’s affinity for Noah’s
curse, quite apart from its value in undergirding specific racial hierarchies.

Back to Babel

The legend of Nimrod and his tower is another atavism that continues to
thrive in post–civil rights America. For conservative and moderate Christians
who are loathe to seek an explanation of life’s beginnings in science, the
        ,      

biblical tale of differentiation and dispersion contained in Genesis 11 seems

to offer a compelling myth of origins. Even today, many Christians cite the
Tower of Babel story as an explanation of human diversity.40 This account of
racial and ethnic origins appears to be suasive because it takes seriously hu-
man differences while safeguarding the historicity of Genesis, and thus the
biblical version of creation.
A scholarly effort to harmonize the tower with scientific and historical
perspectives on human beginnings was offered in 1973 by Thomas Figart. In
A Biblical Perspective on the Race Problem (1973), Figart warned Bible-believing
Christians that because God is “no respecter of persons,” racism is a grievous
sin. But Figart was aware that people of faith are often exposed to biological
and anthropological theories that threaten to undermine their confidence in
scripture. In such a perilous intellectual environment, Figart argued, Genesis
11 offers a reasonable account of human diversity that relies neither on the
theory of evolution nor the vast epochs of time it implies. His desire to
historicize Genesis and harmonize it with scientific evidence led Figart to
speculate that
at the time of the dispersion of Babel four things, as recorded in the Genesis
account, are said to have occurred. The inhabitants were scattered through-
out the world “in their lands.” Immediately people were thrust into new
environments, which also involved new occupations and diets. All this in
turn had a lasting effect on stature and resulted in some measurable changes
in facial features. Second, they were scattered “after their tongues,” causing
new thought patterns, writing and speaking habits, and effectively isolating
each from their neighboring clan. Third, they were grouped “after their fam-
ilies.” Beginning with relatively small groups of several hundreds, perhaps,
the gene pools were somewhat limited. The resultant variations through
manifestation of recessive genes could well have been the major factor in
racial change. Finally, they are said to have been divided “in their nations,”
a possible reference to development in size from the original “family” units,
or a reference to cultural patterns which tended to stabilize the national
entities with their peculiar physical characteristics.41

Figart concluded that “anthropologically, it is not unreasonable to support

the Biblical account of the beginning of the races from 6000 .. as a result
of the dispersion at the tower of Babel.”42
In Noah’s Three Sons (1975), Arthur Custance combined a historicized
tower with the tradition that it was constructed by rebellious Hamites. Cust-
ance wrote that “the family of Ham, who had become politically dominant,
initiated a movement to prevent further dispersal by proposing the building
of a monument as a visible rallying point on the flat plain, thus bringing
upon themselves a judgment which led to an enforced and rapid scattering
throughout the earth.”43 The tradition of Hamite rebellion is also reflected in
a discussion of Genesis 9 that appeared in Commentary in 1992. Ham, ac-
cording to author Leon Kass, was a would-be tyrant who delighted “in rebel-
170         

ling against or exposing preexisting law and authority.” It is thus fitting that
“one of his descendants, Nimrod (whose name connotes rebelliousness) will
conquer an empire and will seek to make himself the all-powerful and self-
sufficing lord of the earth.”44 Adding tyranny to this portrait of Hamite re-
bellion, Kass likened Nimrod to Sophocles’ Oedipus.
In 1990, fantasy author James Morrow paid tribute to Nimrod’s legend
in a short story, “Bible Stories for Adults, No. 20: The Tower.”45 This tale of
hubris and retribution is set in New York in the 1980s and narrated by God.
Concerned with the activities of real estate magnate Daniel Nimrod, God rents
the penthouse of Nimrod Tower in upper Manhattan to keep an eye on him.
After an interview with Nimrod in which his plans for projects such as Nim-
rod Gorge and Nimrod Mountain are confirmed, God decides once again to
intervene:
Don’t ask Me why I found the Shinarites’ Tower so threatening. I simply
did. “And now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imag-
ined to do,” I prophesied. My famous curse followed forthwith. “Let Us go
down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one
another’s speech.”
But that didn’t stop them, did it? They still did whatever they liked.
This time around, I got it right.46

“This time” the punishment is not confusion but perfect understanding. All
the people say just what they mean, and in the absence of subtlety, dissimu-
lation, and verbal subterfuge, chaos reigns: “Half the planet is now a graduate
seminar, the other half a battleground. . . . Plagued by a single tongue, people
can no longer give each other the benefit of semantic doubt. To their utter
bewilderment and total horror, they know that nothing is being lost in trans-
lation.”47 The fact that Morrow’s story is uproariously funny obscures just
how much he draws on the interpretive tradition regarding Nimrod and the
tower. From the multiethnic security force that guards Nimrod Tower and the
“tiers of polygot shops” housed there, to Nimrod’s ambition and “overbearing
vanity,” to God’s description of the tower as “vulgar and arrogant,” to the
story’s final image of Nimrod stealing a “fiberglass hunting bow and a quiver
of arrows” from a New Jersey sporting goods store and setting out to bag a
deer, Morrow’s tale is a veritable primer in Nimrod’s legend.
“Black” biblical studies have also contributed to the survival of Nimrod’s
legend in contemporary America. Although The Original African Heritage
Study Bible (1993) downplays the “curse of Canaan” and its putative appli-
cation to persons of color, an annotation titled “The Sons of Ham and the
Birth of Nimrod” transmits many aspects of Nimrod’s unauthorized biogra-
phy:
Within the Hamitic lineage, the son of Cush, Nimrod, was known to be an
eminent African hunter and architect. Nimrod, grandson of Ham and the
mighty hunter before God, was the first man to try to build his way to
          ,      

heaven (Gen. 11:1–9). Nimrod managed to draw and begin work on a gigantic
tower that would allow him and his fellow servants to see heaven as well as
earth. This tower was built in a city called Babel, in the beginning of his
empire. Nimrod is rightfully considered to be the great innovator and builder
of such ancient Babylonian cities.48
Like nineteenth-century abolitionists, the editors perceive in the prominence
of Ham’s grandson a case against the curse. However, they appear oblivious
to the link between Nimrod’s tower and antiblack interpretive traditions.
Yet another contemporary source for Nimrod’s legend is Alexander His-
lop’s Two Babylons, the magnum opus of nineteenth-century Nimrodiana,
which was republished twice in the United States during the second half of
the 1990s.49 If we consider the recirculation of such classic texts, together with
the vestiges of the interpretive tradition that are transmitted in everything
from fantasy literature to “Afro-centric” study Bibles, we are forced to con-
clude that as long as Genesis is read, the legends of Ham and Nimrod are
likely to persist.

Genesis and Genocide

In the twenty-first century, such legends appear quaint and harmless. They
may be reflected in popular adaptations of the Bible, in conservative politics,
or in the discrimination practiced by fringe institutions like Bob Jones Uni-
versity. But most Americans do not perceive them as threats to their peace
and security. In an age of mass murder, however, we must remain sensitive
to the genocidal potential of biblical texts.
Historically speaking, Genesis 9:20–27 and its satellite passages have ex-
ercised an ambiguous effect on the destiny of Africans. While Noah’s curse
provided an ideological basis for racial slavery in Europe and the Americas,
it also affirmed blacks’ humanity when “scientific” rationales for their exter-
mination were being broadcast. Indeed, when explaining why genocide did
not befall African Americans in the years immediately following the Civil War,
we must not overlook widespread belief in the historicity of Genesis and the
biblical assumption that blacks were human beings descended from Noah and
Adam. This does not mean, however, that the ideology of Noah’s curse is
without genocidal potential or that under certain conditions it could not
transmogrify into a rationale for Africans’ “removal.”
As applied by white theorists beginning in the middle of the nineteenth
century, this quasi-biblical ideology designated certain Africans—those pur-
portedly descended from a fair-skinned “Mediterranean race” and thus bear-
ing European civilization—as “Hamites.” Scientific racists in South Africa util-
ized the Hamitic hypothesis to distinguish “Negroes” from “Bantus,” whom
they believed possessed “Hamitic” blood. But the genocidal potential in the
hypothesis was revealed not in southern Africa but in the Great Lakes Region.
172        

William F. S. Miles helpfully summarizes the ideological background to the

Rwandan massacres of 1994:
Colonial-era race classifications, based on the so-called Hamitic myth, prop-
agated the belief that Tutsis were an intellectually superior, non-indigenous,
Caucasoid (but not Caucasian) people who bettered their Bantu (including
Hutu) neighbors. Hamites were understood to be Semitic, not Negroid, orig-
inating in Egypt and the Upper Nile, introducing higher order institutions
and thought process to an intellectually inferior African interior.50

Rwanda’s German and later Belgian colonizers became convinced that “the
tribal configuration they oversaw conformed neatly to the Hamitic Hypothesis:
Tutsis, a monarchical, pastoralist, and dignified people, were Hamites; aceph-
alous, farming Hutus were Bantus.”51
Reflecting on the influence of the Hamite hypothesis in the Rwandan
catastrophe, Miles observes that “racist-driven genocides are compulsively
steeped in ancient mythic notions of bloodlines and national origin.”52 In the
case of the Hamitic Hypothesis, the integration of nineteenth-century rational
racism and biblical terminology was pioneered by John Hanning Speke, a
British explorer who set out to discover the source of the Nile and published
a journal of his expedition in 1863. Like other nineteenth-century westerners,
Speke saw Africans as descendants of “our poor elder brother Ham [who]
was cursed by his father, and condemned to be the slave of both Shem and
Japheth.” But Speke made an original contribution to white perceptions of
Africa with a theory of ethnology “founded on the traditions of the several
nations, as checked by my own observation of what I saw when passing
through them.” Speke surmised, based on their distinctive physical appear-
ance, that the Wahuma (Tutsis) were descendants of “the semi-Shem-Hamitic
[people] of Ethiopia,” cattle-herding “Asiatic” invaders who eventually moved
south, losing their original language and religion and becoming darkened
through intermarriage. Speke presented his theory before a Tutsi king:
taking a Bible to explain all I fancied I knew about the origin and present con-
dition of the Wahuma branch of the Ethiopians, beginning with Adam, to
show how it was the king had heard by tradition that at one time the people of
his race were half white and half black. Then, proceeding with the Flood, I
pointed out that the Europeans remained white, retaining Japhet’s blood; while
the Arabs are tawny, after Shem, and the Africans black, after Ham. And, fi-
nally, to show the greatness of the tribe, I read the 14th chapter of 2d Chronicles,
in which it is written how Zerah, the Ethiopian, with a host of a thousand, met
the Jew Asa with a large army, in the valley of Zephathah, near Mareshah; add-
ing to it that again, at a much later date, we find the Ethiopians battling with
the Arabs in the Somali country, and with the Arabs and Portuguese at Omwita
(Mombas)—in all of which places they have taken possession of certain tracts
of land, and left their sons to people it.”53

For obvious reasons, Speke’s Hamitic Hypothesis was warmly received by

Tutsi leaders. More importantly, it was embraced by western intellectuals who
         ,       

needed to explain how “civilization” came to Africa, by missionary educators

as a way of undergirding colonial theories of Tutsi superiority, and by Hutu
revolutionaries who sought to cast Tutsis as non-indegenous invaders from
the north. Indeed, although it conforms neither to biblical logic nor traditional
interpretation, the Rwandan version of the Hamitic Hypothesis preserves an
important strand of the interpretive tradition: In both colonial and revolu-
tionary versions of the hypothesis, “Hamite” Tutsis are perceived as “invaders”
who serveral centuries ago usurped control of the land from its indigenous
inhabitants. During the Rwandan genocide, in fact, Hutu Power extremists
bragged of sending Tutsis “back down the Nile.”
Saul Debow observes that the Hamitic Hypothesis has endured largely
owing to its capacity to adapt to changing ideological demands.54 As we have
seen, the very same could be said of the biblical curse tradition in America.
Recall that in his “Century Sermon” Benjamin Palmer utilized Noah’s proph-
ecy as an ex post facto rationale for his government’s removal of Native Amer-
icans “from the earth.” Faced with the challenge of justifying the elimination
of those who once dwelt in “Shem’s tents,” Palmer wove a novel reading of
Genesis 9:27 from disparate and conflicting strands of interpretive tradition.
According to strict biblical logic, it was not possible to portray Native Amer-
icans as Semites and Canaanites, as dwellers in Shem’s tents and idolatrous
interlopers in the promised land. But Palmer’s rhetorical skill, his conviction
that “Noah’s camera” enabled one to envision the movements of history
through the eyes of God, and his auditors’ confidence that he could be trusted
to interpret the Word for their time combined to obscure these logical in-
consistencies.
The result was a genocidal reading of Noah’s curse in the American tra-
dition. It is terribly fitting that this justification for Native American exter-
mination was delivered as the twentieth century dawned, for it greeted an era
that would see the phenomenon of genocide become an all-too-familiar di-
mension of human experience. Palmer did not live to witness the horrors the
new century would reveal or the role religion would play in abetting them.
But he was most likely the country’s first public figure to crown the annihi-
lation of a people with a biblical blessing.
Significantly, this was not the first or only time Palmer hinted at the
genocidal dimension in white readings of Noah’s curse. Since at least 1860,
Palmer’s defense of slavery was tied to predictions of African American ex-
tinction. In his notorious “Thanksgiving Sermon,” Palmer averred that outside
the institution of slavery the black race would experience “rapid extermination
before they had time to waste away through listlessness, filth and vice.”55 In
1863, Palmer characterized the North’s assault upon his region as a “double
crime which involves the extermination both of the white and of the black
race now upon the soil.”56 If “defeat means extermination” for the South,
experience teaches that “except in the condition of servitude, an inferior race
cannot be intermingled with a superior, without annihilation.”57 Palmer was
confident that although “the descendants of Ham have thriven under the
174         

South’s patriarchal system,” the North’s philanthropy would mean their “ab-
solute destruction.” “If the fate of the red man be not theirs,” he contended,
the “triple scourge of indolence, disease and vice shall sweep them from the
earth.”58 Given the way he would later use Genesis 9 to legitimate “the fate
of the red man,” such predictions are sobering indeed.
Even after the crisis of war had passed, the language of genocide was
perceptible in Palmer’s racial rhetoric. In “The Present Crisis and its Issue”
(1872), Palmer boasted of giving blacks this candid warning: “If you are to be
a historic people, you must work out your own destiny upon your own foun-
dation. . . . If you have no power of development from within, you lack the
first quality of a historic race, and must, sooner or later, go to the wall.”
During the 1880s and 1890s, Palmer evinced an equally cavalier disposition
before the appearance and disappearance of nations. In 1882, he observed that
although “the history of every historic people should be fully written . . . only
a small portion of the earth’s surface and few of its nations are historic. You
may, for example, throw all Africa overboard, except its Mediterranean coast
and a small portion that lies upon the delta of the Nile. In like manner, nearly
the whole of the massive and monotonous continent of Asia may be dis-
counted.”59 Speaking to a group of Confederate veterans in 1890, he sounded
similar themes, arguing that China’s 400 million people have not added “a
fraction to the general history of the world.” Furthermore, “so far as the broad
record of mankind is concerned, the Dark Continent might just as well have
been sunk in the depths of the two oceans which wash its borders—utterly
dead, without a history.”60
What the development of Palmer’s racial rhetoric during the second half
of the nineteenth century reveals is not, as Eugene Genovese suggests, the
eclipse of the Bible by science. Rather, it is the influence of scientific racism
in exacerbating the genocidal potential in readings of Genesis by representa-
tives of a dominant white culture. When the curse became irrelevant to the
labor question, Palmer read Noah’s prophecy as a blueprint for the natural
hierarchy of human groups. But the influence of scientific racism on this white
Bible reader led him to value the Hamitic Negro even less than Southern
slaveholders had done. By 1890, Palmer described Ham as simply unfit for
history, even a history of servitude in which he was exposed to the blessings
of civilization. He no longer spoke of preservation through servitude, but of
“discounting,” “throwing overboard,” and “resigning to the watery depths.”
Happily, the American legacy of Noah’s curse has not been genocidal. Yet
the United States has been hospitable ground for the same conjunction of
religious and scientific racism that has abetted genocide in both Europe and
Africa. Given the enduring American fascination with Noah’s curse, its po-
tential for justifying a genocidal assault on a minority population should never
be discounted.
 IV
REDEEMING THE CURSE
 10
Challenging the Curse

Readings and Counterreadings

Closely as [slaveholders] cling to it, “cursed be Canaan” is

a poor drug to stupify a throbbing conscience—a mock-
ing lullaby, vainly wooing slumber to unquiet tossings,
and crying “Peace, be still,” where God wakes war and
breaks his thunders.
Theodore Dwight Weld, 1838

  explores counterreadings of Genesis 9 developed by Bible

readers. Over the centuries, rabbis and church fathers, abolitionists, African
Americans, historical critics of the Bible, and authors of fiction and poetry
have challenged the curse by clarifying Genesis 9’s historical context, by de-
nying its putative racial dimensions, by employing logic and the rules of bib-
lical exegesis, and by undermining textual assumptions through creative re-
reading. Because the longevity of the orthodox interpretive paradigm has been
crucial in sustaining traditional readings of Noah’s curse, we revisit the history
of interpretation with particular focus on subversive counterreadings.
Long before modern writers attacked Noah’s curse in an effort to sever
the nerve that animated the Christian defense of slavery, early Bible readers
resisted the textual logic of Genesis 9:20–27 and the momentum of the inter-
pretive tradition. This practice of resistance reaches back to the rabbis, who
on occasion strenuously contested the antiseptic view of Noah canonized in
Genesis—for instance, in the claim that “it was by the grace of God, not on
account of his merits, that Noah found shelter in the ark before the over-
whelming force of the waters.”1 Another example of the rabbinic tendency to

177
178         

temper Noah’s reputation for righteousness is this gloss on his drunkenness:

“Noah lost his epithet ‘the pious’ when he began to occupy himself with the
growing of the vine. He became a ‘man of the ground,’ and this first attempt
to produce wine at the same time produced the first to drink to excess, the
first to utter curses upon his associates, and the first to introduce slavery.” It
all came about, according to rabbinic legend, when “Noah found the vine
which Adam had taken with him from Paradise, when he was driven forth.”
He tasted Adam’s grapes and planted the vine; on the very same day the vine
bore fruit, Noah made wine and was dishonored.2 Although rabbinic com-
mentary on the tale of Noah’s drunkenness conforms to the orthodox inter-
pretive paradigm by vilifying Ham and honoring Noah, it also warns of the
woeful effects of alcohol—and, by extension, agriculture itself—on the con-
duct of the righteous.3
In contrast to the rabbis, the church fathers tended to downplay or excuse
Noah’s drunkenness.4 If the standard view of Noah as a type of Christ was to
be upheld, insobriety had to be viewed as something that happened to him.
As Augustine wrote: “ ‘And he was drunken,’ that is, He suffered.”5 Medieval
Christian representations of Genesis featured a more didactic take on Noah’s
intoxication, as visual artists utilized Noah’s “sin” as an object lesson for the
pious.6 No doubt the best known artistic interpretation of Noah’s intemper-
ance is Michelangelo’s Drunkenness of Noah, in which “the old Titan is down
and his sons stand before him shocked into laughter or into shame.”7 Chris-
tian skepticism regarding Noah’s celebrated righteousness probably peaked in
the work of Guillaume Du Bartas. The same sixteenth-century French author
who so imaginatively denigrated Ham also cast Noah in an unflattering light.
In Du Bartas’s version of the patriarch’s crapulous behavior, Noah wants “to
overcome the sadness that cruelly afflicted his trembling old age.” He becomes
drunk and, “thinking he can drown his gnawing boredom in such sweet poi-
son, drowns his reason.” Noah’s “wandering speech . . . becomes confused,
unhealthy, stuttering, truncated. He feels his inebriated chest wracked by
winds and his whole shaken pavilion turns unsteadily.” No longer able to
stand, Noah is “a dirty pig of a man [who] drops his snoring carcass shame-
lessly in the middle of the lodging. Forgetting himself, and drowned, he fails
to cover the members that Caesar [insisted must be] covered even when dy-
ing.”8 After he is dishonored by Ham, “the ol’ boy wakes up, recognizes his
error, and ashamed, marvels at the wine’s potency, and piqued by a strong
concern from his prophetic gut, speaks thus to his sons: ‘Cursed be you, Ham,
and cursed as well be your little darling Canaan; may pearly Dawn, pure
Evening, and gleaming Noon forever see your neck charged with a heavy yoke;
may God sustain Shem, and may his grace soon spread the teeming race of
Japheth.’ ”9
Around the same time, Noah’s reputation for probity was challenged by
no less a Bible exegete than John Calvin. Rejecting traditional justifications
for Noah’s lapsed sobriety, Calvin regarded the story as “a lesson of temper-
             

ance for all ages.” Because Moses does not indicate that Noah’s drunkenness
occurred the first time he tasted wine, Calvin concluded that the story teaches
“what a filthy and detestable crime drunkenness is. The holy patriarch, though
he had hitherto been a rare example of frugality and temperance, losing all
self-possession, did, in a base and shameful manner, prostate himself naked
on the ground, so as to become a laughing-stock to all. Therefore, with what
care ought we to cultivate sobriety, lest anything like this, or even worse,
should happen to us?”10 The weightiness of Noah’s sin is reflected in God’s
decision to brand him “with an eternal mark of disgrace.”11 Calvin’s reading
of the episode did not lead him to eschew an otherwise orthodox reading of
Genesis 9,12 but his stubborn refusal to excuse Noah’s behavior extended a
significant countertrajectory in the history of interpretation.
Seventeenth-century commentators influenced by the Reformation fol-
lowed Calvin’s lead in elaborating readings of Genesis 9 that foregrounded
Noah’s infraction. Like Calvin, these exegetes assessed the patriarch’s inebri-
ation as a regretful failure that constituted a valuable lesson in temperance.
In 1637, Gervase Babington fully acknowledged Noah’s “foule fall” and warned
readers to “marke the filthinesse of drunkennesse, [how] it maketh him lie
uncovered in his Tent, undecently, unseemely, nay beastly, and rather like a
beast than a man.”13 Babington emphasized that the patriarch’s shame should
fill readers with humility: After all, he warned, “wine . . . spared not his first
inventor, therefore beware.”14 Andrew Willet adopted a similar view: “For Noah
was so oppressed and intoxicate, that he forgat himselfe, as a man for the
time not regarding comeliness: for he lay uncovered . . . by his own negligence
and ouersight, and that in the middle of the tent, as it were in the floore and
pavement. . . .”15 According to Willet, Noah’s intemperance should not be as-
signed to ignorance or inadvertence unless we are also willing to excuse Lot
and Judas. Nevertheless, the story edifies; “by such examples we should rather
take heede: for if the strong may be thus ouertaken, how much more circum-
spect ought the weaker sort to be.”16 In his famous Bible commentary, Mat-
thew Henry conceded that while “it was said of Noah that he was perfect in
his generations . . . [his fall] shows that it is meant of sincerity, not a sinless
perfection. . . .” Henry went on to remark that although Noah shamed himself
as had Adam, at least the first man “sought concealment; Noah is so destitute
of thought and reason that he seeks no covering. This was the fruit of the
vine that Noah did not think of.”17 Thomas Newton adopted a similar view
of Noah’s intoxication, observing that although “it is an excellent character
that is given of Noah . . . the best of men are not without their infirmities.”
Newton concluded that as a faithful historian, Moses was compelled to record
“the failings and imperfections of the most venerable patriarchs.”18
The view that Noah’s fall may be of benefit to the religious reader was
underlined by biblical commentators into the twentieth century. For instance,
Marcus Dods’s treatment of “Noah’s Fall” in 1901 noted that “the righteous
and rescued Noah lying drunk on his tent-floor is a sorrowful spectacle. God
180           

had given him the earth, and this was the use he made of the gift; melancholy
presage of the fashion of his posterity. . . . In that heavy helpless figure, fallen
insensible in his tent, is as significant a warning as in the Flood.”19 Dods
remarked that Noah is not the only man who has “walked uprightly and kept
his garment unspotted from the world so long as the eye of man was on him,
but who has lain uncovered on his own tent-floor.”20

Modern Counterreadings

In the modern era, “secular” writers have proffered more radical challenges
to the interpretive tradition. For instance, in “Of the Blackness of Negroes,”
Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) emphasized the difficulty of tracing the lines
of human descent and observed that blackness is not shunned by all. He wrote
that “whereas men affirm this color was a Curse, I cannot make out the
propriety of that name, it neither seeming so to them, nor reasonably unto
us; for they take so much content therein, that they esteem deformity by other
colours, describing the Devil, and terrible objects, white.”21 Subsequent re-
monstrances against the curse were anticipated by Henry St. John (Lord Vis-
count) Bolingbroke (1678–1751). In his “Letters on the Study and Use of His-
tory,” Bolingbroke cited Noah’s prophecy as a notorious example of the
historical unreliability of scripture. Bolingbroke noted that the terms of
Noah’s “prophecy” were not clear and complained that “the curse pronounced
in it contradicts all our notions of order and of justice. One is tempted to
think, that the patriarch was still drunk; and that no man in his senses could
hold such language, or pass such a sentence.”22 Bolingbroke protested that
“Ham alone offended; Canaan was innocent” and observed that those “who
would make the son an accomplice with his father, affirm not only without,
but against, the express authority of the text.”23 Bolingbroke evaluated tradi-
tional attempts to defend the integrity of the text:
Will it be said—it has been said—that where we read Canaan we are to
understand Ham, whose brethren Sem and Japhet were? At this rate, we shall
never know what we read: as these critics never care what they say. Will it
be said—this has been said too—that Ham was punished in his posterity,
when Canaan was cursed, and his descendants were exterminated? But who
does not see that the curse, and the punishment, in this case, fell on Canaan
and his posterity, exclusively of the rest of the posterity of Ham; and were
therefore the curse and punishment of the son, not of the father, properly?24

Although such textual queries challenged the application of Noah’s curse to

African slavery, they were not motivated by a desire for social reform. Rather,
Bolingbroke’s commitment to the burgeoning science of history led him to
seize on inconsistencies in the biblical text to demonstrate the impossibility
of deriving from it “any thing like universal chronology and history.”25
              

Abolitionist Counterreadings

The goal was quite different among abolitionist writers, who defied the curse
as a method of striking at the heart of the proslavery argument. From colonial
times, it was widely recognized that the Bible was a crux for the justification
of forced servitude, and as early as the 1670s American opponents of slavery
published attacks on “the assumption that Negro slavery was a fulfillment of
the curse of Canaan.”26
In an early abolitionist tract, The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial (1700),
Samuel Sewall anticipated a number of objections to his assertion that slavery
amounted to a “barbarous Usage of our Friends and Kinsfolk in Africa.” The
first of these was that “these Blackamores are of the Posterity of Cham, and
therefore are under the Curse of Slavery. Gen. 9. 25, 26, 27.”27 Sewall responded
to the putative connection of slaves with Noah’s son Ham in a fashion that
would characterize many subsequent abolitionist assaults on the curse. First,
he noted that “to be an Executioner of the Vindictive Wrath of God” is not
an office that should be wished for. How do we know, for instance, that the
commission to do so is not long out of date? Sewall warned that “many have
found it to their Cost, that a Prophetical Denunciation of Judgment against
a Person or People, would not warrant them to inflict that evil. If it would,
Hazael might justify himself in all he did against his Master, and the Israelites,
from 2 Kings 8.10, 12.”28 Second, Sewall observed that deriving a curse on
Ham from Genesis 9 violated the natural meaning of the text. It is possible,
he suggested, “that by cursory reading, this Text may have been mistaken.
For Canaan is the Person Cursed three times over, without the mentioning
of Cham. Good Expositors suppose the Curse entailed on him, and that this
Prophesie was accomplished in the Extirpation of the Canaanites, and in the
Servitude of the Gibeonites. Vide Pareum.”29 Finally, Sewall asserted that black
Africans could not be the descendants of the cursed Canaanites, in that “the
Blackamores are not descended of Canaan, but of Cush.” Citing Psalm 68:31,
Sewall declared that “Princes shall come out of Egypt [Mizraim]. Ethiopia
[Cush] shall soon stretch out her hands unto God. Under which names, all
Africa may be comprehended; and their Promised Conversion ought to be
prayed for.”30
Sewall’s ambition of denying the purported relevance of Noah’s curse
would be reflected in American abolitionist literature for the next century and
a half. As the antislavery campaign heated up after 1830, proslavery apologists
tightened their embrace of Genesis 9. By 1838, abolitionist Theodore Weld
could remark that Noah’s malediction was “the vade mecum of slaveholders,
and they never venture abroad without it. It is a pocket-piece for sudden
occasion—a keepsake to dote over—a charm to spell-bind opposition, and a
magnet to attract ‘whatsover worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.’ ”31 Of
course, attention to Noah’s curse reflected not only its prominence in the
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rhetoric of slavery’s defenders but also the conviction of many abolitionists

that redemption from the sin of slavery lay in careful attention to biblical
revelation. Caroline L. Shanks has observed that “all Christians both north
and south agreed that the Scriptures were consistent with themselves and
formed a ‘perfect rule of duty’; the conflict came over the formation of this
‘perfect rule.’ ”32
In their efforts to demonstrate that proslavery exegesis of Genesis 9 was
in error, antebellum abolitionists employed a variety of tactics. Among their
technical points were that the Hebrew and Greek terms translated “servant”
in English Bibles were not synonymous with “slave”33 and that the ancient
practice of slavery was not analogous with that of modern America. Aboli-
tionists also insisted that a literal, commonsense reading of Genesis 9 yielded
a curse on Canaan rather than on Ham. Along with the observation that
Noah’s prophecy names Canaan, they stressed that according to Genesis 10
Canaan could not be regarded as the ancestor of Africans.34 Although most
opponents of slavery considered the biblical genealogy to be a reliable account
of human origins, some questioned whether blacks were Hamites at all.35
Another abolitionist strategy called attention to the dubious circum-
stances attending Noah’s “prophecy.” Advocates of the curse alleged that Noah
spoke for God when he announced that Ham or Canaan would serve his
brothers.36 But abolitionists sought to drive a wedge between God and Noah
by contending that while the patriarch’s indignation at his son may have been
justified, his malediction carried no particular authority.37 In 1847, William
Henry Brisbane flatly denied that Noah spoke “by the inspiration of the Holy
Ghost” and asked: “Is there any thing about [the curse] that implies that Noah
spake as moved by the Spirit of God? Is it any thing more than an historical
fact in the life of Noah?”38 Many abolitionists endeavored to deflate Noah’s
curse by downgrading it from “prophecy” to “prediction.”39 In the 1830s, John
Rankin declared that “predications are not given in Scripture as rules of moral
action. It was predicated, and even decreed, that Jesus Christ should be cru-
cified, and yet his crucifiers were full as guilty as they would have been if no
such predication and decree had ever existed.”40 During the 1840s and 1850s,
various versions of this argument became mainstays in the abolitionist assault
on Noah’s curse.41
Abolitionists battled the curse on historical grounds as well, marshaling
data calculated to refute the efficacy of Noah’s words. Faced with the conten-
tion of proslavery apologists that the remarkable fulfillment of Noah’s “proph-
ecy” constituted proof of its divine sanction, abolitionists countered in one
of two ways. Some argued that the curse had been fulfilled in the Israelite
conquest of Canaan or some other episode in ancient history; others that
Noah’s vision of Canaan serving Shem and Japheth had never been fulfilled
and never would. As Brisbane observed, “the very first man mentioned as a
mighty one in the earth was Nimrod, a descendant from Ham. In the same
lineal descent from Ham was Asshur, who built Ninevah.” Meanwhile, he
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noted, Shem’s posterity were carried captive into Assyria, were servants to the
Babylonians, and to Ham’s posterity in Egypt.42
When other expedients were exhausted, abolitionists challenged the curse
by vilifying its advocates on the proslavery side. John Rankin opined that
because “the whole argument for slavery drawn from Noah’s curse, is without
foundation,” it must be the product “of avaricious derangement.”43 Similarly,
J. L. Stone charged that the notion that Noah’s words justified the enslavement
of Africans “is founded upon a demonstrable mistake—and a mistake so
palpable, that it is a subject of great wonder how the prevalent belief in the
existence of such a prophecy ever came to be general, and how it has managed
to survive to this day.”44 Stone found it “difficult to decide whether the mon-
strous or the ludicrous predominates, when we hear a pious defender of Slav-
ery solemnly justifying the buying and selling of human beings, and the breed-
ing of them like hogs for the market, by quoting the curse of Noah and calling
it a prophecy.”45 Mixing disdain with sarcasm, he continued:
Four thousand years ago, Noah awoke from his drunken sleep (I use the
epithet of the Record itself “he drank the wine and was drunken”) and angry
that his younger son had looked upon his nakedness, he uttered the half-
dozen words above quoted. To-day, in a new world, unknown when the
words were uttered, the men who “use up” an estimated number of “niggers”
during each “season” in raising sugar and cotton, on the Mississippi and
Red Rivers, quote these half-dozen words uttered 4000 years ago by the
patriarch in his anger against his son, as a proof that their practices are well
pleasing in the sight of God. And plenty of “reverend gentlemen” are to be
found, who gravely endorse the soundness of the reasoning, and “heartily
shake hands” upon it, with the “southern gentlemen” who take a pious
delight in resting their beloved institution upon a Scriptural basis.46
In a similar vein, George B. Cheever railed against the curse as a “ludicrous
and wicked refuge of oppression” that constituted “the wildest, vastest, most
sweeping and diabolical forgery ever conceived or committed.” It was “a more
frantic forgery than madness itself, unless it had the method of the deepest
depravity, could have ever dreamed.”47 Cheever demanded to know of the
curse’s American advocates:
Where is the sentence [of Scripture] in which God ever appointed you, the
Anglo-Saxon race [over another people], you, the mixture of all races under
heaven, you, who can not tell whether the blood of Sem, Ham, or Japhet
mingles in your veins, you, the assertors of a right to traffic in human flesh,
you, worse Jews, by this very claim, more degraded, more debased in your
moral principles, than the lowest tribe of Jews who were swept for their sins
from the promised land. . . . You might as well go to Russia, and take the
subjects of the Czar. You might as well go to England, and take your cousins
of the sea-girt isle, the descendants of your own great-grandfathers.48
For all their vitriol and social radicalism, American abolitionists did not
contribute a great deal to the history of biblical interpretation. While aggres-
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sively attacking the biblical rationale for slavery, they failed to read against
the textual grain in which Noah’s curse was inscribed. In fact, like their pro-
slavery opponents, they instinctively read Genesis 9 according to the orthodox
interpretive paradigm; that is, abolitionist authors rarely disputed Noah’s
righteousness, the fact that Ham or Canaan had sinned against the patriarch,
or that one or both deserved judgment.49 The influential Elihu Coleman could
affirm that “there was unclean beasts went into the ark as well as clean, and
that it was the will or permission of God, that there should be a Ham, as well
as a Shem and Japhet: by which we may see that God suffers wicked men to
live as well as righteous.”50 Similarly, antebellum abolitionists energetically
maintained that Canaan rather than Ham was the object of Noah’s maledic-
tion, and many were content to deflect the curse upon the “Canaanites,”
whom they regarded as its proper object.51
Even African American abolitionist James W. C. Pennington was willing
to sacrifice Canaan to rescue Ham. The gist of Pennington’s assault on the
curse was the claim that American blacks “are not the descendants of Canaan
. . . [but] the sons of Cush and Misraim amalgamated.” Pennington reasoned
that because Africans are not Canaanites, those wishing to hold slaves “must
discharge the Africans, compensate them for false enslavement, and go get the
Canaanites.” But this clever (and certainly facetious) conclusion left the im-
pression that the curse rested perennially on the posterity of Canaan.52 Al-
though most antislavery authors recognized that casting aspersions upon Ham
was counterproductive, they failed to subvert the dynamics of blame and pun-
ishment in Genesis 9.53 Perhaps this inability to escape the confines of ortho-
dox interpretation explains why, as the rhetorical war over African servitude
raged during the second third of the nineteenth century, abolitionists increas-
ingly pitched the battle on extrabiblical grounds.54

Biblical Criticism: Reading behind the Text

In the 1870s, Bible readers began to utilize the tools of historical-critical anal-
ysis to examine the textual basis for the assumption that Ham’s descendants
bore a perennial curse. Since that time, historical critics have explored Genesis
9’s prehistory, illumined its setting in the life of ancient Israel, and implicitly
challenged its role in sustaining the myth of Noah’s curse. Following Julius
Wellhausen, critics have tended to categorize the story of Noah and his sons
as an ethnological tradition emerging from antagonism between Israel and
“Canaan” and reflecting either Israel’s conquest of the promised land (“Ca-
naan will serve Shem”) or its own experience of subjugation (“Japheth will
dwell in Shem’s tents”).55 Given the ongoing role of Noah’s curse in public
discourse, scholarly analysis of the text has proceeded apace.
Attention to the story’s redactional history has been fueled by a textual
conundrum that puzzled the earliest interpreters: If Ham is the guilty party,
             

why does the curse fall on Canaan? The explanation advanced by Wellhausen
in 1876 and reaffirmed by subsequent commentators is that this textual in-
consistency is the result of a redactor’s careless work in forging two originally
separate traditions. Recently, Randall Bailey has suggested that the text’s cur-
rent form is not haphazard: In the Priestly school’s final editing of the Pen-
tateuch, he argues, an old curse against Cannaan was recast within the story
of Ham’s performance of a suspicious sexual act. Bailey identifies a twofold
polemical purpose in this redaction: (1) to keep Israel from adopting sexual
practices linked with Egypt and Canaan (cf. Lev. 18:3: “You shall not do as
they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they
do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you”) and (2) to demean
the putative ancestor of Africans as a foil to the Israelite custom of regarding
Africa as a standard of valuation.56
Offering an alternative version of the story’s editorial history, Gene Rice
contends that the tensions in Genesis 9 are resolved when we discern two
parallel but divergent traditions concerning the makeup of Noah’s family. One
of these is universal in scope and presents Noah’s sons as Shem, Ham, and
Japheth, while a more limited and parochial tradition identifies Noah’s off-
spring as Shem, Japheth, and Canaan. According to Rice, “the text in its
present form represents an effort to minimize the discrepancy between these
two traditions by equating Ham in the one with Canaan in the other.”57 This
solution implies that Ham’s association with Noah’s curse is the artificial cre-
ation of an editor who inserted “Ham the father of ” in v. 22 to harmonize
disparate strands of tradition. But this explanation raises another question:
When and why were these traditions joined? Although a number of early
biblical critics (including Hermann Gunkel) dated Genesis 9:20–27 to the
second millennium ..., other scholars have placed it in the period of Is-
raelite conquest under Joshua or in the early monarchy. Rice, for instance,
sets the passage in the first seven and a half years of David’s reign, interpreting
the reference to Japheth dwelling “in the tents of Shem” in v. 27 as an echo
of David’s special relationship with the Philistines. According to this view, the
text refers to Israel’s original conquest of Canaan: “Was this conquest simply
a naked act of aggression without any moral justification? And what should
Israel’s attitude be toward the Philistines (Japheth) who were also bent on
conquering the Canaanites? Genesis 9: 20–27 justifies Israel’s right to displace
the Canaanites in their native land on the grounds that there was a basic
moral flaw, a perverse sexuality in the character of the Canaanites.”58
Alternatively, Gunther Wittenberg contends that the Pentateuchal redac-
tor was motivated by the need to justify Canaanite forced labor under Solo-
mon. Although in its earliest form Noah’s curse had nothing to do with ge-
nealogy, Israelite resentment toward the exploitative Canaanite city-state—
and the Table of Nations’s association of Ham’s descendants with urban-
centered kingdoms—led to the linking of Ham and Canaan.59 According to
Umberto Cassuto, the apparent confusion of culprits in Genesis 9 springs
186           

from the conviction that “the sons of Ham . . . acted in sexual matters in
accordance with customs that the Israelite conscience regarded as utterly
abominable.”60 Cassuto declares that Ham represents the Canaanite people
who were known to Israel. Rather than signaling a redaction, the phrase “Ham
the father of Canaan” expresses that Ham’s affinity with the children of Ca-
naan is manifest in his immoral act. Thus, “the Canaanites were to suffer the
curse and the bondage not because of the sins of Ham, but because they
themselves acted like Ham, because of their own transgressions, which resem-
bled those attributed to Ham in this allegory.”61 With regard to the text’s
original setting, Cassuto opines that Noah’s reference to Canaan serving Shem
applies to the situation related in Genesis 14:4, where it is said that the children
of Canaan are serving Chedorlaomer, king of Elam (a son of Shem).
Cassuto goes on to suggest that Genesis 9 may have originally “had a
coarser and uglier character,” reflecting the Canaanite legend of a god who
castrates his father.62 Robert Graves and Raphael Patai explore the influence
of non-Israelite traditions by comparing Genesis 9:20–27 with a Greek myth
in which five brothers—Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus—con-
spire against their father, Uranus, and Cronus successfully castrates him. In
a similar Hittite myth, the authors observe, Anu’s genitals are bitten off by
his rebel son Kumarbi (who laughs at his triumph, as Ham is said to have
done), after which he is cursed by Anu. Albert I. Baumgarten offers another
suggestion regarding the story’s mythological background. He argues that to
distinguish the Flood story from the Mesopotamian and Phoenician sagas that
influenced them, the author(s) of Genesis consciously humanized Noah. Ac-
cording to this view, Genesis 9:20–27 was preserved not only to vilify Hamites
and Canaanites but also to differentiate Noah from the divinized flood sur-
vivors of other Near Eastern tales.63 Since in this literary context the theme
of castrating a father appears exclusively in divine myths, Baumgartner con-
cludes it is unlikely the biblical authors “would have utilized a motif with
such clear divine associations in a story told to stress the humanity of the
flood survivor.”64
A few modern scholars have utilized the tools of biblical criticism in an
effort to uncover the original crime underlying the biblical text. Frederick W.
Bassett, for instance, contends on the basis of Leviticus 18 and 20 that the
Hebrew phrase “to see the nakedness of one’s father” denotes intercourse with
one’s father’s wife. He surmises that because the text’s redactor missed this
idiomatic meaning he made sense of the story by adding a reference to Shem
and Japheth covering their father’s nakedness in the literal sense. Bassett’s
proposal not only accounts for the severity with which Ham’s offense is pun-
ished but also explains why Canaan, if he is the fruit of an incestuous rela-
tionship, must bear Noah’s curse. Anthony Phillips disagrees, maintaining that
references in the Hebrew Bible to uncovering “the nakedness of the father”
should be interpreted literally. In his reading, Ham’s transgression was an
actual seduction of Noah, “an act so abhorrent that the author is unwilling
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to spell it out.”65 Randall Bailey, meanwhile, concludes from internal textual

evidence that “it must have been only voyeurism on Ham’s part.”66
The application of historical-critical analysis to Genesis 9:20–27 indicates
both the promise and limitations of biblical criticism. On one hand, modern
scholars have plausibly reconstructed Genesis 9’s prehistory, illuminated its
setting in life, and identified its purposes as a polemical text. On the other
hand, they have done little to challenge the notion, implicit in the text and
inscribed in the history of interpretation, that Ham and Canaan are villainous
characters. In 1949, for instance, C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch averred that
“in the sin of Ham, there lies the great stain of the whole Hamitic race, whose
chief characteristic is sexual sin.”67 In the 1960s, Umberto Cassuto opined that
“the primary sin of Ham was his transgression against sexual morality, the
disrespect shown to his father being only an aggravation of the wrong.”68 At
about the same time, Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, while judging that
Ham should not be blamed for beholding his father’s nakedness, found quite
plausible the rabbinic legend in which Canaan castrates his grandfather. Their
conclusion that “the sinner was little Canaan, not Ham” effectively historicized
this “Hebrew myth.”69 In 1991, Gunther Wittenberg wrote that “Canaan and
Ham are symbols, just as Babel is a symbol, of man’s deep-seated urge to
dominate and enslave others. As such they are cursed and stand under God’s
judgement, even today.”70 In some cases, biblical critics have given renewed
credence to accusations launched earlier in the history of interpretation, as
in Frederick Bassett’s revival of the view that Ham committed incest with his
mother.
Biblical critics often express great confidence in the capacity of historical-
critical analysis to elucidate texts with a pernicious history of interpretation,
and nowhere is this confidence more apparent than in the case of Noah’s
curse. If the story’s precise meaning has not been rendered by scholarly anal-
ysis, it is simply a matter of time until a consensus is reached. Once the text
receives “proper clarification” as a product of disparate pentateuchal sources,71
the antiblack mythology to which it has given rise is fated to disappear like
morning mist in the midday sunshine. Recent studies such as Steven L.
McKenzie’s All God’s People and Cain Hope Felder’s Troubling Biblical Waters
apply historical criticism to problematic texts with such confidence. If Bible
readers can be educated to observe the hermeneutic controls established by
scholars, these authors believe, the racist interpretive traditions associated with
texts like Genesis 9 can be neutralized.
Because the tradition of Noah’s curse is rooted in a biblical narrative,
biblical criticism seems a natural method for extirpating it. But we should not
assume the adequacy of historical-critical analysis for challenging the curse’s
role in American racial discourse. If the history of interpretation reveals any-
thing, it is that the myth of Ham’s curse is not reducible to the story on which
it is based, for it emerges in the interplay of Bible readers, textual cues, in-
terpretive traditions, and contemporary social realities. As Thomas Peterson
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has observed, “mythological propositions . . . do not yield to scientific and

historical analysis because their basis in reality includes a subjective and emo-
tional involvement with the world.”72

Reading with Desire

Even if we consider the biblical text per se (as opposed to the mythology it
has spawned), Genesis 9:20–27 has proved quite resistant to the “clarifications”
of historical criticism. After all, showing how a text may have come to be is
not tantamount to explaining what it means. Aware of biblical scholarship’s
failure in this regard, a new generation of critics has sought to comprehend
Genesis 9 not as a careless merging of Pentateuchal traditions but as the source
of profound psychological insights regarding the nature of human desire.
Given the sexual overtones in Genesis 9:20–27, it is not surprising that these
authors have developed counterreadings of Noah’s curse that exploit the
story’s libidinous tensions.
Howard Eilberg-Schwartz portrays the “myth” in Genesis 9:20–27 as a
second creation story whose purpose is to condemn the desire between fathers
and sons. Drawing on contemporary art and film studies, Eilberg-Schwartz
identifies a bond in the ancient Israelite imagination between desire and the
male gaze. Ham’s homoerotic gaze challenges the heterosexual norm estab-
lished at creation, and thus he is cast as a villain in Genesis 9:20–27. According
to Eilberg-Schwartz, this story is more than a projection of Canaanite sexual
deviance into primordial time; it is an expression of the male Israelite’s dis-
comfort with a masculine deity. Because they were to imagine themselves as
both lovers and children of God, Israelite men experienced profound ambiv-
alence around notions of divine corporeality and sexuality. As Ham is con-
demned for seeing too much of his father, his story establishes boundaries in
the Israelite relationship with Yahweh: “An Israelite male who gazed at God
was like Ham, who looked at his naked father. Israelite men were expected
to be Semites, virtuous sons of Shem who avert their gaze from their father
in heaven.”73
H. Hirsch Cohen is another interpreter who foregrounds desire in the
story of Noah and his sons. In The Drunkenness of Noah, Cohen combines
linguistic analysis and psychoanalytic theory in an attempt to uncover the
events behind this enigmatic tale. Like many readers before him, Cohen is
keen to explain how the presumably righteous Noah came to be drunk and
naked in his tent. An important clue, he believes, is the symbolic meaning of
wine in ancient cultures. Cohen explores Israelite and other traditions to elu-
cidate a complex relationship between alcohol, fire, and sexuality. Drawing
on this connection, he surmises that Noah’s drunkenness is indicative not of
a deficiency in character but of a good-faith attempt to replenish the earth
following the Flood. Indeed, Noah’s “determination to maintain his procre-
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ative ability at full strength resulted in drinking himself into a state of helpless
intoxication.” How ironic, Cohen notes, that in acceding to the divine com-
mand to renew the earth’s population, Noah suffered the opprobrium of
drunkenness. In Cohen’s view, he “deserves not censure but acclaim for having
played so well the role of God’s devoted servant.”74 As for the behavior of
Ham or Canaan, Cohen finds plausible the rabbinic conjecture that Noah was
castrated by his son or grandson while he “lay uncovered in his tent.”
More noteworthy for Cohen than any sexual assault, however, is Ham’s
voyeurism, which reveals a plot to usurp Noah’s sexual potency by “identifi-
cation.” Cohen speculates that Noah became intoxicated as a prelude to sexual
congress and that Ham “must have been present throughout the act [of in-
tercourse]—until Noah fell asleep—peering from his hiding place to assim-
ilate thereby his father’s strength in his gloating stare.”75 Ham regarded his
father’s potency as the key to gaining preeminence among his brothers, a
standing that would guarantee him “the mantle of leadership on Noah’s
death.” Cohen suggests that the “garment” with which the brothers covered
Noah’s nakedness was provided by Ham, who produced it as “proof ” that he
had witnessed Noah in the sex act: “Ham must have skirted the sleeping,
naked Noah, picked up his father’s garment that had been cast aside, and
stepped outside to show ‘the garment’ to his brothers.”76 Accordingly, the
brothers’ backward approach betokens not respect for the fallen patriarch but
a desire to avoid gazing on him in his weakened state. Cohen interprets Noah’s
curse as a deathbed bequest occasioned by Ham’s theft of his potency. The
curse was directed at Canaan, Cohen explains, so that Ham could not transmit
the “potency of leadership” to his own son and his progeny: “Far from acting
out of vengeance, Noah seemingly degraded the future generations of Canaan
to frustrate Ham’s design of transferring his newly acquired special strength
and power to Canaan and his progeny.”77
By far the most creative discourse on desire in Genesis 9 is Arthur Fred-
erick Ide’s Noah and the Ark.78 Ide combines historical, linguistic, and psy-
choanalytic arguments to recast Genesis 9:20–27 as a tale of sexual liberation.
Ide does not limit himself to what can be gleaned or inferred from the biblical
text; rather, he consults a variety of ancient documents, including apocryphal
and pseudepigraphic texts such as the Ethiopian Book of Enoch, The Genera-
tions of Noah, and the Book of the Generations of Adam. Ide presumes these
sources to be crucial for reconstructing the story of Noah behind the biblical
text.
Setting the background for the events narrated in Genesis 9, Ide alleges
that a group of divine beings (“the yahwehs”) sent the archangel Uriel to
advise Noah that they are disturbed by the casual nature of human sexuality
and the absence of rule and order. The gods forewarn that “unless random,
casual sexuality was restrained and sex occurred without emotion or pleasure,
the gods were determined to destroy the world and everyone and everything
in it.”79 Later, in an effort to control Israelite sexual behavior, the story of
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Noah’s drunkenness was censored by the “priests of Shiloh.” The sexual nature
of the tale, Ide writes misleadingly, “has either been overlooked or deliberately
ignored.” Ide labors to restore the story’s sexual motifs with quasi-
pornographic descriptions of Noah and his sons.80
In Ide’s description of the Flood’s aftermath, Noah drinks to forget the
desolation and the loss of mortal life. He drinks also “to shield himself from
his own lust and carnal desire for a sexual experience future generations would
be taught to hold in disgust.”81 Predictably, Noah becomes intoxicated: “Tipsy,
Noah stripped off his clothing. The fermentation within the bowels of his cup
made his own bowels hot. Returning to his primal state in a fabric womb . . .
Noah declared his freedom from the aprons first fashioned by Adam. He spun,
danced, and made joyful noise in celebration of his gods. . . .”82 At this junc-
ture, Ide contends, Canaan perpetrated a practical joke by entering his grand-
father’s tent, looping a cord around his genitals and unmanning him. Finding
his father’s emasculation humorous, Ham reported it to his brothers. Unlike
the rabbis on whom he is dependent, however, Ide reserves a significant role
for Ham. Rather than finding his father drunk, Ham actually drinks with him,
obliges Noah’s “longing to be sodomized” (this is Ide’s interpretation of the
phrase “seeing his father’s nakedness”), reaches orgasm, and departs the tent,
leaving Noah “sexually anxious and distraught, with but one goal: to also
reach orgasm and spend his sperm.”83
According to Ide, this was not sexual assault. Noah did nothing to stop
the liaison and made no protestation until his other sons learned what had
happened. Noah’s self-preserving malediction was provoked not by Ham’s
sodomy but by Canaan’s castration. Thus, in Ide’s thorough sexualizing of the
biblical story, Ham emerges not as a villain but as a hero of sexual liberation:
“Ham wasn’t ashamed of either his father’s nakedness nor his own sexuality.
Shame, identical to that exhibited and expressed by Adam, was the deficiency
of Shem, Japheth and Noah for they would not permit themselves to accept
the reality that occurred or the truth that all sexual expressions are equal with
no particular sexual play less than any other.”84 The brothers’ “embarrassment
that a natural biological action and normal psychological curiosity took place
condemns them, not the participants.” Their proximity to Noah’s tent indi-
cates their “covert desire to have been part of the family orgy.” In any case,
because they did nothing to prevent or denounce the act, Shem and Japheth
must be regarded as coconspirators.
Ide’s interpretation of Genesis 9 is difficult to categorize. On one hand,
his reading of the story fits squarely within an interpretive history that imag-
ines the transgression of Ham-Canaan in sexual terms. On the other hand,
Ide is part of a modern tradition of counterreading that attempts to subvert
the story’s dynamics of blame. Ham becomes the tale’s hero and Noah is cast
as its villain: His prediluvian chastity is construed not as personal righteous-
ness but sexual confusion, he is accused of engaging in “rank sexual esca-
pades” after the Deluge, and he is regarded as a willing accomplice in geno-
cide. According to Ide, “those who/which were to be saved had to be humble
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and ‘crouch down’ before Noah. The proud were to be cast aside in a manner
identical to the whimsical lottery of the doctor of death, Josef Mengele,. . . .”85
Nevertheless, Ide’s manifesto of homosexual freedom does not subvert the
story’s system of blame. It merely shifts moral condemnation onto Noah,
Shem, Japheth, and any who would use religious warrants to control sexual
behavior.86
Even more recently, Regina M. Schwartz has analyzed Genesis 9:20–27 in
terms of desire for the father and fear of displacement. In The Curse of Cain,
Schwartz attempts to explain “what is going on in the allusive story of Noah’s
curse.”87 In doing so, she relies primarily on the Freudian concept of paternal
identification, noting that “Freud reinscribes the Bible in a secular key for our
time.”88 Schwartz observes that commentators have not been able to rid sug-
gestions of homosexual incest from the story of Noah and his sons, yet she
contends that the real fear addressed in Genesis 9:20–27 is displacement of a
father by his son. The fear of displacement inscribed in the text is what
Schwartz calls the “Noah complex,” in which “love/hate for the father with
whom the son identifies issues in intolerable guilt for that incestuous desire,
a guilt projected onto an omnipotent monotheistic deity who punishes, main-
taining his preserve at the price of his sons’ dissension, turning the brother
into the reviled Other.”89 In the case of Noah and Ham, the incestuous wish
for the parent issues in a curse, which by setting brothers against one another
offsets “the danger that, bonding together, they will threaten the father, like
Freud’s primal horde.”90
According to Schwartz, Ham’s need to identify with Noah is easily con-
fused with a desire to displace him and thus must be figured as a challenge
to his authority—as naked aggression. Meanwhile, his desire produces emo-
tional ambivalence in Ham, “prompting both love for the object of identifi-
cation and fury toward it because the identification is never wholly success-
ful.”91 Finally, as in the other primeval narratives of Genesis, Noah’s sons are
destined to live in conflict, because their cooperation only confirms the par-
ent’s fear of being supplanted. Schwartz perceives the “Noah complex” at work
throughout the Hebrew Bible, pervaded as it is by the concern that if men
love each other, they will overthrow their fathers. “And so the biblical norm
of paternal dominance deliberately promotes rivalry, not love, among broth-
ers.”92 Schwartz’s reading of Genesis 9 is perhaps the most insightful by a
contemporary Bible scholar. It is distinguished particularly by her attention
to sibling rivalry, a theme that, as will be argued in the next chapter, is
indispensable for comprehending the story’s dynamics of desire.93

Literary Counterreadings

Given the role played by Noah’s curse in modern racial discourse, it is not
surprising that allusions to the curse pervade American literature. Authors
who refer to Genesis 9 in their works of fiction include Hugh Henry Brack-
192          

enridge in the eighteenth century, Mark Twain and Charles W. Chesnutt in

the nineteenth, and James Baldwin in the twentieth. While never offering full-
blown counterreadings of the biblical story, these authors attempt to subvert
Noah’s curse by employing irony or ridicule.
No doubt influenced by the abolitionist writers of his day, Brackenridge
wrote in Modern Chivalry (1792–1805) of the imagined origins of black slavery:

Some supposed, that it was the curse pronounced upon Canaan, the son of
Noah, for looking at his father’s nakedness. They got rid by this means of
the difficulty of the flood; but by Moses’ own account, the Canaanites were
the descendents of Canaan; and we do not hear of them being Negroes;
which, had it been the case, we cannot doubt would have been laid hold of
by the Israelites as a circumstance to justify their extirpating, or making
slaves of them. . . . 94

Twain included an ironic allusion to the curse in Pudd’nhead Wilson and in

Letters from the Earth claimed that the microbes Ham carried onto the ark
were discharged in Africa, where they became responsible for the “sleeping
sickness” that “has for its victims a race of ignorant and unoffending blacks
whom God placed in a remote wilderness. . . .”95 In Chesnutt’s story “The Fall
of Adam” (1886), ‘Lijah Gadson asks his pastor Brother Gainey for help in
comprehending the origins of color difference. In delineating his confusion,
Gadson offers this sardonic gloss on the curse:
I ben ‘flectin’ dat subjic’ over a long time, and axin’ ‘bout it; but nobody
doan’ seem to know nuffin’ surtin’ ‘bout it. Some says it’s de cuss o’Caanyun
but I never could’n’ understan’ bout dis here cuss o’Caanyun. I can[‘t] see
how de Lawd could turn anybody black jes’ by cussin’ ‘im; ‘case ‘fo I j’ined
de church—dat was ‘fo de wah—I use’ ter cuss de overseah on ole marse’s
plantation awful bad—when he was’n’ da—an’ all de darkies on the plan-
tation use’ter cus ‘im, an’ it didn’ make de leas’ changes in ‘is complexion.96
Concluding that “de subjec’ is too deep fur readin’,” pastor Gainey seeks an
answer in prayer. He soon falls into a trance and is transported by angels to
the Garden of Eden. There it is revealed to him that in Adam’s futile attempt
to escape God after eating the apple, the first man attempted to jump over
the sun, but “de fiah wus so hot, it scawched ‘im black as a crisp, an’ culed
up his ha’r so he nevuh couldn’n’t git it straight agin.” Thus, according to
the explanation rendered by Pastor Gainey the following Sunday, Adam’s chil-
dren before the Fall were white, those born after the Fall were black. In Go
Tell It on the Mountain, Baldwin’s first novel, the narrator invokes the episode
in Genesis 9 to characterize the protagonist’s relationship with his father: “Yes,
he had sinned: one morning, along, in the dirty bathroom, in the square, dirt-
gray cupboard room that was filled with the stink of his father. Sometimes,
leaning over the cracked, “tattle-tale gray” bathtub, he scrubbed his father’s
back; and looked, as the accursed son of Noah had looked, on his father’s
hideous nakedness.”97
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The first full-blown retelling of Ham’s legend in American literature is

Zora Neale Hurston’s one-act play The First One, published in 1922.98 Hur-
ston’s drama plays on renderings of Noah’s curse that are foundational to
American racist readings of Genesis. In fact, her Ham is something of a Sambo
figure who laughs and dances with a bird perched on one shoulder. In contrast
to his hardworking and earnest brothers, Ham does “naught but tend the
flock and sing.” At the same time, Hurston’s play is subversive of the inter-
pretive tradition; despite his happy-go-lucky independence, Ham is clearly
Noah’s favorite. To the brothers’ dismay, Ham receives his father’s vineyards.
“Jehovah knows Noah loves Ham more than all,” declares Ham’s wife, Eve.
Noah is also portrayed nontraditionally: While “Mrs. Ham” gazes in horror
at the dead who float in the receding waters of the Deluge, Noah seeks the
“juice of the grape to make us forget.” “Drink wine, forget water—it means
death, death!” he cries.
Hurston’s presentation of the fateful encounter between Noah and Ham
is simultaneously traditional and subversive. When Noah collapses inside his
tent and dreams that he is “sinking down in the WATER!” his favorite son
decides to join him in drunken slumber. Very soon, though, Ham “is heard
laughing raucously” and emerges to announce that Noah has “stripped him-
self, showing all his wrinkles.” Hearing the news, “Mrs. Shem” perceives an
opportunity for her husband to displace the favored son. “Rise up,” she coun-
sels Shem, “and become owner of Noah’s vineyards as well as his flocks.”
Although his birthright is at stake, Shem is slow to understand. His wife
explains: “Did he not go into the tent and come away laughing at thy father’s
nakedness? Oh (she beats her breast) that I should live to see a father so
mocked and shamed by his son to whom he has given all his vineyards! (She
seizes a large skin from the ground.) Take this and cover him and tell him of
the wickedness of thy brother.”
Sensing the opportunity, “Mrs. Japheth” implores her husband to help
cover Noah as well. When the dutiful sons have followed their wives’ advice,
Mrs. Shem counsels them to wake Noah in order to receive credit for their
good deed. With the wives weeping ostentatiously in the background, Shem
informs the patriarch that he “has been scoffed, and [his] nakedness made a
thing of shame. . . .” Then, before he can ascertain the culprit’s identity, Noah
announces that “he shall be accursed. His skin shall be black!” Over Eve’s
protestations, he continues: “He shall serve his brothers and they shall rule
over him. . . .” When the curse has been uttered, Mrs. Noah denounces her
husband: “Thou art no lord of the Earth, but a drunkard. Thou has cursed
my son.” Even “Mrs. Shem” is stunned. “It is enough,” she says, “that he
should lose his vineyards.” The scene concludes with Noah, Shem, Japheth,
and Ham’s wife, Eve, lamenting the curse and condemning the drunken state
in which it was uttered. Entreated by his family to “unsay it all,” Noah pleads
for Jehovah to “record not my curses on my beloved Ham.” Even “Mrs. Shem”
is uncharacteristically repentant, asking that Ham’s “punishment be mine.”
When the inexorable curse takes effect, everyone but his wife shrinks in horror
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from Ham’s blackness. The play concludes with Ham and Eve setting off
“where the sun shines forever, to the end of the Earth. . . .” As they depart,
Ham announces a countercurse, as it were: “Oh, remain with your flocks and
fields and vineyards, to covet, to sweat, to die and know no peace. I go to
the sun.”
Hurston’s play is unique among modern literary glosses on Genesis 9,
the only drama since the Renaissance based on the theme of “Noah’s naked-
ness” and the closest thing in twentieth-century literature to a full-blown
reinterpretation of the curse. The First One is also richly allusive, featuring
references to traditional readings of Genesis 9, to Greek mythology, and to
other biblical stories—including David’s self-incrimination before the prophet
Nathan and Jesus’ passion. Along with the name of his wife, Ham’s departure
for the sun indicates his heroic and even messianic stature: Like Christ himself,
Ham is a second Adam betrayed by the greed of his brothers and sisters. In
the next chapter, we will further develop this portrait of the Ham-Christ.

African-American Counterreadings

As abolitionists, biblical critics, and authors of drama and fiction, African

Americans have been zealous opponents of Noah’s curse. Having considered
literary figures such as Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin,99 we should
also note antebellum black intellectuals like David Walker and Frederick
Douglass, both of whom vigorously assaulted the curse and its role in up-
holding slavery. In 1829, Walker denied that any curse on blacks—whether
applied to the seed of Cain or Canaan—could be derived from scripture and
charged that whites “act more like the seed of Cain, by murdering” than do
blacks. In 1845, Douglass observed that miscegenation between masters and
slaves gave the lie to any concept of a “race of Ham.” “If the lineal descendants
of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved,” Douglass reasoned, “it is certain
that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are
ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white
fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters.”100
A careful African American refutation of the curse appeared in 1862, when
Alexander Crummel published “The Negro Race Not Under a Curse: An Ex-
amination of Genesis ix.25.” In his article, Crummell advanced standard ob-
jections to Noah’s curse—that it had been pronounced upon Canaan rather
than Ham, that neither Ham nor three of his four sons were affected, that
the Negro race did not descend from Canaan, and that slavery, as a general
evil pertaining to the entire human family, did “not imply mental degradation
or intellectual ineptitude.”101 James W. C. Pennington, a Congregational min-
ister and former slave, employed Genesis 9 and 10 to argue that blacks were
descended from Ham through an amalgamation of Cush and Mizraim and
thus bore no relation to Canaan or his curse.102
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Perhaps more significant than these African American intellectuals are

the generations of black preachers who have inventively reinterpreted or re-
lativized Noah’s curse as they searched the scriptures to discover God’s way
with the African. Some preachers have contended that the curse was wiped
out when the Old Testament was superseded by the New; others have util-
ized Genesis 10 to link African Americans with the early Egyptians or—
through Nimrod—to the ancient Babylonians, a strategy that has led some
blacks to boast of their identity as children of Ham.103 Following Edward
Wilmot Blyden and Bishop James Theodore Holly (both discussed in the
previous chapter), many black preachers have embraced the Hamitic origins
of the Negro while recasting Genesis 9 in light of “the rising glory of the
sons of Ham,” the imminent liberation of Africans, or the evangelization of
Africa by former slaves.104 Probably the most exhaustive study of “the Ha-
mitic race” by a black preacher was published in 1937 by Alonzo Potter
Burgess Holly, son of James Theodore. In God and the Negro, the younger
Holly declared that “God Almighty has shown, throughout the Bible Rec-
ord, a peculiar interest in His people of Hamitic Descent.” Holly affirmed
the Canaanite ancestry of the Negro and a curse of limited duration but in-
sisted that a perennial malediction would “run counter to the plan of re-
demption.”105
More recently, black scholars including Latta Thomas, Charles B. Copher,
Cain Hope Felder, Katie Geneva Cannon, and Randall Bailey have submitted
Genesis 9:20–27 to careful critical and ethical analyses.106 In the process, they
have illumined the legendary and etiological aspects of the story, the historical
and literary contexts in which it developed, the cultural forces that sustain
the curse, and the forms of modern eisegesis that racialize it.107 Felder defends
the moral integrity of scripture, insisting that there is no Bible narrative whose
original intent was “to negate the full humanity of black people or view blacks
in an unfavorable way.”108 The development of Ham’s curse he regards as a
chief example of sacralization, or “the transposing of an ideological concept
into a tenet of religious faith.” However, while acknowledging that ambiguities
in the passage have yielded “a fantastic variety of suggestions about the in-
cident,” Felder is confident that “the crime” in question is Ham’s seeing the
nakedness of his drunken father without immediately covering him. “In error,
Ham leaves his father uncovered (according to Hebrew tradition, an act of
great shamelessness and parental disrespect) while he goes to report on Noah’s
condition to Shem and Japheth.”109 Felder criticizes scholars who conclude
that Noah’s curse is probably historical, yet by historicizing Ham’s transgres-
sion he leaves undisturbed the dynamics of blame in Genesis 9:20–27. Felder’s
work represents both the possibilities and pitfalls of biblical criticism in chal-
lenging the curse.
African American readings of Genesis 9 are not uniformly subversive of
the curse. For instance, according to the recently published Black Bible Chron-
icles:
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Noah had three boys named Shem, Ham and Japheth. The nations of the
earth came from Noah’s three boys. Noah became a farmer and planted a
vineyard and made wine. One day he drank too much and lay ‘round his
tent without a stitch on. Ham the father of Canaan, saw his father without
any clothes on and went and told his other brothers. Now Shem and Japheth
got a robe and walked backwards into the tent so that they wouldn’t see
their daddy naked and covered him up. Noah was really mad after he sobered
up and found out what had happened, so he laid a heavy trip on Ham and
cursed his further generation. “I swear,” said Noah, “that the future gener-
ations of Ham shall be slaves and lowest of slaves, at that.” And to the future
generation of Shem and Japheth he said, “May the almighty bless both Shem
and Japheth and be righteous by them. And may Ham’s kids be Shem’s slaves
and let Japheth share in his riches.”110

Black Bible Chronicles translates Genesis 9 into the “language of the streets”
but does nothing to challenge the legacy of Noah’s curse. In fact, because
Canaan is not mentioned in this retelling, the burden of Noah’s oracle falls
directly upon Ham.
Overall, black approaches to Noah’s curse reflect the same methodological
and interpretive differences common throughout the world of biblical schol-
arship. For instance, some scholars now embrace a so-called New Hamite
hypothesis, according to which the Hamites of the Bible are viewed as
“white.”111 Others resist the effective banishment of blacks from the Bible that
is implied by the hypothesis,112 and some popular Afrocentrist readings of
Genesis assume Noah and his sons alike were black.113

Noah’s Forbidden Fruit

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, a number of talented authors
recast Genesis 9:20–27 with particular attention to Noah’s drunkenness and
its repercussions in his family.114 One of these is Frederick Buechner, who
relates the encounter between Ham and Noah this way:
Ham was the youngest of Noah’s three sons and by tradition the progenitor
of the black race.
After the Flood was over and the family had settled down into the wine
business, Noah did a little too much sampling one hot afternoon and passed
out buck naked in his tent. Ham happened to stick his head in at just the
wrong moment and then, instead of keeping his mouth shut, went out and
treated his brothers to a lurid account of what he’d seen.
When Noah sobered up and found out about it, he blew his top. Among
some other unpleasant things he had to say was a curse to the effect that
from that day forward Ham was to be his brothers’ slave.115

A more irreverent retelling of the story appears in Julian Barnes’s novel

A History of the World in 101⁄2 Chapters (1989), in which the events in Noah’s
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life following the Flood are related by a woodworm who stows away on the
ark. The narrator anticipates the incredulity of readers who are familiar with
the biblical portrait of Noah. “There were times when Noah and his sons got
quite hysterical. That doesn’t tally with your account of things? You’ve always
been led to believe that Noah was sage, righteous and God-fearing, and I’ve
already described him as a hysterical rogue with a drink problem?”

Take the story of Noah’s nakedness—you remember? It happened after the

landing. Noah, not surprisingly, was even more pleased with himself than
before—he’d saved the human race, he’d insured the success of his dynasty,
he’d been given a formal covenant by God—and he decided to take things
easy in the last three hundred and fifty years of his life. He founded a village
(which you call Arghuri) on the lower slopes of the mountain, and spent his
days dreaming up new decorations and honours for himself: Holy Knight of
the Tempest, Grand Commander of the Squalls and so on. Your sacred text
informs you that on his estate he planted a vineyard. Ha! Even the least
subtle mind can decode that particular euphemism: he was drunk all the
time. One night, after a particularly hard session, he’d just finished undress-
ing when he collapsed on the bedroom floor—not an unusual occurrence.
Ham and his brothers happened to be passing his “tent” (they still used the
old sentimental desert word to describe their palaces) and called in to check
that their alcoholic father hadn’t done himself any harm. Ham went into the
bedroom and . . . well, a naked man of six hundred and fifty-odd years lying
in a drunken stupor is not a pretty sight. Ham did the decent, the filial thing:
he got his brothers to cover their father up. As a sign of respect—though
even at that time the custom was passing out of use—Shem and the one
beginning with J entered their father’s chamber backwards, and managed to
get him into bed without letting their gaze fall on those organs of generation
which mysteriously incite your species to shame. A pious and honourable
deed all round, you might think. And how did Noah react when he awoke
with one of those knifing new-wine hangovers? He cursed the son who had
found him and decreed that all Ham’s children should become servants to
the family of the two brothers who had entered his room arse-first. Where
is the sense in that? I can guess your explanation: his sense of judgment was
affected by drink, and we should offer pity not censure. Well, maybe. But I
would just mention this: we knew him on the Ark.116

A less humorous reflection on the episode is offered by poet and biblical

scholar Alicia Suskin Ostriker, who counts Noah as one of “my fathers, whom
I intend to pursue. . . . Needing to remember that I am my fathers, just as
much as my mothers.”117 Ostriker refocuses the story of Noah and his sons
by combining the perspective of Ham with her own experience as the child
of an alcoholic father:

I thought the vineyard idea was a good one, the old man had to be kept
busy somehow. Then he started drinking. Steadily. After all we had been
through. The pity of it. And he would lie in his tent uncovered, naked and
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sweating. Father, how could I turn my back? I wanted to cover your pathetic
flabby body.
I told my brothers: our father is lying naked in the tent dead drunk.
They said no. That doesn’t happen in families like ours. Only gentiles are
alcoholics. Shut up, they said, and quickly turned their backs. Then our father
woke up and began screaming, cursing me.
You’ll be black, he screamed. The sweat stood out on his forehead. You’ll
never get anywhere. Your children will be slaves and servants. He retched
and flung himself backward shivering. That ought to teach you respect, he
screamed.118
These and other119 glosses on Genesis 9 that highlight the systemic effects of
intoxication reflect contemporary concerns about alcohol abuse. Often draw-
ing on personal experiences, these authors clarify the ambiguous legacy of
Noah’s wine. On one hand, fermented grapes cover his “painful memories of
destruction and desolation.”120 On the other hand, Noah’s wine becomes a
toxin that poisons him temporarily, and his family for generations.
Significantly, these contemporary authors are extending an interpretive
tradition that is centuries old. No doubt aware of the ambiguity with which
fermented drink is presented in the Hebrew canon,121 curious rabbis and pious
Protestants refused to ignore the significance of Noah’s wine for interpreting
Genesis 9:20–27. The forbidden fruit’s effects were foregrounded in much early
Jewish commentary. According to one tradition,
Noah’s assistant in the work of cultivating the vine was Satan . . . [who] con-
veyed to Noah what the qualities of wine are: before man drinks of it, he is
innocent as a lamb; if he drinks of it moderately, he feels as strong as a lion;
if he drinks more of it than he can bear, he resembles the pig; and if he
drinks to the point of intoxication, then he behaves like a monkey, he dances
around, sings, talks obscenely, and knows not what he is doing.122
Another set of rabbinic comments on the passage relates Noah’s drunkenness
to Israel’s national misfortunes:
A. “And he lay uncovered in his tent” (Gen. 9:21):
B. R. Judah bar Simon, R. Hanan in the name of R. Samuel b. R. Isaac:
“What is written is not ‘lay uncovered’ but ‘uncovered himself,’ and [since
the consonants of the word for ‘uncover’ can yield the meaning, ‘exile,’ we
may read the passage to indicate that it was that sort of drunkenness that]
brought about both for himself and generations to come the penalty of exile.”
C. “The ten tribes were exiled only on account of wine, in line with
this verse: ‘woe to those who get up early in the morning to follow strong
drink’ (Is. 5:11).”
D. “The tribes of Judah and Benjamin went into exile only on account
of wine, in line with this verse: ‘But these also erred through wine’ (Is. 28:
7).”123
These rabbinic glosses offer timeless insights into alcohol’s bewildering effects
on human beings. The first suggests that while a little wine has an exhilarating
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effect on the body (“he feels strong as a lion”), too much debases the mind
(“he behaves like a monkey”). The second indicates the poison’s long-term
effects on human communities.
Among Christian writers who have perceived in Genesis 9 an object lesson
in the mysterious dangers of drink are seventeenth-century interpreter Abra-
ham Rosse, who urges readers to consider the relation between “the sinne of
Adam, and this of Noah”:

Adam the father of the first world sinned shortly after his creation, and Noah
the father of the second world, sinnes shortly after his preservation: secondly,
Adam transgressed by eating the fruite of the forbidden tree, and Noah trans-
gresseth by drinking the fruite of the vine tree: thirdly, the sequel of Adams
sinne was nakednesse, and the sequel of Noahs sinne is the same: fourthly,
Adam was ashamed, and the shame of Noah is delivered: fifthly, Adams na-
kedness was covered with skinnes, and Noahs nakedness is covered with a
garment: sixthly, a curse upon Adams posteritie, is the effect of Adams eating,
and a curse upon Canaan, Noahs posteritie, is the effect of Noahs drinking.124

These counterreadings of Genesis 9—from the rabbis to Buechner,

Barnes, and Ostriker—elucidate Noah’s phamakon, the classical term for a
substance that is both remedy and poison.125 In doing so, they illustrate al-
cohol’s dual function as an antidote to fatigue and memory with potentially
toxic effects on mind and body. If we are more sensitive than our predecessors
to alcohol’s human cost, it is probably in our understanding of the pharma-
kon’s corporate reach. We know that when it is chronically abused alcohol’s
impact is rarely limited to a single individual, or even a single generation.
But contemporary authors who identify in Genesis 9 the dynamics of a family
under wine’s curse reveal more than our society’s ambivalence toward fer-
mented drink. Their graphic and pathetic images of Noah’s drunkenness raise
a basic interpretive question: Why has the tradition portrayed Noah so con-
sistently as the story’s victim?
Part of the answer may lie in the observation that the families of those
who have carelessly imbibed the pharmakon are often divided by their reac-
tions to the imbiber. Those who remain oblivious to the problem preserve a
semblance of peace in the family. But the cost of this false security is the
exclusion or vilification of those who cannot ignore the disease. When a family
member dares to reveal the naked truth about the remedy that has become a
poison, fear of family instability leads to a closing of ranks behind the abuser.
Thus, the one who would speak for the victims is victimized. If this brave
soul cannot rescue the family from the pharmakon’s grip, the poison slowly
works its way into the deep structures of family life, where it can remain for
generations after the original abuser has died.
Perhaps this scenario applies to the second first family after the Flood.
Noah the husbandman discovers a remedy for his sweat and fatigue, but his
excess turns the antidote into a poison and he falls victim to the pharmakon.
200          

Moreover, the son who would intervene and point out the father’s defeat is
met by his brothers’ denial and his father’s rage. His reward for naming the
pharmakon in a moment of crisis is a curse on himself and his descendants.
If textual dynamics and the history of interpretation have obscured the impact
of Noah’s wine on his family, then understanding the text will require atten-
tion to the pharmakon.
The various challenges to Noah’s curse reviewed in this chapter testify to
Bible readers’ creativity, their careful attention to textual seams and gaps, and
their willingness to accent previously silenced voices. In different ways, these
strategies for counterreading hint that the story might be redeemed through
subversive reinterpretation. In the next chapter, we will follow some of these
leads as we strain to hear the victim’s voice in the story of Noah and his sons.
 11
Redeeming the Curse

Ham as Victim

This crime of Ham was the first transgression recorded af-

ter the flood, and probably the first committed; and you
must remember, in the next place, that Noah now was to
the world what Adam was, when created—the official
head—the Viceregent of Heaven—and, therefore, the first
deliberate and wilful offence, as in the case of Adam, ac-
cording to the moral government of God, must be pun-
ished with the utmost rigor of law.
Leander Ker,
Slavery Consistent with Christianity

   reflected and transmitted antiblack sentiment for nearly

two millennia, Noah’s curse requires a cure. The virulent ideology to which
Genesis 9 plays host has been eradicated by neither slave emancipation nor
the application of historical criticism. Rather, in the wake of such attacks, the
curse has undergone dangerous mutations, drawn strength from proximate
passages in Genesis 10 and 11, and survived in the minds and hearts of Bible
readers.
Because a majority of Americans now share the vision of an integrated
society that energized the Civil Rights movement, it is tempting to regard
Noah’s curse as discredited and irrelevant. Yet the stereotypes and myths that
once animated racial readings of Genesis continue to operate in the American
imagination. The early chapters of Genesis are invoked in political debates
concerning antimiscegenation laws and in religious affirmations of capital

201
202           

punishment. Radio and television airwaves carry references to the curse tra-
dition, from the rantings of Christian fundamentalists to slick Hollywood
miniseries. The Dake Annotated Reference Bible (currently in its twenty-
seventh printing) affirms Genesis 9’s racial implications, though in a less ex-
plicit form than previously. The Black Bible Chronicles, inexplicably it would
seem, updates the curse for a generation of hip Bible readers. Biblical com-
mentaries interrogate history and tradition but continue to find fault with
Ham. And even liberationist readings of Genesis 9 affirm the curse for their
own purposes.
For all these reasons, the curse should not be regarded as an ideological
relic as long as people read the Bible and seek justifications for group hegem-
ony. Noah’s curse may be dormant, but it is not dead; it may be in remission,
but it is still in need of a remedy. Where are we to find such a cure, a method
of interpreting the story of Noah and his sons that precludes the denigration
of “Hamites,” “Canaanites,” or the groups with whom readers wish to asso-
ciate them? Critics of biblically sanctioned white hegemony have long sought
a cure for the curse in the application of “scientific” remedies, including logic,
biblical scholarship, and moral suasion. American abolitionists employed all
of these strategies, and when the curse was revivified during the 1950s and
1960s to oppose government-sponsored integration, antisegregationists found
themselves administering the same treatments pioneered a century earlier.
With the help of these prospective antidotes, the curse was displaced (by the
insistence that it befell Canaan rather than his father or brothers) softened
(with the claim that Noah’s oracle was predictive rather than prophetic), or
deracialized (its link with the putative ancestor of African Americans chal-
lenged). But these strategies did not cure the curse, for they left intact a textual
logic of blame and punishment and did nothing to challenge the assumption
that Genesis 9–11 reflects a divine compulsion for differentiation.
A more radical cure for the curse and its troublesome legacy has been
sought by those who discredit the biblical version of human origins. But this
counteragent carries undesirable side effects, most notably loss of the empha-
sis on human unity that is assumed throughout the Bible. It is beneficial to
remember that in American intellectual history Genesis 9–11 has functioned
not only as a ground for racism but also as a vantage point for perceiving
human beings as the descendants of common parents, created in the divine
image, and worthy of redemption. For instance, in response to the polygenetic
theory advanced by the American School of Ethnology in the 1840s, advocates
of slavery invoked Genesis as incontrovertible proof of blacks’ humanity. But
when the biblical defense of slavery was discredited after the Civil War, sci-
entific racism and its secular theory of human origins received an unexpected
boon. Their need to justify black servitude obviated, some Christians aban-
doned the traditional assumption that Africans were Hamites for the scien-
tifically fashionable hypothesis that blacks were actually pre-adamite humans
or soulless beasts.1
         

Thus, Genesis 9–11’s American legacy is ambiguous: Despite these chap-

ters’ role in justifying slavery and segregation and vilifying the purported
ancestors of blacks, their canonical context has helped establish the full hu-
manity of America’s putative Hamites when it was called into question by
“science.”2 The biblical version of creation may lack scientific credibility, but
as a theological account of human origins it possesses distinct advantages over
secular renderings.3 Because the biblical myth of creation and its aftermath
offers a transcendent basis for the conviction that human beings are equally
valuable as bearers of God’s image and objects of God’s love, strategies for
curing the curse that undermine confidence in the revelatory potential of the
Bible are purchased at an ideological price.4 But the conviction that scripture
witnesses to a redeeming God obligates us to resist the curse by reading for
redemption. Doing so is difficult work, for Genesis 9 establishes patterns of
condemnation that readers, even scholarly readers, have found extraordinarily
difficult to contravene. But this does not relieve us of the obligation to keep
trying.
This chapter offers an interpretive strategy for countering Noah’s curse
and its interpretive field in Genesis 9–11 by exploiting textual clues that point
toward the curse’s redemption. Two assumptions guide this experimental ef-
fort at redeeming the curse. First, the oppressive potential of Genesis 9:20–27
can be neutralized only when the biblical version of the curse has been revised
and reimagined, the textual dynamics of blame subverted. Second, this can
be accomplished only when the story is read in the context of the biblical
canon and its message of redemption. The tentative interpretive scheme de-
veloped here draws on a variety of historical, literary, and imaginative re-
sources, some of them discussed in earlier chapters. As we have seen, over
the centuries a series of bold interpreters have consciously subverted the iden-
tities of victim and victimizer that the biblical narrative assigns to Noah and
Ham, respectively. Although these subversive retellings of the scriptural story
have contested Noah’s status as a paragon of righteousness, only very re-
cently—for instance, in the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Arthur Frederick
Ide, Julian Barnes, and Alicia Suskin Ostriker—have they imagined Ham as
an innocent victim of familial violence. As we strain to perceive more clearly
the echoes of Ham’s voice in Genesis 9, we will be aided by this tradition of
counterreading.

Canonical Clues for a Cure

Hebrew Bible
To subvert the curse while retaining the theological advantages of the biblical
doctrine of creation, Genesis 9:20–27 must be viewed in light of the canonical
context in which the story functions. A consideration of Genesis 9’s setting
in the Hebrew canon reveals, first of all, unmistakable linguistic and thematic
204             

connections with the story of Eden (Genesis 1–3). These parallels are neatly
summarized by The New Interpreter’s Bible:

Noah, a new Adam, takes up the creational task once again in “planting”
and tilling the “ground”; his skill leads to a taming of what the ground
produces and hence ameliorates the curse (3:17; 5:29). Yet, Noah as the new
Adam (and one child) also fails as miserably as the old Adam. Similar themes
appear in both stories: nakedness after eating fruit, and intrafamilial conflict,
including human subservience and its affect [sic]. The curse on the serpent
and the ground parallels the curse on Canaan, both of which affect life
negatively. Yet, the act of Shem and Japheth in covering the naked one mir-
rors earlier action of the deity (3:21).5

Other allusions to the garden appear in 9:1 and 9:7, which repeat the divine
command to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”
As these Edenic references indicate, 9:20–27 recalls the imprecation of
Genesis 2. In fact, tracing the curse’s career in the Bible’s primeval history
reveals a fatal bond between pre- and post-Flood humanity. The L curses
the serpent, but the curse migrates—first to the ground, then from the blood-
soaked earth to Cain. The announcement of Noah’s birth (5:29) promises relief
from the soil’s execration, a promise fulfilled when God announces that the
newly “cleansed” earth will not be cursed again. But the postdiluvian dispen-
sation begins inauspiciously, with the curse entering the world of the second
Adam as quickly as that of the first. Ironically, it is Noah himself who rein-
troduces the curse, transmitting it to his son and grandson in chapter 9. Based
on the preceding eight chapters of Genesis, we should expect the L to be
intimately involved in the judgment visited upon Ham-Canaan. Previous
transgressions—the Fall of the first couple, Abel’s murder, and the general
wickedness of humankind—have precipitated specific expressions of divine
displeasure, including expulsion from the garden, Cain’s terrible stigma, and
a catastrophic purging of the earth. But in chapter 9, for the first time in
biblical history, God remains curiously silent in the midst of human “sin.”
Noah breaks this silence with the only words he will speak in scripture.
Links between 9:20–27 and the rest of the primeval history are also evi-
dent in the tale of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. Like chapter 4, chapter 9
features brothers, transgression, and stigmatization. But the tale of Noah and
his sons does not conform to the general pattern of Genesis “brother stories”:
6
The younger brother is a shepherd who is favored by one or both parents
and by God, the older brother is displaced, the younger brother endures an
ordeal, and there is some sort of reconciliation or reintegration of the two.7
Curiously, none of these elements is present in Genesis 9: There are no shep-
herds, only vintners; Ham is called the “youngest son” (9:24), but the birth
order in Noah’s family is far from clear, and the text provides no evidence
that Ham is favored by his father or “chosen” by God. Ham can be said to
endure an ordeal, but the story offers no reconciliation. Nor is the displaced
         

sibling enfolded in God’s care or “won back” for the larger story, a pattern
evident in other Genesis sibling stories. Finally, there is no inversion of pri-
mogeniture; in fact, this is one of the few stories in Genesis where the youngest
son fares worse than the oldest.8
Analysis of Genesis 9’s canonical setting requires consideration of its place
within the Flood narrative (Genesis 6–9). The thematic symmetry in this nar-
rative is delineated by Terry Prewitt: “The two chapter parts of Genesis 6 are
neatly mirrored in Genesis 9. First, God blesses Noah and makes his covenant
with all future generations. Second, Noah’s son Ham disgraces his father by
seeing his nakedness, resulting in the curse of Canaan. The ‘nakedness’ of
Noah is indicative of a sexual crime by Ham, a disgrace comparable to the
‘divine beings’ or ‘sons of God’ taking the daughters of men as wives.”9 In
both chapters 6 and 9, in other words, the leading themes are transgression,
covenant, and sacrifice. Before the Deluge, God is concerned with the world’s
“violence,” decides to “make an end of all flesh,” and selects Noah to preserve
a remnant of living things. After the Flood, the divine relationship with Noah
and animal sacrifice are formalized. God announces a covenant with the sur-
vivors of the Deluge, including the animals, “as many as came out of the ark”
(9:10).
Never again, God proclaims, shall all flesh be cut off or the earth de-
stroyed by flood. The sign of this apparently unconditional arrangement (it
applies to “all future generations,” according to v. 12) is God’s “bow in the
clouds” (9:13). God tells Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have
established between me and all flesh that is on the earth” (9:17). Previously,
the L declared that the survivors “shall not eat flesh with its life, that is,
its blood” (Gen. 9:4); God will “require a reckoning” (9:5) for the lifeblood
of animals and humans alike. Nevertheless, Noah’s postdiluvian sacrifice in-
troduces a threat to nonhuman beings: “The fear and dread of you shall rest
on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that
creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are
delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I
gave you the green plants, I give you everything” (9:2–3). According to the
biblical narrative, then, the L declares upon receiving Noah’s sacrifice that
the continuity of human history, and consequently the natural world, will not
again be broken. With Noah’s offering of clean animals and birds, the cycle
of human wickedness that led to the Deluge has been shattered. It will be
recalled that in Genesis 6 “violence” is given as the chief cause for the flood.10
This brief review of Genesis 9:20–27’s canonical context raises several
intriguing questions. First, in that the passage recalls in many ways the tale
of Cain and Abel, are we to conclude that the forces responsible for the demise
of antediluvian civilization are similar to those at work after the Flood? Sec-
ond, are the theological motifs that dominate the flood narrative—particularly
the interplay of human violence and animal sacrifice—useful for understand-
ing the story of Noah and his sons as well? And third, given God’s unusual
206          

silence in the story, why have Bible readers assumed that Noah’s malediction
has divine sanction?
This last question is the easiest to address since the history of interpre-
tation would suggest that a variety of textual forces have conspired to nudge
readers toward the conclusion that Noah speaks for God: This episode follows
a description of the covenantal relationship God has forged with Noah, “a
righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Gen. 6:9); the story’s narrator
privileges Noah with the gift of speech that in Genesis is often a divine pre-
rogative; and the poetic typography afforded these words in most translations
lends them the patina of authority, for it echoes divine imprecations elsewhere
in the primeval history while anticipating the prophetic tradition in which the
word of the L is often revealed in verse. Furthermore, Bible readers may
encounter this story already convinced, based on prominent brother stories
in Genesis and elsewhere, that God shares Noah’s concern with the relative
ranking of sons.
These tacit links between Noah’s oracle and the divine voice have led
generations of readers to conclude that Noah’s curse is also God’s curse, thus
reinforcing the orthodox interpretive paradigm in which Ham is victimizer
and Noah victim. However, the biblical text offers no explicit support for the
assumption that Noah acts as God’s agent. Exploiting the gap between the
human and divine wills that is opened by the story’s canonical context (and
by counterreading) creates space for considering whether Noah’s malediction
reliably reflects the character of God. For those who regard the Bible as scrip-
ture, this means asking if the curse conforms to the will of the One to whom
the text bears witness. If we can resist the textual and interpretive forces that
lead us to associate Noah with God, it may be possible to perceive Ham’s role
as victim, and this perception may illumine a canonical link between Ham
and Jesus the victim. Once this link has been imagined, further parallels be-
tween these biblical sons emerge—from their rejection by family members to
their problematic relationship with their father’s “houses” (the Jerusalem Tem-
ple and Noah’s tent). But how do we pursue this canonical hunch that Ham
is a victim, that Noah—and perhaps Shem and Japheth—have victimized
him? This is where the mimetic theory of René Girard proves extraordinarily
useful.

The Promise of Girard

Any successful strategy for redeeming Noah’s curse must attend to its histor-
ical, literary, and psychological elements, must have a track record of fruitful
application to religious texts, and must be concerned with the mythical origins
of violence (for what is the curse if not a narrative justification for organized
violence?). Given these requirements, the work of literary critic René Girard
is quite promising. In a series of seminal writings over several decades, the
          

French American theorist has elucidated the nature of myth, the historical
events that generate it, and the primordial violence it shrouds. To “expose to
the light of reason the role played by violence in human society,”11 Girard has
developed a powerful critical theory based on what he calls “mimetic rivalry.”
Although he has not written explicitly on Genesis 9:20–27,12 Girard and schol-
ars influenced by him have demonstrated the relevance of mimetic theory to
biblical texts, their prehistory, and their reception.13 Girard’s work is partic-
ularly applicable to stories that are concerned with the origins of human
society, for he contends that the nascence of civilization can be located in
original events of sacrifice that are barely repressed in myth and literature.
Girard has devoted special attention to analyzing “persecution texts,”
which he defines as “accounts of real violence, often collective, told from the
perspective of the persecutors, and therefore influenced by characteristic dis-
tortions . . . [which] must be identified and corrected in order to reveal the
arbitrary nature of the violence that the persecution text presents as justi-
fied.”14 In The Scapegoat, Girard explores the classic literary stereotypes of
persecution, which include representation of a crisis that is precipitated by
the breakdown of social differentiation, “accusations made against victims
onto whom the alleged crimes undermining law and order are transferred,”
and “signs” of the victim.15 The overall impression given by persecution texts,
Girard writes, is a loss of social order “evidenced by the disappearance of the
rules and ‘differences’ that define cultural divisions.”16 According to this de-
scription, Genesis 9:20–27 would seem to be a typical persecution text: It
features a crisis allegedly precipitated by a breakdown in order, it makes ac-
cusations against a character who is charged with eliminating crucial differ-
ences, and it marks him with “preferential signs of victimage,” including rep-
rehensible behavior and association with a known outsider (cf. Ham’s
identification in 9:22 as “the father of Canaan”).
Girard notes that persecution texts attribute to their victims “deformities
that would reinforce the polarization against the victim, were they real.”17
Among the accusations that are particularly characteristic of collective per-
secution are violent crimes against untouchables: “a king, a father, the symbol
of divine authority . . . then there are sexual crimes: rape, incest, bestiality. The
most frequently invoked [accusations] transgress the taboos that are consid-
ered the strictest in the society in question.”18 In overturning a society’s dis-
tinctions, the wrongdoer “must either attack the community directly, by strik-
ing at its heart or head, or else they must begin the destruction of difference
within their own sphere by committing contagious crimes such as parricide
and incest.”19 In the history of biblical interpretation, Ham has been im-
peached on all of these counts, with each accusation stemming from the
story’s claim that Ham has blurred crucial distinctions or overturned order
in his family. Inspired by Girard’s phenomenological description of the per-
secution text and its apparent relevance to Noah’s curse, let us engage in a
more thorough Girardian analysis of Genesis 9:20–27.
208         

Mimetic Desire, Scapegoating, and Sacrifice

One of Girard’s original insights concerns the way classic texts reveal “the
imitative nature of desire,” often observable in what he calls the discord be-
tween doubles. Girard is particularly alert to the rivalry that develops when
two persons desire a similar object. As Leo Kuper writes, “men come to desire
precisely the same things, and they engage in conflict not because they are
different but because they are essentially the same.”20 From his earliest work,
Girard has sought to clarify mimetic desire’s triangular structure. The angles
of the mimetic triangle are the self, the other as “mediator” or “model,” and
“the object that the self or subject desires because he or she knows, imagines,
or suspects the mediator desires it.”21 Conflict arises when the mediator can
no longer fulfill the role of model without also becoming an obstacle. “Like
the relentless sentry of the Kaf ka fable, the model shows his disciple the gate
of paradise and forbids him to enter with one and the same gesture.”22
If unrelieved, rivalry between the self and other leads to a mimetic crisis
in which “there will be an inexorable movement toward finding a scapegoat.”23
As hominids experienced in the process of becoming human and many so-
cieties have discovered since, “convergence upon a victim brings them una-
nimity and thus relief from violence.”24 The scapegoat effect, according to
Girard, is “that strange process through which two or more people are rec-
onciled at the expense of a third party who appears guilty or responsible for
whatever ails, disturbs, or frightens the scapegoaters. They feel relieved of their
tensions and they coalesce into a more harmonious group. They now have a
single purpose, which is to prevent the scapegoat from harming them, by
expelling and destroying him.”25 The scapegoating mechanism, which “curtails
reciprocal violence and imposes structure on the community,”26 is the empir-
ical or historical referent that generates myth, and myth’s function is to ob-
scure this fact.
Another central concern for Girard is the role of sacrifice in the founding
of human societies. Girard defines sacrifice (much like scapegoating) as vio-
lence that is limited for the sake of maintaining order. As “a collective action
of the entire community, which purifies itself of its own disorder through the
unanimous immolation of a victim,”27 sacrifice mediates the reordering of a
community in crisis. As Girard observes in Violence and the Sacred, scape-
goating and sacrifice are linked by substitution.28 The nexus in Girard’s
thought between mimetic desire, scapegoating, sacrifice, and myth suggests
rich possibilities for a Girardian reading of Genesis 9:20–27. But how does
the claim that unrestrained mimetic rivalry brings societies to the brink of
violence illumine the tale of Noah and his sons? To clarify the mimetic crisis
that may have taken place in Noah’s family, let us highlight some specific
aspects of the biblical story: Noah’s role as God’s vice-regent, Ham’s failure
to display proper regard for his father, and the curious relationship of Shem
and Japheth.
           

Noah’s identity as a virtuous man beloved by God is so underscored by

the text and its canonical setting that Bible readers through the centuries have
ascribed to Noah a semidivine stature. Even modern biblical scholars confirm
Noah’s exalted status by comparing him with the heroes of other ancient flood
stories (e.g., The Gilgamesh Epic’s Utnapishtim) or the gods credited with the
discovery of viticulture and wine (e.g., Osiris in Egypt and Dionysus in
Greece). In text and imagination, then, Noah is an untouchable whose hu-
miliation creates a serious exigency for the postdiluvian community. The bib-
lical narrator communicates the severity of the situation by intimating that a
sexual assault has been perpetrated on God’s righteous one, by attaching ste-
reotypes of persecution to the alleged perpetrator, and by relating the story
in terms of striking reversal: It is precisely while Noah is “in his tent” (a place
generally associated with security) that the crisis occurs.29 These are all indi-
cations of a significant crisis in Noah’s family. But what is the nature of the
crisis?
Girard argues that because human beings do not know what to desire,
they emulate each other’s desires. “The model is likely to be mimetically af-
fected by the desire of his imitator. He becomes the imitator of his own
imitator, just as the latter becomes the model of his own model.”30 Mimesis
leads to rivalry, rivalry to scapegoating, victimization, and violence. Modern
attempts to clarify Genesis 9:20–27 by analyzing traces of desire in the text
have assumed that the passions animating this tale are libidinous. Subversive
though these counterreadings seek to be, they inevitably reinscribe the ortho-
dox interpretive paradigm in which Noah is a righteous victim and Ham a
vilified villain.31 If we are to detect the sort of desire Girard claims operates
in many classic texts, we must read for traces of mimetic rivalry. And the
clearest signal of rivalry is the doubling behavior of Shem and Japheth.
The brothers take a garment, lay it across their shoulders, walk backward
in tandem until they reach Noah’s tent, and together cover him. In depicting
this scene, visual artists have assigned the lead to one of the brothers.32 But
the biblical narrator gives us a striking image of physical and emotional prox-
imity. As Umberto Cassuto notes, this description “assumes an almost poetic
form”: “The clause and walked backward is paralleled by the clause their faces
were turned away; the words and they did not see their father’s nakedness cor-
respond to the hemistich and covered their father’s nakedness. The expression
their father’s nakedness, which occurs here twice, echoes the words his father’s
nakedness in v. 22; this threefold use of the phrase serves to emphasize it.”33
In other words, the brothers’ act is narrated with a parallelism and symmetry
that reflect the unanimity of the act itself. In their movements and the lan-
guage employed to describe it, Shem and Japheth merge into a single char-
acter.
The relationship of Shem and Japheth has not caught the attention of
many Bible readers. A rabbinic gloss on the story declares that both brothers
deserved credit for covering their father, but, as it was Shem’s idea, he earned
“the greater meed of praise.” Conversely, an illustration in the fifteenth-
210          

century Cologne Bible depicts Japheth as the leader in this act of filial piety.34
John Calvin interprets Noah’s prophecy as a prediction that there would “be
temporary dissension between Shem and Japheth.”35 Although such comments
on the brothers’ relationship are rare, they remind us how very odd is the
scriptural image of two adult brothers thinking and acting as one. Are these
men extraordinarily comfortable in each other’s presence, unusually well-
coordinated, virtual twins in the spitting image of their righteous father? From
a Girardian perspective, the doubling behavior of Shem and Japheth indicates
that they may be archrivals whose mimetic desire has made them mirror
images of one another.36 In motion toward the object of their common long-
ing, they are frozen in mimetic rivalry.
But what is the object of the brothers’ rivalrous desire? Typically, the
sibling stories in Genesis are fueled by the quest for a father’s blessing, and
this is very likely the case in our story. Because Noah’s family members are
the only survivors of the Flood, the aged patriarch’s benediction means ru-
lership of the earth for its recipient. Presumably, Noah’s blessing will fall on
only one of his sons. As Regina Schwartz observes, there is a principle of
scarcity at work in monotheistic narratives in which humans seek God’s ap-
proval, a principle which dictates that everything—“land, prosperity, power,
favor, even identity itself ”—must be competed for. In Schwartz’s words,
“scarcity imposes sibling rivalry: a shortage of parental blessings and love
yields fatal competition for them. Scarcity imposes parental hostility: it pre-
sumes that in order to imitate the father successfully, he must be replaced,
not joined. Scarcity imposes hierarchy: the short supply of prestige or power
or whatever must issue in an allocation of those resources, and some will
invariably get more than others.”37
Who will be the beneficiary of scarcity in Noah’s family? Normally, the
paternal blessing would fall on the eldest. But perhaps the enormous trauma
through which the family had passed led the brothers to wonder if the “old
ways” of primogeniture would be retained in the new world.38 Moreover, the
birth order of Noah’s sons is not clear in the biblical text, so perhaps linguistic
confusion indicates familial confusion as well.39 Assuming, as most commen-
tators have, that Shem is the firstborn, the dynamics of mimetic desire in
Noah’s family would evolve this way: The expectation that Noah will favor
the eldest makes Shem a model for Japheth, who simultaneously becomes
Shem’s imitator and obstacle. Likewise, Shem’s uncertainty regarding Noah’s
blessing—no doubt intensified by his brother’s name, derived from the He-
brew yapht, to “extend” or “enlarge”—makes Japheth Shem’s model and ob-
stacle.
In the closed system of Noah’s family, the brothers’ common desire for
their father’s blessing locks them in a mimetic dance Girard calls “internal
mediation,” connoting that the physical and emotional distance between the
antagonists is minimal. The brothers’ proximity catalyzes their desire until it
has shifted from jealousy to intense antipathy. After all, “only someone who
           

prevents us from satisfying a desire which he himself has inspired in us is

truly an object of hatred.”40 Such a relationship is captured in one of Girard’s
descriptions of mimetic rivalry: “The antagonists are caught in an escalation
of frustration. In their dual role of obstacle and model, they both become
more and more fascinated by each other. Beyond a certain level of intensity
they are totally absorbed and the disputed object becomes secondary, even
irrelevant.”41 This mutual fascination, according to Girard, can reach the level
of a “hypnotic trance.” Mimetic antagonism is ultimately unitive, in that it
provides an object the antagonists can share. But the quiescent conflict it
implies is full of peril for the community.
Considered mimetically, the biblical image of Shem and Japheth walking
in tandem to cover their father is emblematic of their intense rivalry. While
being careful to keep his brother in sight, each strains to earn the all-
important blessing. This rivalry, while apparently benign, actually threatens
to destroy Noah’s family, which has become synonymous with the human
family. According to mimetic theory, the conflict can be relieved and the
danger eschewed only if a scapegoat is found. But by necessity in this lonely
postdiluvian world, the scapegoat must come from Noah’s family. Thus, the
community can be spared an eruption of murderous violence only if one of
its own members is destroyed through the scapegoating mechanism. This is
precisely the solution revealed in Noah’s pronouncement, in which Shem and
Japheth are blessed while the family’s shame is projected upon Ham or Ca-
naan.
Shem is given priority over his brother (“Japheth will dwell in the tents
of Shem”), but Japheth, too, is blessed and vested with authority over Ham
and Canaan. This is the family’s solution to the crisis precipitated by unre-
lieved mimetic rivalry. The object of the brothers’ desire—their father’s bless-
ing—is shared in exchange for their complicity in scapegoating a third party.
The collusion is evident in the very structure of Noah’s oracle, as the male-
diction is reiterated in connection with each brother. Averting the crisis re-
quires not only the identification of a scapegoat but also a repudiation of the
rivalry that made the scapegoating necessary. This is provided in Noah’s dec-
laration “May God make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tents of
Shem” (v. 27), which indicates that the brothers will coexist in peace and
proximity.42
The mimetic crisis in Noah’s family is arrested when Ham-Canaan is
accused of excessive desire. In fact, The brothers’ simultaneous covering of
their father symbolizes the family’s unanimity in projecting upon Ham the
desire for Noah that is the essence of their own rivalry. The story’s displace-
ment of desire upon Ham brings a resolution to the crisis, rescuing the com-
munity from the violent result of rivalry that visited the first Adam’s family
when Cain murdered Abel. Noah’s righteousness is preserved inasmuch as his
own failures are obscured by Ham’s dishonor, and the brothers’ dangerous
desire is projected upon the scapegoat.
212          

Through the collective violence of scapegoating, then, disorder is trans-

ferred from the community to the victim. But there is a problem: Although
Ham’s choice as scapegoat may be obvious from our perspective, mimetic
theory dictates that his selection appear to be “by chance.”43 Because Ham is
the only surviving male of his generation not caught in mimetic struggle, he
is hardly an arbitrary choice. However, the biblical text reveals slippage in the
scapegoat’s identity. Although it is Ham who is accused of unleashing destruc-
tive desire, it is Canaan who becomes the object of Noah’s curse. This dis-
crepancy, which has troubled Bible readers for generations, is evidence that
the text’s authors have taken pains to transform Ham from an arbitrary victim
to a dangerous criminal. Ham is the “obvious” scapegoat only because readers
are given a sign of his victimage (“Ham the father of Canaan”).
According to this analysis, Genesis 9 contains what Girard calls an “ex-
emplary scapegoat myth.” Such myths begin with disorder or undifferentia-
tion,44 themes that are often expressed in a quarrel between relatives, pref-
erably twin brothers. Then a third individual stands convicted of some fault:
“It may be a heinous crime . . . or an accidental faux-pas; but it has brought
the state of chaos from which the community suffers.” Once the scapegoat is
identified with the help of “preferential signs of victimage,” he or she is “killed,
expelled, or otherwise eliminated,” either by the entire community or by a
single individual. Finally, “peace returns, order is (re)generated.”45 But can
Ham be a sacrificial victim if he is not annihilated?
Bearing on this question is the classical Greek concept of pharmakos, a
person “maintained by the city at its own expense and slaughtered at the
appointed festivals as well as at a moment of civic disaster.”46 Walter Burkert
notes that in classical drama the pharmakos is not always destroyed. In Oe-
dipus the King, for instance, “Oedipus, assuming the role of the pharmakos,
is not killed violently but voluntarily led away.” Burkert notes that “even when
there is annihilation in the scapegoat complex, it is characteristically left to
‘the others,’ to hostile forces be they demons or real enemies. The basic action
seems to be abandonment.”47 Burkert has described, it would seem, precisely
the way Ham functions as a sacrificial victim in Genesis 9: Although he is not
killed, Ham is marginalized and abandoned. He becomes a perpetual human
sacrifice, surviving as a target for whatever postdiluvian corruption must be
accounted for. Abandoned to dishonor but never consumed, Ham is available
for literary lynching whenever needed.

The Flood and Sacrifice

Like the rest of the primeval history of Genesis, the Flood narrative is believed
to have undergone final redaction by the Priestly school. It should not surprise
us, then, that the language used in Genesis 9 to denote Ham’s transgression
resonates with the sexual prohibitions of the Holiness Code in Leviticus 18
          

and 20.48 This intertextuality suggests not only an active Priestly editorial hand
but also Genesis 9’s affinity with sacrifice and ritual. Because Girard has con-
sistently argued that the origins of sacrifice as sacred violence are to be found
in the scapegoating effect, it is necessary to revisit the canonical context of
Genesis 9:20–27, particularly its proximity to a description of animal sacri-
fice.49
According to Genesis 8:19–21, after “every animal . . . went out of the ark
by families . . . Noah built an altar to the L, and took of every clean animal
and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” When God
found pleasing the odor of Noah’s sacrifice, “the L said in his heart, ‘I
will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination
of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every
living creature as I have done.’ ” Significantly, this slaughtering of clean ani-
mals follows immediately the announcement of a prohibition against shedding
human blood. Noah and his sons are instructed not to “eat flesh with its life,
that is, its blood” (Gen. 9:4) because God will “require a reckoning” for the
lifeblood of animals and human beings alike, “each one for the blood of
another, I will require a reckoning for human life” (Gen. 9:5). Verse 6 ex-
presses this restriction poetically: “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, / by
a human shall that person’s blood be shed; / for in his own image / God
made humankind.” This juxtaposition of opposites—slaughter of the animals
that had sojourned in the ark alongside a strict interdiction against shedding
human blood—clarifies Noah’s sacrifice as a method of limiting violence in
the postdiluvian community, a way of stemming the flood of violence that
precipitated the Deluge.
Girard observes that in stories of sacrifice “it is the god who supposedly
demands the victims; he alone, in principle, who savors the smoke from the
altars and requisitions the slaughtered flesh. It is to appease his anger that the
killing goes on, that the victims multiply.”50 Genesis 8 implies that the L
desires Noah’s sacrifice (“the L smelled the pleasing odor”). But a Gir-
ardian reading of this sacrificial episode must inquire whether “the sacrifice
serves to protect the entire community from its own violence.”51 A key to
comprehending sacrifice’s relation to violence in the human community is
found in Girard’s observation that “all victims, even the animal ones, bear a
certain resemblance to the object they replace.”52 Are there such resemblances
in Genesis 9? The animals are “clean” and thus differentiated from their peers;
like Noah and his family, they have been rescued from the Flood; like the
rivalrous brothers, they come in pairs. Then are these animals who resemble
their caretakers on the ark substitutes for some member of Noah’s family?
Violence, Girard points out, is much like a flood: Left unappeased, it
accumulates and overflows its confines, inundating its surroundings. The role
of sacrifice is to “redirect violence into its ‘proper’ channels.” If Noah initiates
the slaughter of animals immediately after the L’s flood has subsided, then
we are left to ask what sort of crisis emerged on the high seas that threatened
214            

a flood of violence in the surviving community. The legend of the mysterious

fourth son of Noah—the mythical Jonathan—offers one provocative answer
to this question. Perhaps this legend, according to which the youngest of
Noah’s sons is lost in the Flood, contains a trace of historical and religious
truth. Did Jonathan become a sacrificial victim while the human remnant
languished on the ark, unsure of how to appease the angry God who was
purging the earth? If Jonathan became a victim of the very violence that
precipitated the Flood, this might explain why animal sacrifice was resorted
to immediately after the ark reached dry ground. Why else slaughter rescued
animals upon arrival in the new world, unless a sacrificial crisis had developed
in transit?
In this case, substitutionary sacrifice would have become the literal foun-
dation of the postdiluvian human community. This would explain why, when
a crisis erupted again in the episode of Noah’s drunkenness—when Ham
caught a glimpse of “things hidden from the foundation of the world,” that
is, Noah’s own role in the violence that threatened human survival—it was
not possible to repeat the originary violence. One fourth of Noah’s potential
descendants had been lost with Jonathan; should another fourth part be sac-
rificed with Ham? To end the cycle, an alternative form of substitution was
required.

The Innocent Victim

Another Girardian insight embraced by many biblical critics is the revelatory

function of the Bible in illuminating the dynamics of mimetic conflict, vic-
timage, and sacrifice. According to Girard, the Bible portrays the fate of the
innocent victim in a way that elucidates the violent origins of human civili-
zation. Controversially, Girard regards the New Testament accounts of Jesus’
passion as the paragon of revelation, in that they describe God’s innocent
victim suffering to end the cycle of scapegoating and violence.53 In Girard’s
view, although the Hebrew Bible provides glimpses of the redemptive process
narrated in the Gospels (particularly in the Prophets’ concern for victims), it
is of secondary importance for breaking the pattern of violence on which
human societies are founded.54 In this sense, Girard is open to the charge that
he reinscribes traditional forms of Christian supersessionism vis-à-vis Juda-
ism. At his best, however, Girard regards concern for the victim as a general
characteristic of biblical revelation. He affirms that the Bible contains “reve-
lation of victimage and its refusal” and possesses “a counter-mythical thrust
in the treatment of victimage.”55 This thrust is present, Girard writes, in
countless texts that “espouse the perspective of the victim rather than the
mythical perspective of the persecutors.”56 Girard notes the Bible’s tendency
to “side with the victims” and cites Hebrew Bible texts as evidence, including
the stories of Cain and Abel and Joseph and his brothers (along with Job,
Psalms, and the suffering servant passages in Isaiah).57
          

On its surface, Genesis 9:20–27 does not appear to be one of these texts
that espouses the perspective of the victim. If Israel is a “community that
bears the memory of its own marginal, often victimized situation through the
centuries,”58 this memory has been thoroughly repressed in Genesis 9. Yet
Girard emphasizes that traces of the scapegoating mechanism are often elu-
sive, because “the mythic systems of representation obliterate the scapegoating
on which they are founded, and they remain dependent on this obliteration.”59
In addition, episodes of mimetic violence and their subsequent reconciliation
are recollected from the perspective of their beneficiaries. The community
could not be at peace “if it doubted the victim’s enormous capacity for evil.
. . . The victim cannot be perceived as innocent and impotent; he (or she, as
the case may be) must be perceived . . . as a creature truly responsible for all
the disorders and ailments of the community.”60 From this perspective, Gen-
esis 9’s history of interpretation—from church fathers through American seg-
regationists—can be viewed as an extension of the original impulse to vilify
an innocent victim as “subversive of the communal order and as a threat to
the well-being of the society.”61
As we have seen, the great majority of tellings and retellings of this tale
follow the logic of the text and the momentum of interpretive history in
treating it as an account of Noah’s victimization by his son Ham. How do we
resist these forces and recover the voice of the true victim? Within the field
of the orthodox interpretive paradigm, the victim’s voice has been silenced by
an overwhelming emphasis on his penchant for disorder. Even opponents of
the curse, while questioning Noah’s righteousness and acquitting his son of
any crime, have rarely attended to Ham’s voice. Meanwhile, advocates of the
curse have usurped Ham’s speech in order to argue that he is content with
or complicitous in his own thralldom.62 Redemption of the curse, then, will
require us to listen for the voice of Ham, the scapegoat who falls victim to
his brothers’ mimetic rivalry. The imaginative retelling of the family’s history
that follows takes the perspective of its silent victim.

Noah’s Dream

In the beginning, there was no victim, because there was no crime. But I
was chosen to be a victim, so a crime had to be invented. That was the real
crime. Let me tell you how it happened.
After God flooded the world, things settled down for those of us who
survived. On the ark we had done a lot of arguing. In fact, the one thing
we agreed on was that we couldn’t wait to get off the boat and find some
personal space. But when the waters subsided we faced an eerily silent, un-
familiar world. The animals must have been as frightened as we were, because
they stayed pretty close as well.
Soon, life took on a routine. Dad started to tend grapes and learned to
ferment them. He got into the habit of treating himself to the fruit of his
labor at day’s end. Nothing wrong with that, we all agreed. He’d been a good
216          

father, raised us right, got us through that extended family cruise without us
drowning or suffocating in the stench of animal shit. Who were we to be-
grudge him this one little vice?
I only worried about him when he started having nightmares. How do
I know about his dreams? I could hear him talk in his sleep. My tent was
next to his and I was a light sleeper. My two older brothers shared a tent
on the other side of the old man. But I doubt if they ever heard dad carrying
on. They slept like babies, exhausted from their attempts to win his approval.
I laughed it off at the time, not knowing how their sibling rivalry would
affect me.
Anyway, from what I overheard at night, dad’s dreams were mostly
about the flood, in which, as you know, all our friends and neighbors
drowned. He knew the Lord approved of that carnage, but he came to have
reservations. Dad developed what you call survivor guilt, and it seemed to
get the best of him when he went to bed drunk.
One night after we retired to our tents I was lying awake thinking about
the day I would leave home. Eventually, dad started moaning in the usual
way. But then I heard what sounded like an argument. I wondered who he
could be talking to, so I poked my head out of the tent and into the night
air. There I saw dad sprawled out on the ground, naked as a jay bird. He
was chattering away in his sleep, and I wondered how I could cover him
without waking him up.
From what I could glean, dad’s dream took him back on the ark. He
was discussing with God what sacrifice he would offer when we got through
the flood. Dad’s part of the conversation went something like this: “I thought
you wanted them? No? Are you sure? Well, you certainly deserve them; see
how young and strong they are, how virile, how righteous, how much like
their father. I’ll still have the youngest one; he’s my favorite anyway. Clean
animals are nice, sure, but after all you’ve done for us, you really deserve
better. No? Well, how about just one of them.”
None of this made any sense to me then. But looking back, I realize
that dad was fed up with the way Shem and Japheth incessantly competed
for his blessing. It got to where one didn’t trust the other out of his sight,
lest they pull ahead in the quest for Noah’s favor. If one helped him harvest
grapes, the other had to be there, too. If one got up early to go hunting, the
other one was off behind him before his sandals were on. To be honest,
when they left home together I half expected one of them to return with the
guilty look Cain wore after taking care of Abel. Anyway, back to the story.
Dad’s “conversation” became so animated that even Shem and Japheth
woke up. Each assumed dad was in trouble and neither wanted the other to
get credit for coming to his assistance. So side by side they stumbled toward
us. Immediately, it occurred to me that I couldn’t let them get near enough
to hear dad talk about them this way. So I told them to find something we
could use to cover the old man. One found a blanket, and the other grabbed
it in an effort to secure part of the credit.
While they silently struggled for sole possession, I was thinking about
what to do next. Just then, dad woke up and found me standing there staring
dumbly at him. He opened his bloodshot eyes, looked up, and mumbled,
         

“You can’t have that one.” Then he grabbed his head, moaned, and went
back to sleep. When the dynamic duo arrived with the blanket, I said, “I’ll
make sure each of you gets credited for that act of filial piety.” Then we all
went back to our tents. How was I to know that my days at home had
already come to an end?
The next morning at the crack of dawn I awoke to the sound of dad
preaching—the sort of thing he had done before the flood to warn our
neighbors. When I realized he had decided to get on with the much-awaited
paternal blessing, I laid there and thought to myself: “Finally, things will
settle down around here.” First he blessed Shem, the oldest—no surprise
there—but then he blessed Japheth, too. “Hmm, that’s clever,” I thought. He
threw in permission for Japheth to live in Shem’s tents—just so they could
keep an eye on each other, no doubt. That’s when it got weird. Noah said
something about how I was going to serve both of them. I laid there in
stunned disbelief. What did I have to do with any of this?
Best I can figure, dad awoke in his birthday suit and through the fog
of his hangover pieced together memories of the night before. He must have
wondered how much of his little discussion with the Lord I had overheard.
If I did know his secret, he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t use it against
him. So he went on the offensive. He claimed that I had dishonored him by
laughing at his nakedness and telling my brothers about it. Of course, I did
tell them, but only to keep them from hearing dad’s ramblings about giving
them back to the Lord! Exactly what he was accusing me of was unclear, but
as time went on the story got more outlandish. The fact that dad had passed
out naked that evening must have been a stimulant to my brothers’ imagi-
nations.
The story was full of inconsistencies, of course—they couldn’t even
decide whether it was me or Canaan who had threatened Noah’s five-
hundred-year-old manhood. But that didn’t deter them. Shem and Japheth
seemed happy to have the blessing matter settled so they could spend their
energy on something more constructive—like ganging up on me. With all
of them making sick accusations, and everyone starting to treat me like I
was their slave or something, I decided to leave. I’ve never been home since,
though I hear they tell some strange stories about me.

Noah’s Curse and Revelation

When we follow this or some other path toward a clarification of Ham’s

identity as scapegoat, we gain a new perspective on Genesis 9:20–27’s revela-
tory potential. If “the revelation of God is the disclosure of . . . the standpoint
of the victim, who is always either innocent or arbitrarily chosen,”63 then the
story of Noah and his sons may be regarded as an adumbration of the willing
victimhood of God’s Christ. If the church fathers thought that Noah repre-
sented the suffering Christ and Ham those who mocked him, we now see
Ham as the true type of Christ, the innocent victim who put an end to scape-
goating by refusing to retaliate.64
218           

The type is not the reality, of course: Ham is made a victim by the
collusion of family members, and Jesus chooses victimhood to expose the
violent foundations of his culture. Nevertheless, though Ham is not “the
scapegoat for all” (as Girard claims for Jesus), his victimhood can be good
news for a culture affected by racism and the biblical myths that sustain it.
Nor is the Hamitic Christ without precedent. During the first few decades of
the twentieth century, when lynching was a way of life in the United States,
the African American was routinely depicted as a Christ figure subjected to
persecution and crucifixion. In works of fiction—including W. E. B. Dubois’s
“Jesus Christ in Texas” and Countee Cullen’s “The Black Christ”—and in
paintings, sketches, and cartoons, black suffering was viewed through the
prism of the crucified Jesus.65 A Girardian reading of Genesis 9 enables us to
do the same.
If we recast the story of Noah and his sons so that Ham’s identity as
victim is highlighted, how do we avoid making victimizers of the story’s
other characters? Helpful in this regard is the classical Jewish concept of
Noahides.66 The designation was developed by Jewish readers of the Hebrew
Bible to refer generically to non-Jews. According to the logic of Genesis,
however, all human beings are Noahides. Before we are Hamites, Semites,
or Japhethites; Caucasians, Hispanics, or Asians; Jews, Christians, or Mus-
lims; we are “sons of Noah.” If we are all “sons of Noah,” Genesis 9:20–27
suggests that we are all victims, all victimizers, all at the center of our own
myths, all in need of rescue and redemption, all loved and favored by God,
all revealed in our depravity by God’s truth. Seen in this light, the desig-
nation “Noah’s curse” not only displaces the stigma of guilt from Ham the
innocent victim but also implies that the curse and the responsibility for re-
deeming it belong to all.
Of course, as this study has emphasized, Noah’s curse is inscribed in a
section of scripture that can function perniciously even without explicit ref-
erence to Genesis 9:20–27. Do our efforts to redeem the curse diminish the
racist potential in the texts to which the curse has been linked?67 If the story
of Noah and his sons tells us more about Noah, Shem, and Japheth than
about Ham, more about the origins of segregation and oppression in the
scapegoating mechanism than about the derivation or subsequent history of
human beings, then the postdiluvian history as a whole can be read anew, no
longer chronicling God’s plan for differentiation and physical separation, but
desire’s role in compromising the unity of creation. Regarding the theological
message of Genesis 1–11, we arrive at the conclusion reached by Desmond
Tutu, who speaks with authority for millions of victims of racist readings of
Genesis. From the first chapters of the Bible, writes Tutu, “one learns that
unity and wholeness were God’s will for the creation. But this primal unity
was disrupted by sin. The Genesis stories culminate in the shattering story of
the Tower of Babel where human community and fellowship become impos-
sible.” This is the ultimate consequence, Tutu writes, “of sin, separation, alien-
        

ation, apartness.”68 Tutu calls it “a perverse exegesis” that would see in the
Tower of Babel “a justification for racial separation, a divine sanction for the
diversity of nations.” For this would be to confuse the divine intention for
humankind with the divine punishment for sin. And that, Tutu declares,
would be a fundamental misreading of the Bible.
 12
Conclusion

Racism, Religion, and Responsible Scholarship

   conclude from this study of American racism and its bib-
lical dimensions? Several intellectual pitfalls must be avoided. One of these—
the assumption that religious belief is not relevant for comprehending con-
temporary social problems—has caused scholars to overlook the evidence
linking religion and racism. Since the 1950s, analysis of prejudice has been
the province of the social sciences, and because social-scientists are wont to
view religion as an epiphenomenal projection of more essential needs and
desires, the social-scientific approach has failed to gauge the religious aspects
of racial prejudice.
An instructive example of this failure is Elisabeth Young-Bruehl’s The Anat-
omy of Prejudices. In this six-hundred-page-plus tome, Young-Bruehl proffers a
neo-Freudian analysis of prejudice as a function of repressed desires. In her
view, racism is a form of hysterical prejudice “that represents or symbolizes
genital power or prowess and sexual desires by bodily features like skin color,
thick hair, muscularity, or big breasts; it equates strength, size and darkness
with primitivity, archaic and unrestrained sexual activity forbidden in civiliza-
tion.”1 Apart from being virtually unfalsifiable (the repressed desires that pur-
portedly underlie racism are not directly observable), Young-Bruel’s definition
excludes attention to the beliefs and traditions transmitted by religious com-
munities. Thus, like social scientists in general, she cannot explain why scrip-
ture has so often been a touchstone for racist thinking and behavior, or why
American readings of key biblical texts—texts that openly invite the sort of sex-
ual projections she describes—are often conspicuously void of sexual content.
Those who succeed in keeping the religious dimensions of racism in view
are vulnerable to other hazards. One is the scholarly axiom that religious

220
     ,      ,             

traditions in general—and Christianity in particular—are intrinsically exclu-

sivist.2 Scholars who embrace this dictum assume that an inclusive and tol-
erant society requires that the influence of religious ideas and institutions be
limited. Such unexamined prejudices may be de rigueur in sectors of the
academy, but they cannot survive critical examination.
Another trap looms for those who are determined to redeem religion by
identifying the roots of theologically sanctioned racism. The quest for the
fountainhead of religious racism has given rise to a spirited scholarly debate
over whether Judaism, Christianity, or Islam is finally responsible for linking
Noah’s curse to skin color and thus providing the religious ideology under-
girding modern racial slavery. This book includes much evidence that could
be used to incriminate Jews and Christians alike; although Islamic readings
of the curse have not been surveyed, it is also possible to connect Ham, black
Africa, and slavery in the writings of Muslim exegetes beginning in the late
medieval period.3 But quests for the historical moment in which the purity
of scripture was tainted by racist exegesis obscures the racist potency in mod-
ern Bible readers and in the Bible itself.
A balanced scholarly method for studying the complex interconnections
between religion and race must avoid these pitfalls on the road to understand-
ing—based in unfounded assumptions that religion is irrelevant for compre-
hending or alleviating social problems, that religion necessarily breeds racism,
or that sacred texts provide no foothold for racist thinking. This book has
sought to navigate a path between these hazards. In any case, it provides
voluminous evidence that, whatever else may be said about the history and
dynamics of American racism, its stubborn links with religion in general and
scriptural traditions in particular should not be underestimated or approached
simplistically. Given the apparent permanence of racism in the United States,
the American revival of religion and spirituality, and the unlikely survival of
biblical images in an otherwise secularized culture, it would be naive indeed
to assume that the American mind has become resistant to racist readings of
the Bible with the advent of a new millennium. If cultural expressions of these
readings are subtler than in the past, the task of the scholar becomes that
much more challenging—not to mention crucial.
 Notes

Preface

1. The Palmer Memorial Tablet was unveiled on the occasion of the college’s jubilee
and inaugural celebration (November 26–28, 1925), during which dedicatory exer-
cises for the new administration building were held in the newly completed Palmer
Hall. An address by a member of the board of directors on “Benjamin Morgan
Palmer, Father of Southwestern” followed. See W. Raymond Cooper, Southwestern
at Memphis 1848–1948 (Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1949).
2. Letter of Benjamin M. Palmer to Rev. Dr. C. C. Hersman, dated May 27, 1889, in
Burrow Library Archive, Rhodes College. I am indebted to Heather Lea Woods,
who transcribed this letter.
3. Thomas Carey Johnson, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1906;
reprint, Edinburgh and Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 620.
4. Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primi-
tivism in America, 1630–1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
5. Thomas V. Peterson, Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic World of Whites in
the Antebellum South (Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library Association,
1978).
6. Ibid., 110.
7. John F. A. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996).
8. According to Sawyer, among the established scholarly approaches to the Bible that
take seriously interpretive traditions are Rezeptiongeschichte (reception history), Wir-
kungsgeschichte (history of a text’s effects), and reader-response criticism.
9. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel, 13.

223
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Chapter 1

1. Philip Martin, “Interracial Marriage Ban,” Morning Edition, April 15, 1999.
2. The report included a spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention who
pointed out that the denomination had eschewed racism in its well-known 1995
statement on slavery and stated that “to wrap our prejudice in the Scripture is a
sinful thing to do.”
3. The letter is posted at http://www.multiracial.com (July 1999).
4. Ibid.
5. Benjamin Braude, letter to the author, January 24, 2001. See also Benjamin Braude,
“The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities
in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” William and Mary Quarterly 54, no.
1 (1997): 120ff.
6. In W. E. B. Dubois’s story “The Second Coming,” “white,” “black,” and “yellow”
bishops descend on Valdosta, Georgia, to greet the birth of the black Christ. In
Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe,
1920), 105–8.
7. I am indebted to Benjamin Braude for this observation.
8. According to the time line developed by Bishop James Ussher (1581–1656) and still
widely accepted among fundamentalist Christians, Noah entered the ark in 2348
... and died in 2006 ... Ussher dated the Tower of Babel episode at 2233
... See Ferdinand Ruprecht, Bible History References: Explanatory Notes on the
“Advanced Bible History,” vol. 1, Old Testament Stories (St. Louis: Concordia, 1947),
448.
9. Braude, “The Sons of Noah,” 111, 112, 114. Braude concludes that “the racial iden-
tities [Noah’s] sons have borne have been remarkably unstable. Shem, Ham and
Japhet have been ever-changing projections of the likes and dislikes, hatreds and
loves, prejudices and fears, needs and rationales through which society continually
constructs and reconstructs its selves and its opposites” (142).
10. Harry Lacey, God and the Nations (New York: Loizeaux Brothers, 1947), 23. See
also p. 24: “God thus apportioned the inheritance of the nations: He moved the
Japhetic group of families to the northern parts of the earth, the group of families
springing from Ham to the southern continents, the Semitic peoples to the central
belt; and later Israel received the crown of the lands in the center of all when God
had developed that nation from Abraham.” In the twentieth century, Genesis 10
has been regarded as the key for understanding the origins of both nations (as in
the preceding title) and races. See A. H. Sayce, The Races of the Old Testament
(London: Religious Tract Society, 1925).
11. Nimrod’s association with the Tower has meant that his geographical assignment
among Bible readers has been fairly stable relative to the other descendants of
Noah mentioned in Genesis 10. The link between Nimrod and Babel has been
encouraged by interpreters who note that “Nimrud” was an ancient city in Mes-
opotamia.
12. Benjamin Braude characterizes the evidence from these texts this way: “The lan-
guage is allusive and unclear. Clear references to black skin or negroid features
are absent. The statements may be metaphorical and not physical” (letter to the
author, January 24, 2001).
        - 

13. Origen, “Genesis Homily XVI,” in Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. Ronald
E. Heine (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 215.
14. Augustine writes: “It is with justice, we believe, that the condition of slavery is the
result of sin. And this is why we do not find the word ‘slave’ in any part of
Scripture until righteous Noah branded the sin of his son with this name. It is a
name, therefore, introduced by sin and not by nature.” City of God, 19:15, in Philip
Schaff, ed., A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian
Church, vol. 2, St. Augustine’s City of God and Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 1955). Augustine interprets the curse of slavery thus: The good
make skillful use of the wicked for their own training in endurance or for their
own development in wisdom. Augustine’s view was adopted by Pope Gelasius I,
John Chrysostom, and others and was resurrected among American Catholic slav-
ery advocates in the nineteenth century. See Letters of the Late Bishop England to
The Hon. John Forsyth, on the Subject of Domestic Slavery: To Which are Prefixed
Copies, in Latin and English, of the Pope’s Apostolic Letter, Concerning the Atlantic
Slave Trade, With Some Introductory Remarks, Etc. (New York: Negro Universities
Press, 1969), 23–24.
15. Jean Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. 2, part 1, trans. William
Granger Ryan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 18.
16. Werner Sollors, Neither Black nor White yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Inter-
racial Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 87. The text of Ephrem
cited by Sollors may be pseudepigraphical.
17. See, e.g., David H. Aaron, “Early Rabbinic Exegesis on Noah’s Son Ham and the
So-Called ‘Hamitic Myth,’ ” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63, no.
4 (1995): 721–59; Steven L. McKenzie, “Response: The Curse of Ham and David
H. Aaron,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65, no. 1 (1997): 183–86;
Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 1999); Ephraim Isaac, “Genesis, Judaism, and the ‘Sons of Ham,’ ” in
Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, ed. John Ralph Willis (London: F. Cass, 1985)
1:75–91, and “Ham” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New
York: Doubleday, 1992); David M. Goldenberg, “The Curse of Ham: A Case of
Rabbinic Racism?” in Jack Salzman and Cornel West, eds., Struggles in the Promised
Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 21–52; and Charles B. Copher, “Blacks and Jews in
Historical Interaction: The Biblical/African Experience,” Journal of the Interde-
nominational Theological Center 3 (1975): 9–16.
18. See Devisse, Image of the Black, 143. Devisse writes that the genealogy of Christ
from the Cathedral of St. Patroklus, Soest (ca. 1230) portrays the family of Cush
as blacks, “recognizable by their profile and the conventional details of the hair,
and like the text, locates them in Ethiopia, ‘which today is called Africa.’ ”
19. Braude, “The Sons of Noah,” 132.
20. See William McKee Evans, “From the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea: The
Strange Odyssey of the ‘Sons of Ham,’ ” American Historical Review 85, no. 1 (1980): 26:
“More than ten centuries separate the appearance of the story of Ham in the book of
Genesis from the elaboration and explanation of the tale that occurs in rabbinic lit-
erature. During these centuries the face of servitude had darkened in the Near East.”
21. This story will be clarified in Benjamin Braude’s forthcoming book, Sex, Slavery,
and Racism: The Secret History of Noah and His Sons.
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22. Some scholars date the emergence of racial interpretations of Genesis 9:20–27 in
Europe to the sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries. See, e.g, Winthrop Jordan,
White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1968). Gene Rice locates the curse’s European
origins in the publication of J. L. Hannemann’s Curiosum scrutinum nigridinis
filiorum Cahm (“Curious Inquiry into the Blackness of the Children of Ham”),
published in 1677. See “The Curse That Never Was (Genesis 9:18–27),” Journal of
Religious Thought 29, no. 1 (1972): 27 n. 117. More controversially, Ivan Hannaford
traces the origins of the racial idea in Western thought to the twelfth-century
Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. See Race: The History of an Idea in the
West (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 112.
23. See Louis Ruchames, ed., Racial Thought in America, vol. 1, From the Puritans to
Abraham Lincoln (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1969), 47–58.
24. Ibid., 53.
25. William Summer Jenkins, cited in Randy J. Sparks, “Mississippi’s Apostle of Slav-
ery: James Smylie and the Biblical Defense of Slavery,” Journal of Mississippi History
51 (1989): 100 n. 26.
26. Among scholars of the curse, Thomas Peterson comes closest to illuminating these
themes in Ham and Japeth in America: The Mythic World of Whites in the Ante-
bellum South (Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library Association, 1978).
He notes that those who invoked Noah’s curse “all agreed that Ham had dishon-
ored his father,” but he concludes that Ham’s real offense was “an attack against
the authority of the family and thereby against God’s chosen institution for gov-
erning the human race” (49). He also analyzes the “oppositions” in the antebellum
myth of Ham, which include “Ham act[ing] like a foolish child (laughing, and
joking about his father)” and “Ham act[ing] like a villain (the heinous sexual
crime)” (117–121). But Peterson does not tie what he calls the “dominant political,
social and religious ideas of the Old South” to the conceptions of Ham’s trans-
gression that prevailed among Southern Bible readers.
27. See, e.g., Malcolm Ritter, “In South, Insulting a White Guy Can Get You a Black
Eye,” Salt Lake Tribune, 15 July 1996; and Cynthia Tucker, “Road Rage, Southern
Style,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, 29 November 1999.
28. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain. Illustrated by Thomas Hart
Benton. With an Introduction by Edward Wagenknecht, and a Number of Previously
Suppressed Passages, Now Printed for the First Time, and Edited with a Note by
Willis Wager (New York: Heritage Press, 1959), 272. See also Clement Eaton, The
Growth of Southern Civilization, 1790–1860 (New York: Harper Brothers, 1961), 318–
20.
29. Edward Wagenknecht, “Introduction,” in ibid., xiii.
30. In The Mind of the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1964), Clement Eaton confirmed and expanded Osterweis’s argument. Eaton’s em-
phasis on Southern honor is significantly greater in this and other works subse-
quent to his A History of the Old South (New York: Macmillan, 1949).
31. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1982), 95. According to Patterson, Franklin argued that
“the institution of slavery had a profound effect on Southern character” (66) and
began to draw a connection between the martial spirit and slavery, in which honor,
too, is implicated.
         - 

32. Clement Eaton, “The Role of Honor in Southern Society,” Southern Humanities
Review 10 (1976, supplement): 47–58; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor:
Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982),
and Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press,
1986); and Patterson, Slavery and Social Death.
See also Kenneth S. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks,
Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions,
the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); Steven M. Stowe, Intimacy and Power
in the Old South: Ritual in the Lives of the Planters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1987); John Hope Franklin, The Militant South: 1800–1861 (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1956); Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion,
Recreation and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1990); Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Begin-
nings of the Bible Belt (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina
Press, 1997); and Michael P. Johnston, “Planters and Patriarchy: Charleston, 1800–
1860,” Journal of Southern History 46, no. 1 (1980): 45–72.
33. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, ix, 17.
34. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum
South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972). William McKee Evans (“From
the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea,” 22) suggests the psychological appeal
of the Sambo stereotype by observing that it was shared by ancient Roman, Greek,
and Hebrew masters.
35. Blassingame, The Slave Community, 134. See also Patterson, Slavery and Social
Death, 79. Patterson regards the antebellum Sambo stereotype (“the typical plan-
tation slave, [who] was docile but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, humble but chron-
ically given to lying and stealing; his behavior was full of infantile silliness and his
talk inflated with childish exaggeration”—Stanley Elkins) as “simply an elaboration
of the notion that the slave is quintessentially a person without honor” (Slavery
and Social Death, 96).
36. Theodore Dwight Weld, The Bible against Slavery: An Inquiry into the Patriarchal
and Mosaic Systems on the Subject of Human Rights (New York: American Anti-
Slavery Society, 1838).
37. Mark A. Noll, “The Bible and Slavery,” in Religion and the American Civil War,
ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 62. Noll continues: “Occasional theologians like
Philip Schaff or Rabbi Raphal might be willing to speculate on the relevance of
the passage to the modern situation of American slaves. But most elite theologians
had long since dismissed that kind of application in favor of a reading that saw
the prophecy fulfilled when the children of Israel conquered the Promised Land.”
38. Eugene D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind
of the White Christian South, Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures 41 (Ath-
ens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 81. In addition to John Henley
Thornwell and Robert L. Dabney, Presbyterians J. B. Adger and George Howe
were reluctant to apply the curse to racial slavery.
39. Eugene D. Genovese, letter to the author, 29 May 1998.
40. In the passage quoted, Weld continues: “But closely as they cling to it, ‘cursed by
Canaan’ is a poor drug to stupify a throbbing conscience—a mocking lullaby,
228          -  

vainly wooing slumber to unquiet tossings, and crying ‘Peace, be still,’ where God
wakes war and breaks his thunders.”
41. Thomas V. Peterson, Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic World of Whites in
the Antebellum South (Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library Association,
1978), 117.
42. Ibid., 48. According to Peterson, the story of Ham’s curse was thought to account
for the supposed inferiority of blacks emphasized by scientific racists during the
nineteenth century, while also explaining the black color of Ham’s descendants
(Ham and Japheth, 70). Peterson writes that “there is no question that Ham was
popularly identified as the progenitor of the black race, especially among those
people who accepted the Bible as the literal word of God that to some degree
prophesied future events,” and claims to have discovered only one antebellum
Southern clergyman who unequivocally rejected Ham as the progenitor of the
black race (102).
43. W. E. B. Dubois, “ ‘The Servant in the House,’ ” in Darkwater, 113.
44. Noll, “The Bible and Slavery,” 66. Noll is undoubtedly correct that racist assump-
tions about Africans functioned as a “hidden hand” in the process of proslavery
biblical exegesis. But this hidden hand was less intrusive in the case of Genesis 9,
because the text itself was assumed to elucidate the destinies of humankind’s three
great races.
45. Among the antebellum proslavery writers who believed that Genesis 9 was con-
cerned as much with racial differentiation as with slavery were Josiah Priest, who
exercised a tremendous influence in the South, T. R. R. Cobb, and J. R. Graves.
On Cobb, see Eugene D. Genovese, “Slavery Ordained of God”: The Southern Slave-
holders’ View of Biblical History and Modern Politics, Twenty-fourth Annual For-
tenbaugh Memorial Lecture (Gettysburg, Pa.: Gettysburg College, 1985), 12ff. On
Graves, see Harold S. Smith, “J. R. Graves,” in Baptist Theologians, ed. Timothy
George and David S. Dockery (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990), 234–36.
46. Genovese writes that “not until after the fall of the Confederacy did a racial-
imperialist ideology emerge in full force, as the South adapted to the values and
policies of a triumphant Yankeedom. Indeed, in essential respects, the Southern
embrace of imperialism represented a substitute for—and a betrayal of—the ideals
and visions of the proslavery worldview, although it was tailor-made for a New
South bent on continuing the racial subordination of blacks” (A Consuming Fire,
92).
47. Though Methodists and Baptists were numerically dominant among Southern
Protestants, Presbyterians and Episcopalians exercised an inordinate influence on
Southern culture. Presbyterians in particular controlled many educational insti-
tutions in the Old South, including ostensibly public universities.
48. James Oscar Farmer Jr., The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell
and the Synthesis of Southern Values (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1986),
117, 263.
49. Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
50. Ibid. Generally, Snay observes, those who exploited the Old Testament in arguing
for Southern secession viewed contemporary conflicts in the light of Israel’s history
under prophets, judges, and kings. The division of the Israelite kingdom following
the death of Solomon was the passage most often cited among Southern preachers
as a biblical precedent for disunion. According to Snay, Israel’s “national division
          -  

along sectional lines of North and South understandably captured the imagination
of Southern Protestants” (192). However, while seemingly apropos of the South’s
political situation, Jereboam’s rebellion (1 Kings 12) was limited in applicability by
its “historical” nature.
Particularly in the Presbyterian context, the appeal to the primeval history of
Genesis was fortuitous. As James Oscar Farmer has shown, it was precisely as the
Civil War loomed that the standard Presbyterian view of the relationship of church
and state moved away from theocracy—with ancient Israelite society as para-
digm—toward the doctrine of “the spirituality of the church.” This meant that
appeals to texts from the history of Israelite theocracy would gradually lose their
authority among Southern Presbyterians. See Farmer, Metaphysical Confederacy,
256ff.
51. Genovese, A Consuming Fire, 160 n. 7.
52. When Palmer wrote that “the outspreading landscape of all history is embraced
within the camera of Noah’s brief prophecy,” it is not clear what sort of instrument
he imagined. Since the first successful photographic process had been made public
in 1839, it is possible that Palmer had in mind a primitive version of the modern
camera. Yet the image works better if we view “Noah’s camera” as a telescopic
lens capable of capturing small or distant objects and making them discernible to
the human eye. According to this understanding, the person who peered through
Noah’s “camera” was privileged to a perspective on human history very close to
God’s own.
53. On pre-Adamism, see Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins
of the Christian Identity Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1997), 150–56.
54. Ibid., 150.
55. Ibid., 161–62. This is also true of the earlier two-seedline view associated with
Daniel Parker and William Branham, who viewed Ham, along with Cain, Ahab,
and Judas Iscariot as representatives of the seed of Satan.
56. The former view is articulated in H. Ben-Judah, When? A Prophetical Novel of the
Very Near Future (Vancouver, B.C.: British Israel Association of Greater Vancouver,
1944). The latter is fostered by the Aryan Nations and Church of Jesus Christ
Christian in Hayden Lake, Idaho. See Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right, 177,
131.
57. In the nineteenth century, Joseph Smith published the view that Cain entered into
a secret covenant with the Devil, and Dominick M’Causland portrayed Cain as a
“strong-minded resolute man, endowed with capacity and attainments superior to
those of his new associates,” over whom he quickly gained ascendancy. In the early
twentieth century, Ellen Bristowe argued that Cain became the “leader, teacher
and absolute lord and master of an inferior race,” and Frederick Haberman as-
sociated him with the production of physical giants. More recently, Identity writers
have imagined Cain as the founder of the first “Super World government,” the
leader of a satanic rebellion against God, the originator of idolatry, and the first
to institute cannibalism. See Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right, 154–55, 166–67.
58. As Barkun (ibid., 193) makes clear, the group known as the Covenant, Sword and
the Arm of the Lord represents an important exception to this observation.
59. James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997),
108.
60. See Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right, 142.
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61. Interview with Thom Robb in the documentary film Blood in the Face, by Anne
Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty, and James Ridgeway (Right Thinking Productions, 1986).
62. See Human Relations and the South African Scene in the Light of Scripture (Cape
Town: Dutch Reformed Church Publishers, 1976), 19: “There is no Scriptural basis
for relating the subordinate position of some present day peoples to the curse on
Canaan. . . . It simply is not true that Ham and all his descendants were for ever
cursed: in the first place, the curse was specifically limited to Canaan and therefore
does not apply to the other sons of Ham.”
63. Cited in Willem Vorster, “The Bible and Aparteid 1,” in John W. DeGruchy and
Charles Villa-Vicencio, Apartheid Is a Heresy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
1983), 102. The NGK report was the final product of a commission constituted by
the General Synod in 1970.
64. Human Relations and the South African Scene, 14.
65. Ibid., 15–16.
66. Ibid., 18.
67. Recognizing the role of Babel in the religious defense of apartheid, opponents have
focused on passages such as Zeph. 3:9, 11, and Isa. 66:9–11, texts in which the Lord
promises that when the process of salvation is fulfilled, the curse of Babel will be
reversed. See Douglas Bax, “The Bible and Apartheid 2,” in Apartheid Is a Heresy,
124. In addition, the story of Pentecost can be read as a reversal of Babel, in
contrast to the Afrikaner interpretation that sees it as a reaffirmation of Babel’s
message. Biblical critic Gunther Wittenberg provides another gloss on Genesis 11,
based on his socioeconomic analysis of Genesis 9 and 10: “In the present South
African system the true children of Ham are not the blacks. They are much more
like the ’apiru, the “Hebrews” of the ancient Near East. The true children of Ham
are the whites who have attempted to erect a new Tower of Babel in their ‘system’
of exploitation and oppression.” Gunther Wittenberg, “Let Canaan Be His Slave”
(Genesis 9:26). Is Ham Also Cursed?” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 74
(1991): 55.

Chapter 2

1. According to an early Aramaic version of the Hebrew Bible, “Noah learned by

revelation in a dream what had been done to him by his son. . . .” See Jack P.
Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood in Jewish and Christian
Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), 98.
2. See Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, vol. 1, Bible Times and Characters
from the Creation to Jacob, trans. Henrietta Szold (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society of America, 1968), 145: “When [Noah] was taken from the hand of the
midwife, he opened his mouth and praised the Lord of righteousness. His father
Lamech . . . said . . . ‘I have begotten a strange son . . . [who] resembles the children
of the angels of heaven, and his nature is different, and he is not like us, and his
eyes are as the rays of the sun, and his countenance is glorious.’ ” Within the
biblical canon, Noah is often alluded to as an outstanding example of righteous-
ness. See, e.g., Ezek. 14:14.
3. Ibid., 169.
4. “As Ham was made to suffer requital for his irreverence, so Shem and Japheth
          -  

received a reward for the filial, deferential way in which they . . . covered the na-
kedness of their father. Though Shem and Japheth both showed themselves to be
dutiful and deferential, yet it was Shem who deserved the larger meed of praise.
He was the first to set about covering his father.” See Ginzberg, Legends of the
Bible (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1956), 81. One rabbinic
text suggests Shem and Japheth covered their father with their prayer cloaks. See
Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood, 153.
5. Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (New York:
Greenwich House, 1983), 121.
6. Ginzberg, Legends of the Bible, 80; Graves and Patai, Hebrew Myths, 121
7. Ginzberg, Legends of the Bible, 79. The reference here is to the Babylonian Talmud,
Tractate Sanhedrin. The charge that Ham could not remain continent on the ark
appears in Islamic sources as well.
8. See Jacob Neusner, ed., Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of
Genesis, A New American Translation, vol. 2 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 33.
9. Werner Sollors finds this tradition in Sachsenspiegel (ca. 1200). See Neither Black
nor White yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1997).
10. Neusner, Genesis Rabbah, 33.
11. Ginzberg, Legends of the Bible, 80. Not surprisingly, passages such as these have
led scholars to view rabbinic reflections on Genesis 9 as the ultimate source for
identification of Ham’s descendants with black Africa. But although such readings
represent a clear precedent for modern racializing interpretations of the passage,
care is required in interpreting them. See especially David H. Aaron, “Early Rab-
binic Exegesis on Noah’s Son Ham and the So-Called ‘Hamitic’ Myth,’ ” Journal
of the American Academy of Religion 63, no. (1995): 721–59, for a discussion of this
and other rabbinic passages dealing with Ham and their usefulness for understand-
ing European views of Africans.
12. Stephen Gero, “The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah,” Harvard Theological
Review 73 (1980): 322.
13. Cited in James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1997), 115. As Kugel notes, the image of Noah the preacher was adopted by a variety
of Jewish and Christian authors.
14. Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood, 31.
15. Ibid., 40.
16. Ibid., 56, 57, 72, 73. Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 116.
17. In Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996), 91.
18. Ibid., 94–95. Berossus was rediscovered when an anthology of his “missing vol-
umes” was published in 1498 by Annius of Viterbo.
19. Cited in Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 87.
20. “The Divine Institutes” ch. xiv, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7 (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), 63. Clement wrote that Noah, “being found faithful,
preached regeneration to the world through his ministry”; thus he was preserved
so that he “might anew repair the world.” See “Recognitions of Clement,” Book
I, ch. xxx, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, 137; and “The First Epistle of
Clement,” ch. viii in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol, 1, 7. See also Irenaeus, “Against
Heresies,” in Cyril Richardson, ed. and trans. Early Christian Fathers, vol. 1 (Phil-
232         -  

adelphia: Westminster, 1953), 368. As Jack Lewis points out, Marcion’s vilification
of Noah and denial of his salvation are unique in the classical Christian tradition
(A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood, 110).
21. Justin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho,” ch. cxxxvii, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers,
vol. 1, 268.
22. See Origen, “Genesis Homily II,” in Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. Ronald
E. Heine (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 72–88. Origen’s
second homily on Genesis is an extended exposition on the story of Noah’s ark
and its spiritual significance. Origen perceived Noah as a type of Christ and the
biblical description of the ark as an extended Christian allegory.
23. In the Reformation era, this symbolic view of the ark reappeared in “The Second
Helvetic Confession” (1566): “For as there was no salvation outside Noah’s ark
when the world perished in the flood; so we believe that there is no certain sal-
vation outside Christ, who offers himself to be enjoyed by the elect in the
Church. . . .” See The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), Part I: The
Book of Confessions (Louisville, Ky.: Office of the General Assembly, 1996), 90.
24. Dom Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah: Renaissance Rationalism in Art, Science
and Letters (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963), 155–56.
25. See, e.g., Cyprian of Carthage, On Christian Doctrine. Jerome noted that as Noah
planted a vineyard, Christ planted the church and suffered, and identified Ham’s
attitude toward his father with the Jews’ attitude toward the cross. According to
Augustine, that Noah’s nakedness occurred in his house typified the treatment
Jesus received from his own nation. That the two sons went backward symbolized
the turning back on the sins of the Jews, which one does when reverencing the
passion. See Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood, 177–78.
These fathers contributed to a long Christian tradition—extending at least through
the fifteenth century—that linked Ham and unbelieving Jews.
26. Augustine, “City of God,” XVI: 2, in Philip Schaff, ed., A Select Library of the
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church Series, 8 vols. (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1955). On-line version at www.ccel.org.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid. Vincent of Lerins offered a similar interpretation of Ham as the father of
mockers and heretics in the church. See Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of
Noah and the Flood, 179.
29. “City of God,” XVI: 2, in Schaff, Select Library. On-line version at www.ccel.org.
The passage continues: “And therefore was Ham cursed in his son, he being, as it
were, his fruit. So, too, this son of his, Canaan, is fitly interpreted ‘their move-
ment,’ which is nothing else than their work. But Shem and Japheth, that is to
say, the circumcision and uncircumcision, or, as the apostle otherwise calls them,
the Jews and Greeks, but called and justified, having somehow discovered the
nakedness of their father (which signifies the Saviour’s passion), took a garment
and laid it upon their backs, and entered backwards and covered their father’s
nakedness, without their seeing what their reverence hid. For we both honor the
passion of Christ as accomplished for us, and we hate the crime of the Jews who
crucified Him. The garment signifies the sacrament, their backs the memory of
things past: for the church celebrates the passion of Christ as already accomplished,
and no longer to be looked forward to, now that Japheth already dwells in the
habitations of Shem, and their wicked brother between them. But the wicked
         - 

brother is, in the person of his son (i.e., his work), the boy, or slave, of his good
brothers, when good men make a skillful use of bad men, either for the exercise
of their patience or for their advancement in wisdom.”
30. Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood, 178. In the Carolingian
era, Rabanus Marus interpreted Ham and his posterity as representing those who
do not believe in Christ. See Jean Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art,
vol. 2 part 1, trans. William Granger Ryan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1976–79) 221 n. 175.
31. Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 84–85.
32. This view is expressed in Genesis Rabbah. In answer to the question, “should Ham
be the one who sinned yet Canaan be cursed?” R Judah said, “It is because it is
said, ‘And God blessed Noah and his sons’ (Gen. 9:1). Now there cannot be a
cursing where there has been a blessing. Accordingly, he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan’ ”
(Neusner, Genesis Rabbah, 33).
33. See Justin Martyr, “Dialogue with Trypho,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, 269;
and Andrew Willet, Hexapla in Genesin (London: Tho. Creede, 1608), 104.
34. Ambrose concurs, writing that “the one who mocked him remained exposed to
the shame of everlasting disgrace” (Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah
and the Flood, 118). Charles Copher sees in Irenaeus the beginning of the influence
of the Septuagint and rabbinic commentary on Gentile readings of the curse. See
his “Three Thousand Years of Biblical Interpretation with Reference to Black Peo-
ples,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 13 (Spring 1986): 233.
35. Hannaford, Race, 95.
36. “Divine Institutes,” ch. XIV, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, 63.
37. Origen, “Genesis Homily XVI,” in Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, 215.
38. “Recognitions of Clement,” Book IV, ch. xxvii, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol, 8, 140.
Pierre Bayle ascribes to John Cassian (ca. 360–435) the view that Ham, not daring
to bring his magic books with him in the ark, carved their main dogmas on very
hard bodies that could resist the waters of the Flood.
39. “Recognitions of Clement,” Book I, chs. xxx–xxxi, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 8,
85–86.
40. Allen, Legend of Noah, 77.
41. According to some patristic readings, the curse on Ham’s descendants was removed
in the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch to Christianity (Acts 8:26–40). See
Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art, vol. 2, part I, 21.
42. Andrew Horn’s Mirror of Justices (late thirteenth century) recorded that “serfage,
according to some, comes from the curse which Noah pronounced against Canaan,
the son of his son Ham, and against his issue.” In David Brion Davis, The Problem
of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), 97.
43. Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 83.
44. Ibid., 85.
45. In Albert B. Friedman, “ ‘When Adam Delved . . . ’: Contexts of an Historic Prov-
erb,” in Larry D. Benson, ed., The Larned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and
Medieval Literature, Harvard English Studies 5 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1974), 227–229. The matter of how an African Ham could be the progenitor
of European servants was addressed by The Boke of St. Albans (1486), which de-
clared that after cursing Ham, Noah assigned him the northern part of the world,
Japheth Asia, and Shem Africa (229).
234           - 

46. Ibid., 228.

47. Allen, Legend of Noah, 139.
48. Ibid., 73.
49. See Francis Lee Utley, “Noah’s Ham and Jansen Enikel,” Germanic Review (1941):
241–49.
50. Cited in ibid., 241. An expanded, more fanciful version of the legend occurs in
Jansen Enikel’s Weltcrhonik (ca. 1276). The theme of Ham’s inability to remain
celibate on the ark was part of medieval Jewish midrashic collections and seems
to have come into Christian tradition fairly early. According to Louis Ginzberg,
the story was used by Philo Judaeus, Origen, the Ethiopic Book of Adam, and
Ephraem Syrus, among others. (See ibid., 243.)
51. Ibid., 248. Utley continues: “Magicians themselves encouraged the belief in order
to give their art the sanction of antiquity. Ham’s role as preserver of the tradition
appears in the widely circulated Sefer-ha-Yashar (probably written by a Spanish
Jew in the Twelfth Century) and in Clement of Alexandria, who attributes to Ham
a Book of Prophecies on the authority of the Gnostic Isidore. . . . Ham’s magic, like
the command to continence on the ark, goes back to Jewish tradition. . . .”
52. Cited in Benjamin Braude, “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic
and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” William
and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): 117.
53. “Lectures on Genesis, Chapter IX,” in Luther’s Works, 55 vols., ed. Jaroslav Pelikan
(St. Louis: Concordia, 1955), 2:165. Despite his high regard for the patriarch, Luther
does not defend Noah’s lapse into drunkenness as the result of inexperience with
wine. In fact, Luther thinks “Noah was not unfamiliar with the nature of this juice
and, together with his family, often made use of wine before this. . . .” Noah’s
inebriated state Luther “simply cannot excuse.” However, Luther finds it odd that,
given Noah’s “outstanding achievements over the course of so many years,” Moses
records only “this . . . silly and altogether unprofitable little story” of Noah’s
drunkenness. At this point in his commentary, Luther sounds a theme that would
become common parlance among interpreters influenced by the Reformation:
“But the intention of the Holy Spirit [in prompting Moses to record this story]
is familiar from our teaching. He wanted the godly, who know their weakness and
for this reason are disheartened, to take comfort in the offense that comes from
the account of the lapses among the holiest and most perfect patriarchs” (166).
54. Luther’s emphasis on Ham’s laughter extends to his descendants, who “laugh at
the punishment [announced in the curse] and make a joke of the threats that they
hear from their parent Noah” (ibid., 220).
55. Ibid., 172, 186.
56. Ibid., 175. See also 180, 212.
57. Ibid., 185. Interestingly, Luther interprets Ham’s name this way: “I believe that this
name was given to him by his father because of the great hope he had formed
about his youngest son, as though in comparison with him the other two were
cold.”
58. Ibid., 176. For a discussion of Luther’s role in perpetuating racist readings of Gen-
esis 9, see L. Richard Bradley, “The Curse of Canaan and the American Negro,”
Concordia Theological Monthly 42 (Fall 1971): 100–110.
59. John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, 2 vols., trans.
John King (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1948), 1:302.
        -  

60. Ibid., 304.

61. Ibid., 301.
62. Ibid., 304.
63. Ibid., 301.
64. Andrew Willet, Hexapla in Genesin (London: Tho, Creede, 1608), 105–06. Raphael
Holinshed (d. ca. 1580), drawing on an anthology of the “missing volumes” of
Berossus published at the end of the fifteenth century, claimed Britain had been
settled by the giant Albion, a descendant of Ham. Ham himself Holinshed de-
scribed as a sorcerer and giant descended from Cain. The Hamites taught witch-
craft, sorcery, and buggery and were wiped out by the Trojan leader Brutus. See
Hannaford, Race, 163–64.
65. Abraham Rosse, An Exposition on the Fourteene First Chapters of Genesis, by Way
of Question and Answere, Collected Out of Ancient and Recent Writers: Both Briefely
and Subtilly Propounded and Expounded (London: B. A. and T. F., 1626), 54.
66. Ibid., 58. Meanwhile, Rosse casts Noah’s sons as types of the pious and infidel: As
Shem and Japheth covered Noah’s nakedness, so Joseph and Nicodemus covered
Christ’s body; as Ham was cursed for scorning his father, the Jews are accursed
for killing their savior. Also in keeping with tradition is Rosse’s rendering of Noah
as a picture of industry, chastity, and temperance; he did “not sinne in drinking
. . . [since] he was exceeding olde and weake at this time, therefore was quickly
ouercome.”
67. Ibid., 61.
68. See Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art, 217. The map is part of
Schledel’s Nuremberg Chronicle (1493).
69. Cited in Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 93.
70. Benjamin Braude argues that there are more white Cushites in medieval art than
black. See his forthcoming Sex, Slavery, and Racism: The Secret History of Noah
and His Sons.
71. See Schledel’s Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) in Devisse, The Image of the Black in
Western Art, 220.
72. Allen, Legend of Noah, 77–78.
73. In Braude, “The Sons of Noah,” 132.
74. Allen, Legend of Noah, 78. See also Gene Rice, “The Curse That Never Was (Genesis
9:18–27),” Journal of Religious Thought 29, no. 1 (1972): 23 n. 98.
75. Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–
1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 36.
76. In Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 97–98.
77. Recall Luther’s assertion that Ham went to Babylon and established himself as
“lord of all Asia.” In the seventeenth century, Andrew Willet cited Berrosus’s claim
that Ham “was cast out from his father and dwelt in Egypt, where he was a God
under the name of Saturne, and they built him a citie called Chemmin, that is,
the citie of Cham, the inhabitants whereof were called Chemenita” (Willet, Hexapla
in Genesin, 106).
78. Davis, The Problem of Slavery, 452.
79. In the seventeenth-century Spanish comedy El arca de Noe, Ham is a ne’er-do-
well who is infatuated with his brother’s bride-to-be. He betrays wedding guests
into playing a wicked game of fortune. A demon tempts Nacor and Ham to destroy
Noah’s ark with fire and convinces Ham that the flood is not universal. Ham then
236            - 

accuses Noah of inventing the story for his own glory. The same demon reveals
the drunken and naked Noah to Ham, who summons his brothers and says,
“Here’s your crazy father.” The play concludes with the cursing of Ham and the
division of the world. Noah was the subject of three plays written in the last half
of the seventeenth century, including El arca de Noe. Joost Vondel’s Noah, of on-
dergang der eerste weerelt (1667) presents Ham as a salacious buffoon (Allen, Legend
of Noah, 149, 151–52).
80. La Seconde Sepmaine, in The Works of Guillaume De Salluste Sieur Du Bartas, vol.
3 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940). Translation by James
Vest.
81. Ibid., “Deuxieme Jour,” lines 85–95, passim.
82. Ibid., “L’Arche,” lines 521–48.
83. Ibid., “L’Arche,” lines 549–60.
84. John Milton, Paradise Lost (New York: Norton, 1975), 266.
85. Ibid. The context indicates that the term race should be taken to refer to humanity
as a whole rather than to the descendants of Ham in particular.
86. Dictionaire Historique et Critique par Mr. Pierre Bayle; avec la vie de l’auteur, par
Mr. Des Maizeaux (Amsterdam: Par la Compagnie des Libraires, 1734). English
translation by Lawrence de Bartolet.
87. Ibid., 403–4.
88. Ibid., 404.
89. See Augustin Calmet, Calmet’s Dictionary of the Bible As Published by the Late Mr.
Charles Taylor, with the Fragments Incorporated. The Whole Condensed and Ar-
ranged in Alphabetical Order, Seventh Edition, Revised, with Large Additions, by
Edward Robinson (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1835), 476. See also Thomas V.
Peterson, Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic World of Whites in the Ante-
bellum South (Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library Association, 1978),
43–44. Benjamin Braude opines that “the article on Ham in Calmet’s Dictionary
was the single most important statement on the curse ever published, because of
the authoritative character and longevity of the book” (“How Did Ham Become a
Black Slave?: Reexamining the Noahides in the Abrahamic Tradition,” presentation
at the annual meeting of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, San Francisco,
November 1997, 4). Braude’s article will be part of the forthcoming book Sex,
Slavery, and Racism: The Secret History of Noah and His Sons. Other eighteenth-
century encyclopedias, though less influential than Calmet’s, also cataloged tra-
ditional tales concerning Ham and his transgression. Among them was Johann
Heinrich Zelder’s Universallexikon (1732–54).
90. This connection fails to appear in the revised American edition of Calmet’s
Dictionary of the Holy Bible (1832), beyond the initial claim that Ham’s name means
“black.” As Benjamin Braude has shown, the American and English abridgments
of Calmet, “responding to the rising tide of abolitionism, removed the slavery-
justifying passages, while retaining those which linked Ham to Africans and other
people of color” (Braude, “How Did Ham Become a Black Slave?” 8). Nor does
the original 1722 edition of the Dictionary associate Ham with either blackness or
Africa. Yet the 1728 supplementary edition included a reference to “the author of
the Tharik-Thabari, [who] teaches that Noah directed his curse to Ham and Ca-
naan. The effect of this curse was not only that their posterity was enslaved to
their brothers, and thus born into slavery, but also that with one stroke the color
        - 

of their skin became black” (in Braude, “How Did Ham Become a Black Slave?”
7). Braude concludes that “the turning point in Western Christendom [for con-
necting the curse of Ham with the enslavement of Black Africans] occurred in the
eighteenth century with a revised edition” of Calmet’s dictionary, in which Calmet
cited a Muslim source (“How Did Ham Become a Black Slave?” 2).
91. Thomas Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies, Which Have Remarkably Been
Fulfilled, and at This Time Are Fulfilling in the World, vol. 1 (New York: William
Durell, 1794), 13.
92. According to Peterson, Newton was dependent on Calmet for this insight. Newton
(Dissertations, 18–19) goes on to observe that Vatablus and other interpreters read
“Canaan” to mean “the father of Canaan,” and to argue that “if we regard the
metre, this line ‘Cursed be Canaan,’ is much shorter than the rest, as if something
was deficient.” Based on this evidence, may we not suppose, Newton asks, “that
the copyist by mistake wrote only Canaan instead of Ham the father of Canaan,
and that the whole passage was originally thus?: ‘And Ham the father of Canaan
saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without—And Noah
awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And
he said, Cursed be Ham the father of Canaan; and servant of servants shall he be
unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Ham the
father of Canaan shall be servant to them. God shall enlarge Japheth; and he shall
dwell in the tents of Shem; and Ham the father of Canaan shall be servant to
them.’ ”
93. Thomas Peterson notes that Newton’s Dissertations was one of the few sources
cited by Southern advocates of the curse (Ham and Japheth, 43). Joseph C. Ad-
dington is an American proslavery writer who cited the “Arabic version” of the
biblical text, apparently under Newton’s influence. See Reds, Whites and Blacks, or
the Colors, Dispersion, Language, Sphere and Unity of the Human Race, as Seen in
the Lights of Scripture, Science and Observation (Raleigh, N.C.: Strother & Marcom,
1862), 29, where the author places the “English” and “Arabic” versions of Genesis
9 in parallel columns.
94. Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, Wherein Each Chapter, Is
Summed Up in Its Contents: The Sacred Text Inserted at Large in Distinct Paragraphs;
Each Paragraph Reduced to its Proper Heads: The Sense Given, and Largely Illustrated
with Practical Remarks and Observations, Vol. 1, Genesis to Deuteronomy (New York:
R. Carter and Brothers, 1880), 73.
95. Ibid.
96. Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments, The Text
Carefully Printed from the Most Correct Copies of the Present Authorized Translation,
Including the Marginal Readings and Parallel Texts, With a Commentary and Critical
Notes; The Old Testament, Vol. 1, Genesis to Deuteronomy (1810; reprint, New York:
Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1977), 83.
97. According to Clarke, “it is very probable that this was the first time the wine was
cultivated; and it is as probable that the strength or intoxicating power of the
expressed juice was never before known. Noah, therefore, might have drunk it at
this time without the least blame, as he knew not till this trial the effects it would
produce.” Clarke relates a similar case he himself had witnessed: A fatigued traveler
stopped for refreshment at a Somersetshire farmer’s house and innocently drank
half a pint of cider to quench his thirst, only to become intoxicated. “This I
238          -  

presume to have been precisely the case with Noah,” he concludes. Thus, no one
can “can attach any blame to the character of Noah on this ground” unless he is
known to have repeated the act. Clarke is adamant on this point and has no
patience with “expositors [who] seem to be glad to fix on a fact like this, which
by their distortion becomes a crime; and then, in a strain of sympathetic tenderness,
affect to deplore ‘the failings and imperfections of the best of men;’ when, from
the interpretation that should be given of the place, neither failing nor imperfection
can possibly appear” (ibid., 82).
98. Ibid., 82–83.

Chapter 3

1. According to Benjamin Braude, this is “the first example in the iconography of

Ham in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim art in which Noah’s son is blackened or
racialized in any way” (letter to the author, 16 January 2001). See Braude’s forth-
coming Sex, Slavery, and Racism: The Secret History of Noah and His Sons.
2. For biographical information on Priest, see Winthrop Hillyer Duncan, “Josiah
Priest, Historian of the American Frontier: A Study and Bibliography,” Proceedings
of the American Antiquarian Society 44 (1934): 45–102. I am indebted to Benjamin
Braude for bringing this article to my attention.
3. Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part II: From Noah to
Abraham, Genesis 5:19 to 11:32 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1949).
4. Ibid., 200. Cassuto notes that “such quotations introduced from epic poetry into
registers of important personages are likewise found in Mesopotamian writings.”
Like Gilgamesh and Enkidu, it is related that Nimrod demonstrated his prowess
by fighting “fearsome animals and terrifying monsters.” Because the Bible reports
that Nimrod was a mighty hunter before Yahweh, we can conclude that the epic
poem from which these verses are cited was a purely Israelite work (202). It is
also possible that Nimrod’s name suggests a connection with Ninurri in The Epic
of Gilgamesh, who is called a “hunter.”
5. All references here are to Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Vol. 1, Bible
Times and Characters from the Creation to Jacob, trans. Henrietta Szold. (Phila-
delphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968), 174–80.
6. Ibid., 174.
7. Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (New York:
Greenwich House, 1983), 125.
8. Ibid.
9. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 177.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Graves and Patai, Hebrew Myths, 126.
13. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 179.
14. Ibid., 180. According to the same tradition, “the punishment inflicted upon the
sinful generation of the tower is comparatively lenient . . . [for they were] preserved
in spite of their blasphemies and all their other acts offensive to God.”
15. Graves and Patai, Hebrew Myths, 127.
16. Ibid., 134.
17. Ibid., 134–37.
          - 

18. Ibid., 140, 141.

19. Ibid., 194, 127.
20. See Josephus, Complete Works of Josephus, in Ten Volumes, a New and Revised
Edition Based on Havercamp’s Translation, Vol. 1, Antiquities of the Jews, Books I–
III (Cleveland: World, 1940), Book I, ch. iv, 19ff.
21. Ibid., 20.
22. Ibid., 21.
23. Graves and Patai note that in Jewish legend, the Nimrod tradition became attached
to the myth of Samael’s rebellion against El (Hebrew Myths, 128).
24. “Augustine, City of God, XVI: 3 in Philip Schaff, ed. A Select Library of the Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 8 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 1955). Augustine acknowledges that “some interpreters have misunder-
stood this phrase, being deceived by an ambiguity in the Greek, and consequently
translating it as ‘before the Lord,’ instead of ‘against the Lord.’ . . . [But] it is in
the latter sense that we must take it in the description of Nimrod; that giant was
‘a hunter against the Lord.’ ”
25. See Jean Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art, Vol. 2, part 1, trans.
William Granger Ryan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976–79) 220 n. 158.
Devisse notes that some Muslim authors make Nimrod an ancestor of Goliath,
who was said to have taken refuge in North Africa after he was defeated.
26. Cited in James L. Kugel, The Bible as It Was (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1997), 128.
27. Ibid., 578. In light of Numbers 13:32–33, where Nephilim appears to denote men
of great stature, early Bible readers interpreted the term in Genesis 6:4 as “giants,”
a reading that is reflected in the Septuagint.
28. Although there is no direct evidence that the Christian image of Nimrod was
influenced by 1 Enoch, it is interesting that the book’s portrayal of the prediluvian
giants “as a race of tyrannical and oppressive creatures who terrorize humanity,
deplete the earth’s resources, and spread violence and death everywhere” is a fair
description of the way Nimrod and his associates came to be viewed among Eu-
ropean Bible readers. As Kugel (ibid., 709, 110–11) notes, ancient interpreters rou-
tinely associated these giants with arrogance and rebellion.
29. “But those things that are here [on earth] are against those things which are there
[in heaven]. For this reason it is not ineptly said [that Nimrod was] ‘a giant before
God’ which clearly [means] in opposition to the Deity” (Philo, Questions and An-
swers in Genesis, cited in ibid., 126).
30. “City of God,” in Schaff, Select Library, XVI: 3.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Cited in Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 127.
35. “Recognitions of Clement,” Book I, chs. xxx–xxxi, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol.
8 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), 85–86. Clement remarks that in the
ancient world Ham was also known as Zoroaster. In another place, however, he
says it is Ham’s descendant Nebrod (Nimrod) who was called Zoroaster (172, 186).
36. Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art, Vol. 2, part 1, 224 n. 231.
37. The quotations are from Isidore of Seville (ca. 560–636) and Ambrose. See ibid.,
221 n. 175, 224 n. 231.
38. Ibid., 18.
240         -  

39. Agapius al-Manbiji, cited in ibid., part 2, 268 n. 148.

40. See Stephen Gero, “The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah,” Harvard Theological
Review 73 (1980); 321–30.
41. Ibid., 324.
42. Ibid., 326. The Book of the Cave of Treasures also claims that Nimrod sent emissaries
to Balaam “the priest of Mount Se’ir” upon learning that he was an expert in
reading the signs of the Zodiac.
43. According to Stephen Gero, one function of the Yonton story, which probably
had a Mesopotamian origin, was to transmit useful knowledge and skills to Nim-
rod, “a culture-hero of eastern Syria and Mesopotamia” (328). Gero also believes
that the origin of the rabbinic view that Ham castrated his father, Noah, may have
been official concern with a popular form of Judaism that held up Nimrod and
Yonton as heroes. This theory would help explain the vilification of Nimrod in
Jewish sources: While Noah’s fourth son could be eliminated with a stroke of
Ham’s knife, Nimrod had to be “denigrated as a senseless tyrant and an idolater”
(329).
44. Charles Homer Haskins, “Nimrod the Astronomer,” in Studies in the History of
Mediaeval Science (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1924), 336–45.
45. Ibid., 336. The text is Philip de Thaon’s Li Cumpoz (1119), “the earliest monument
of Anglo-Norman literature.” Astronomical tables under Nimrod’s name are
known to have been current in Arabic, and Nimrod received mention in the
twelfth century by Hugh of St. Victor and William of Conches and in the
thirteenth-century Speculum astronomie (337).
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., 338. The treatise is still extant in two manuscripts, MS. Lat. VIII 22 of St.
Mark’s at Venice and MS. Pal. Lat. 1417 of the Vatican.
48. Ibid.
49. According to Haskins (ibid., 343), “the dialogue [between Nimrod and Jonathan]
bears clear traces of Syrian origin, for the disciple Ioathon or Ioanton can be none
other than the fourth son of Noah. . . . Unknown in Hebrew tradition, he is found
in works of Syrian origin and in these only, and is there brought into direct relation
to Nimrod. Thus in the Cave of Treasure, which in its Syrian form is probably of
the sixth century, Ionton is visited by Nimrod in the land of Nod and teaches him
that wisdom and learning of the stars which the Persians call the oracle and the
Romans astronomy.”
50. Cited in Benjamin Braude, “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic
and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” William
and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): 117.
51. Ibid., 131. Braude writes: “The section in Comestor’s Historia Scholastica on Genesis
10 that deals with what modern critics have mislabeled ‘The Table of Nations’ is
entitled in the manuscript and all editions I have consulted ‘De Dispersione fi-
liorum Noe et Nemrod’ (‘On the dispersion of the Sons of Noah and Nimrod’).
In the authoritative sixteenth-century commentary of Pererius, Nimrod and his
realm in Babylonia gain more attention than any other figure in the entire Noachic
genealogy. Nimrod’s role as the master builder of the Tower of Babel earned him
repeated attention from medieval and early modern artists.”
52. Ibid., 132. Braude writes that “in the mid-fourteenth century the genealogy of the
House of Luxembourg placed Ham and Nimrod at its origins, and the Habsburg
         -  

ruler Maximilian I (1459–1519), also drawn to these images, claimed similar de-
scent.” In another paper, Braude notes the irony that the representative of a pre-
sumably cursed race built such a powerful kingdom: “In Mandeville’s account Ham
is identified with mastery and tyranny not slavery and subjection. . . . Luther’s Ser-
mons on Genesis similarly set Ham in Asia and identify him with wealth and power.
Some Curse!” (“How Did Ham Become a Black Slave? Reexamining the Noahides
in the Abrahamic Tradition,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Middle
Eastern Studies Association, San Francisco, November 1997, 4). In the sixteenth
century, Sir Walter Raleigh commented on the irony that a presumably cursed
race held such sway over the world in earlier times: “Indeed the great masters of
nations, so far as we can know, were in that age of the issues of Ham; the blessing
of God given by Noah to Shem and Japhet taking less effect, until divers years
were consumed. . . .” See The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt., Now First Collected:
To Which are Prefixed The Lives of the Author, by Oldys and Birch, In Eight Volumes,
Vol. 2, The History of the World (Oxford: University Press, 1829), book I, chapter
viii, section ii, 253.
53. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, 1: Inferno, trans. John D. Sinclair (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1961), XXXI: 46–66.
54. Ibid., 67–75.
55. These references include Purgatory XII: 34–36: “Mine eyes beheld Nimrod, beneath
his dire/ High handiwork, look stunned upon the men/ That shared in Shinar his
proud heart’s desire” (The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, the Florentine, trans. Dorothy
L. Sayers, 3 vols. [New York: Basic Books, 1962]) and Paradiso XXVI: 124–127: “The
tongue I spoke was all extinct before Nimrod’s race gave their mind to the un-
accomplishable task; for no product whatever of reason—since human choice is
renewed with the course of heaven—can last forever” (trans. Sinclair, 3:379).
56. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, in Luther’s Works, 55 vols., ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St.
Louis: Concordia, 1955), ch. IX, 175.
57. Ibid., 210.
58. Ibid., 212.
59. Ibid., 219. In his view of Ham’s activities following this episode with Noah, Luther
seems to have been influenced by several of the church fathers. For instance, he
alludes to the patristic notion that Ham “later on filled the world with idolatry,”
claims that after being cursed Ham went to Babylon where he “engage[d] in build-
ing a city and a tower . . . establish[d] himself as lord of all Asia,” and developed
“a new government and a new religion” and even adopts Augustine’s suggestion
that Ham’s name means “hot.”
60. John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, 2 vols., trans.
John King (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1948), 1:316–320.
61. La Seconde Semaine, “Babylon,” lines 39–92. In The Works of Guillaume Salluste
Sieur Du Bartas, Vol. 3 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940).
Translation by James Vest.
62. Ibid. Summary of lines 93–104 by James Vest; quotation from line 105.
63. Raleigh, History of the World, book I, chapter viii, section ii, 251.
64. Ibid., 252.
65. Ibid., 353.
66. Ibid., 355.
67. According to Merritt Y. Hughes, “Milton was acquainted with the discourse on
242           - 

tyranny with which Du Bartas introduces his account of Nimrod in Babalon, and
in Du Bartas’ applications to French politics he had an example for his suggestion
in Eikonoklastes, xi, that the bishops might have told King Charles ‘that Nimrod,
the first that hunted after faction, is reputed by ancient tradition the first that
founded monarchy.’ ” See Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York:
Odyssey Press, 1962), 390 n. 24.
68. Ibid., XII: 24–62. In the notes to this section of Book XII, Hughes guides us toward
some of the sources for Milton’s picture of Nimrod: “From Josephus (Antiquities,
I, iv, 2) came the belief which prevailed in the seventeenth century that ‘the secret
design of Nimrod was to settle unto himself a place of dominion and . . . the be-
ginning of his kingdom was Babel’ (Sir Thomas Browne, Vulgar Errors, VII, vi).”
See Paradise Lost I: 694 for another reference to Babel: “And here let those/ Who
boast in mortal things, and wondr’ing tell/ Of Babel, and the works of Memphian
Kings,/ Learn how thir greatest Monuments of Fame,/ And Strength and Art are
easily outdone/ By spirits reprobate, and in an hour/ What in an age they with
incessant toil/ And hands innumerable scarce perform.”
69. Hughes observes that “Milton’s epigram is an echo of Du Bartas’ statement that
Nimrod ‘Leaves hunting Beasts, and hunteth Men’ (‘The Divine Weekes,’ 120).”
See ibid., 390 n. 30.
70. Milton’s connection of Nimrod with the building of the Tower of Babel “had
patristic authority as well as that of Josephus and the example of Dante’s vision
of Nimrod at the foot of his tower (Purgatorio, XII, 34; compare Inferno, XXXI,
77).” See ibid., 390 n. 38.
71. Milton scholarship has long sought to trace the sources for Paradise Lost. In the
case of Nimrod, the influence of several sixteenth-century authors has been con-
firmed, among them Sir Walter Raleigh and Robert Stephanus (d. 1559). The as-
sociation of Nimrod’s name with rebellion may have come to Milton from Ste-
phanus’s Thesaurus. It is important to note, however, what Milton did not adopt
from Stephanus, including the description of Nimrod as a giant ten cubits tall.
See Dewitt T. Starnes and Ernest William Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in
Renaissance Dictionaries: A Study of Renaissance Dictionaries in Their Relation to
the Classical Learning of Contemporary English Writers (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1955), 264–268.
72. In another textual note, Hughes writes that “from Josephus comes the idea that
the brick in the Tower of Babel was ‘cemented together with mortar, made of
bitumen’ (Antiquities, I, iv, 3).”
73. Irene Samuel, Dante and Milton: The Commedia and Paradise Lost (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1966), 118–19.
74. The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, Gervase Babington, Late Bishop of
Worcester. Containing Comfortable Notes Upon the First Bookes of Moses (London:
Miles Flesher, 1637), 35.
75. Abraham Rosse, An Exposition on the Fourteene First Chapters of Genesis, by Waye
of Question and Answere, Collected Out of Ancient and Recent Writers: Both Briefely
and Subtilly Propounded and Expounded (London: B.A. and T.F., 1626), 87–88.
76. Andrew Willet, Hexapla in Genesin (London: Tho. Creede, 1608), 117.
77. Ibid., 124.
78. Augustin Calmet, Calmet’s Dictionary of the Bible, As Published by the Late Mr.
Charles Taylor, with the Fragments Incorporated. The Whole Condensed and Ar-
        -  

ranged in Alphabetical Order, Seventh Edition, Revised, with Large Additions, by

Edward Robinson (Boston: Crocker and Brewsler, 1835), 705. As did most intellec-
tuals of his time, Calmet tried to place the biblical patriarchs in the context of
classical history and mythology: “The name Nebrodeus, or Nebrodus, given to
Bacchus, is perhaps derived from Nembrod, or Nimrod, though the Greeks derive
it from a goat-skin, with which they pretend Bacchus was clothed. The same
Bacchus may also be derived from Bar-chus, ‘son of Cush;’ because Nimrod was
indeed the son of Cush. The Greeks gave to Bacchus the name of hunter, just as
Moses gives it to Nimrod. The expeditions of Bacchus into the Indies are formed
on the wars of Nimrod in Babylonia and Assyria.”
79. Calmet also refers to an aspect of Nimrod’s biography that was ignored by most
Christian interpreters—his encounter with Abraham. In his article “Babylon,” Cal-
met quotes Ibn Haukal: “There are two heaps [at Babylon], one of which is in a
place called Koudi Ferik, the other Koudi Derebar: in this the ashes still remain;
and they say that it was the fire of Nimrod into which Abraham was cast; may
peace be on him!” (ibid., 126).
80. Henry’s words would indicate that he supports the antiquity and legitimacy of
monarchy, if not its divine origin.
81. Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, wherein each chapter, is summed
up in its contents: The sacred text Inserted at Large in Distinct Paragraphs; Each
Paragraph Reduced to its Proper Heads: The sense given, and largely illustrated with
practical remarks and observations, Vol. 1, Genesis to Deuteronomy (New York: R.
Carter and Brothers, 1880), 76–77.
82. Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments, The text
carefully printed from the Most Correct Copies of the Present Authorized Translation,
including the Marginal Readings and Parallel Texts, with a Commentary and Critical
Notes; The Old Testament, Vol. 1, Genesis to Deuteronomy (1810; reprint, New York:
Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1977) 86.
83. Ibid.
84. Alexander Hislop, The Two Babyulons, or Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship
of Nimrod and His Wife (1858; reprint, New York: Loizeaux Brothers, 1953). Ac-
cording to the Library of Congress on-line catalog, the book was republished twice
in the late 1990s: Brooklyn: A&B Publishers, 1999; Chicago: Research Associates
School Times Publications, 1996.
85. Ibid., 23. Hislop says that “it was by inuring his followers to the toils and dangers
of the chase, that [Nimrod] gradually formed them to the use of arms, and so
prepared them for aiding him in establishing his dominions.”
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid., 50.
88. Ibid., 50–51. Hislop goes on to cite commentators who contend that Nimrod was
the first to gather humankind into communities, the first mortal to reign, and the
first to offer idolatrous sacrifices.
89. Ibid., 52.
90. Ibid., 53, 55.
91. Ibid., 67.
92. Ibid., 55, 63.
93. Ibid., 34. Indebted to Hislop on this point are a number of European and Amer-
ican thinkers who in the twentieth century have spun bizarre racial theories as-
244        -  

sociated with Cain, Ham, and Nimrod. Ellen Bristowe’s Sargon the Magnificent
(London: Covenant, 1927)—an attempt to reconstruct Cain’s life after his arrival
in the “land of Nod”—is among the works influenced by The Two Babylons. As
Hislop identifies Nimrod with the Babylonian king Ninus, Bristowe conflates Cain
with “the great Babylonian monarch Sargon of Akkad.” Like Hislop’s Nimrod,
Bristowe’s Cain is a confederate of Satan who is responsible for the birth of idolatry
and establishes a Babylonian cult based upon cannibalism. See Michael Barkun,
Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, rev.
ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 165ff.
Although Hislop was not overtly concerned with racial distinctions, Bristowe
was, and she exercised considerable influence on leaders of the American Christian
Identity movement, whose preoccupation with race is notorious. Her focus on
Cain rather than the Hamite Nimrod has allowed Christian Identity thinkers to
apply her theories directly to “Jews,” who represent the chief racial threat in their
worldview. Africans and other nonwhite peoples are seen in the dominant Identity
paradigm as pawns in a Jewish racial plot to undermine white society. A significant
exception to this generalization is the use of Nimrod and his Babylonian cult in
the theology of the Missouri-based Identity group, Covenant, Sword and Arm of
the Lord. According to Barkun, the CSA has been influenced in their view of
Nimrod by Des Griffin, Fourth Reich of the Rich (South Pasadena, Calif: Emissary
Publications, 1978). See also C. Lewis Fowler, O House of Israel and Thou Judah
(New York: Maranatha Publishers, 1941). Fowler was an American proponent of
British Israelism who placed Noah’s sons in an imminent end-of-days scenario he
believed was unfolding in World War II: “Three new, distinct races began with
Ham, Shem, and Japheth. Read Genesis, the tenth chapter. Two of these boys
yielded at once to Satan, to Lucifer, the fallen angel of light. They were self-
centered, wise in their own conceits. They would not listen to God at all . . . Then
came Nimrod in the Ham line, the grandson of Ham, who listened to Satan and
was inspired by him in all he did. Satan had worked out and perfected a complete
system of social, economic, religious and governmental organization. Both Ham
and Japheth accepted the Satan system. Babylon—or Babel—was built. . . . Ham
loves gold and down to that ‘god’ he also bows. From the beginning Ham wor-
shipped gold. He built the golden image upon the plains of Shinar and required
all, both small and great, to come, fall down and worship it” (54, 60).
94. Hislop, The Two Babylons, 28. Relying on an intricate and unlikely series of lin-
guistic connections, Hislop associates Cush with “division” and “confounding.”
He concludes that Cush must have been “the DIVIDER of the speeches of men”
(26).
95. Ibid., 25. Later, Cush is referred to as “the great soothsayer or false prophet wor-
shipped at Babylon”(34).

Chapter 4

1. Ronald G. Walters, The Anti-Slavery Appeal: Abolitionism after 1830 (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 74.
2. Apparently, the connection between slavery and the Southern culture of honor
was being made by opponents of the peculiar institution as early as the 1840s.
         -  

Slavery apologist James Henry Hammond acknowledged that “it is true that the
point of honor is recognized throughout the slave region, and the disputes of
certain classes are frequently referred for adjustment to the ‘trial by combat.’ ”
But Hammond averred that whatever evils may arise from these practices “cannot
be attributed to slavery, since the same notion and custom prevails both in France
and England.” See Gov. Hammond’s Letters on Southern Slavery: Addressed to Tho-
mas Clarkson, the English Abolitionist (Charleston, S.C.: Walker & Burke, 1845),
Letter Two, 7.
3. Ralph L. Moellering, Christian Conscience and Negro Emancipation (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1965), 52: “The favorite argument used by those seeking a religious sanc-
tion for slavery was to refer to the curse which Noah pronounced on his grandson
Canaan. . . .”
4. See Andrew E. Murray, The Presbyterian and the Negro—A History (Philadelphia:
Presbyterian Historical Society, 1966), where the author summarizes the biblical
proslavery argument this way: “The chain of scriptural argument began with the
original divine decree in Genesis, which fixed the racial patterns of mankind by
ordaining that Canaan should be a servant to his brothers as punishment for his
sin against his father, Noah”(69). There are no textual warrants, of course, for
regarding Noah’s curse as “divine,” or for viewing Canaan (the grandson, not the
son, of Noah) as the perpetrator of any “sin.”
Another striking example of apparent ignorance of the biblical text appears
in Bertram Wyatt-Brown’s Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986), where the author on several occasions refers to the “ex-
pulsion” (25) or “banish[ment]” (34) of Ham. Wyatt-Brown seems to have con-
fused Noah’s curse on Ham or Canaan with the punishment of Cain related in
Genesis 4. Although “it is not unlikely that the force ‘banned’ is the basic deno-
tation of [the Hebrew term] ’arur in the pronouncemnt of Noah,” all standard
English translations render the Hebrew “cursed be Canaan.” See Herbert C.
Brichto, The Problem of “Curse” in the Hebrew Bible, Journal of Biblical Literature
Monograph Series 13 (Philadelphia: Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis,
1963), 86–87.
For a synopsis of the story that imaginatively fills textual gaps without ac-
knowledging doing so, see Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1977), where the author refers to “the curse of the
drunken Noah upon the descendants of his son, Ham (Africans) because of an
invasion of the patriarch’s privacy”(171).
5. “These divines were intelligent, learned, and well trained, not only in theology but
in history, political economy, political theory, and the natural sciences. . . . They
were neither demagogues nor ignoramuses nor bigots.” See Eugene D. Genovese
and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, “The Social Thought of Antebellum Theologians,” in
William B. Moore Jr. and Joseph F. Tripp, eds., Looking South: Chapters in the
Story of an American Region, Contributions in American History 136 (Westport,
Conn.: Greenwood, 1989), 31.
6. Benjamin Braude, “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geo-
graphical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods,” William and Mary
Quarterly 54, no. 1 (1997): 133.
7. Randall C. Bailey, “They’re Nothing but Incestuous Bastards: The Polemical Use
of Sex and Sexuality in Hebrew Canon Narratives,” in Fernando F. Segovia and
246        -  

Mary Ann Tolbert, eds., Reading from This Place, Vol. 1 Social Location and Biblical
Interpretation in the United States (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 134.
8. Ibid. Braude maintains that the sexual understanding of Genesis 9 that dominated
Christian and Jewish interpretation through the sixteenth century is “manifest
most strikingly in Michelangelo’s depiction of Ham and the drunkenness of Noah
in the ceiling frescoes of the Sistene Chapel (“How Did Ham Become a Black
Slave?” Reexamining the Noahides in the Abrahamic Tradition,” paper presented
at annual meeting of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, San Francisco, No-
vember 1997, 7).
9. Laurence Turner identifies the beginning of the Flood narrative as an interpretive
cue for Genesis 9: “Verses 6.1–4, whatever else they might convey, are concerned
with illicit sexual liaisons that occurred immediately before the flood and provide
(at least part of) the motivation for God’s sending the Flood. . . . In fact, whether
[9:20–27] refers to homosexual rape, castration, incest or Ham’s simple viewing
of Noah exposed in his tent . . . the story carries sexual connotations to a greater
or lesser degree. The semantic range of érwâ (nakedness) contains significant sex-
ual connotations, so that ‘to see nakedness’ is used as a euphemism for sexual
offenses (e.g. Lev. 20.17). Just as the ‘sons of God’ take the initiative, but humanity
is punished (6.3), so Ham committed the offense but his offspring (Canaan) is
cursed (9.25–27).” See Laurence A. Turner, Genesis, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 2000), 56.
10. See Curtis Brown Watson, Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960).
11. Both authors are cited in Winthrop Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes
toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University North Carolina Press, 1968),
54.
12. Thomas V. Peterson, Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic World of Whites in
the Antebellum South (Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library Association,
1978), 48.
13. In reviewing more than fifty primary documents from the antebellum period—
all of which cite Noah’s curse as a central if not exclusive justification for slavery—
I have discovered no explicit references to sexual misconduct on the part of Ham
(or Canaan). According to Thomas Peterson, many proslavery writers hinted that
the sin depicted in Genesis 9 was somehow sexual in nature. He cites as examples
William Stringfellow’s use of the phrase “beastly wickedness,” Nathan Lord’s ref-
erence to an “unnatural crime” that represented Ham’s “obscene” nature, and
James Sloan’s “indecency.” But Peterson provides no rationale for a sexual inter-
pretation of such language. Nevertheless, when he is analyzing the curse, Peterson
himself refers to Ham’s act as “lewd and sensual” (Ham and Japheth, 79) or a
“heinous sexual crime” (118), speaks of “slavery as the result of Ham’s sexual crime”
(119), and affirms that “Ham commits an indecent, sexual act and is condemned”
(117, 118).
14. John Bell Robinson, Pictures of Slavery and Anti-Slavery. Advantages of Negro Slav-
ery and the Benefits of Negro Freedom. Morally, Socially and Politically Considered
(Philadelphia, 1863), 20.
15. In Werner Sollors, Neither Black nor White yet Both: Thematic Explorations of
Interracial Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 98–99.
16. Priest asks his readers to imagine a scene in which Noah explains to Ham just
why his malediction is justified: “Oh Ham, my son, it is not for this one deed
         -  

alone which you have just committed that I have, by God’s command, thus con-
demned you and your race, but the Lord has shown me that all your descendants
will, more or less, be like you their father, on which account, it is determined by
the Creator that you and your people are to occupy the lowest condition of all
the families among mankind, and even be enslaved as brute beasts, going down
in the scale of human society, beyond and below the ordinary exigencies of mortal
existence, arising out of war, revolutions, and conflicts, for you will, and must be,
both in times of peace and war, a despised, a degraded, and an oppressed race.”
See Josiah Priest, Slavery as it Relates to the Negro or African Race (1843; reprint,
New York: Arno, 1977), 75–80 passim.
17. According to Winthrop Hillyer Duncan, Priest’s Slavery as It Relates to the Negro
or African Race was printed three times in Albany, New York, between 1843 and
1845 and was republished in Kentucky in the 1850s as Bible Defence of Slavery.
Duncan describes six editions of the text published between 1852 and 1864 in either
Glasgow or Louisville, Kentucky, the first two of which identified the author as
“Rev. Josiah Priest, A.M.” See Duncan, “Josiah Priest, Historian of the American
Frontier: A Study and Bibliography,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian So-
ciety 44 (1934), 98ff. It is possible that this fallacious appellation stemmed from
simple confusion, because the author had a son of the same name who became a
noted Presbyterian divine. It is more likely, however, that the title “Rev.” was
conferred to bolster Priest’s authority among Southern readers. At least one South-
ern proslavery intellectual cited “the Rev. J. Priest.” See Eugene D. Genovese,
“Slavery Ordained of God,” The Southern Slaveholders’ View of Biblical History and
Modern Politics, twentieth-fourth annual Fortenbaugh Memorial Lecture (Gettys-
burg, Pa.: Gettysburg College, 1985), 13.
18. See Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 76–77.
19. James Smylie, Review of a Letter from the Presbytery of Chillicothe, to the Presbytery
of Mississippi, on the Subject of Slavery (Woodville, Miss.: Wm. A. Norris, 1836),
16. It is interesting that, despite withholding any hint as to the nature of the
transgression for which Hamites have been cursed, Smylie emphasizes in his dis-
cussion of Paul’s teaching that slaves owe their masters honor, as well as obedience,
hard work, and loyalty. See Randy J. Sparks, “Mississippi’s Apostle of Slavery:
James Smylie and the Biblical Defense of Slavery,” Journal of Mississippi History 51
(May 1989): 103.
20. Cited in Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 45. Baptist J. B. Thrasher also belongs in this
category. Although he opines that “it was, perhaps, Canaan who first saw the
nakedness of his grand father, Noah, and told his father of it,” Thrasher is inter-
ested in the curse and its aftermath, not in the events that precipitated it. See his
Slavery A Divine Institution, by J. B. Thrasher of Port Gibson, A Speech, Made before
the Breckinridge and Lane Club, November 5th, 1860 (Port Gibson, Miss.: Southern
Reveille Book and Job Office, 1861), 7ff.
21. George D. Armstrong, The Christian Doctrine of Slavery (1857; reprint, New York:
Negro Universities Press, 1969), 111. Even abolitionists did not deny Ham’s “sin”
but attacked the story on other grounds, particularly whether the curse applied to
all of Ham’s descendants or was limited to “Canaanites.” Thus, John Gregg Fee,
while attempting to overturn the curse, referred vaguely to the “act of Ham.” See
his An Anti-Slavery Manual (1848; reprint, New York: Arno Press and New York
Times, 1969), 18.
22. J. L. Dagg, The Elements of Moral Science (New York: Sheldon, 1860).
248           -  

23. Ibid., 344. See also Mark E. Dever, “John L. Dagg,” in Timothy George and David
S. Dockery, eds., Baptist Theologians, (Nashville: Broadman, 1990), 165–87.
24. Frederick Dalcho, Practical Considerations Founded on the Scriptures Relative to the
Slave Population of South-Carolina (Charleston, S.C.: A. E. Miller, 1823).
25. Ibid., 8, 10.
26. John Fletcher, Studies on Slavery, In Easy Lessons, Compiled into Eight Studies, and
Subdivided into Short Lessons for the Convenience of Readers (1852; reprint, Miami:
Mnemosyne, 1969), 446. For Fletcher, the curse came upon Ham not only for his
“ill-manners . . . toward his father” but also for marrying into the line of Cain.
27. Robert L. Dabney, A Defence of Virginia and Through Her, of the South, in Recent
and Pending Contests against the Sectional Party (1867; reprint, New York: Negro
Universities Press, 1969), 90, 102.
28. This term and its application to slave societies is adapted from Orlando Patterson,
Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1982). Proslavery speculations that “Canaan” means “the submissive one”
or “submissive knee-bender” reflect the conviction that the slave lives without
honor and must derive his or her very life from submission to the master, con-
firming Patterson’s observation that “the dishonor of slavery . . . came in the primal
act of submission” (78).
29. In Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 144–45.
30. Ibid.
31. Samuel Davies Baldwin, Dominion; or, the Unity and Trinity of the Human Race;
With the Divine Political Constitution of the World, and the Divine Rights of Shem,
Ham, and Japheth (Nashville: Stevenson and F. A. Owen, 1858).
32. Ibid., 60, 61, 62.
33. James A. Sloan, The Great Question Answered; or, Is Slavery a Sin in Itself (Per Se)
Answered According to the Teaching of the Scriptures (Memphis: Hutton, Gallaway,
1857), chap. 4, “The Origin of Color and Slavery.”
34. Ibid., 66. The reference to “unseemly enjoyment” hints at sexual offense, yet Sloan
rules out an assault on Noah when he writes that the patriarch could not have
known of the “indecent and sinful conduct of his son Ham from any other source”
than the Holy Spirit (67).
35. Ibid., 74–75. Sloan writes: “So that, according to the law of God, Ham deserved
death for his unfilial and impious conduct. But the Great Lawgiver saw fit, in his
good pleasure, not to destroy Ham with immediate death, but to set a mark of
degradation on him, as he had done with the first murderer, Cain, that all coming
generations might know and respect the laws of God. Slavery was, properly, a
commutation or a change of punishment.”
36. H. O. R., The Governing Race: A Book for the Time, And for All Times (Washington,
D.C.: Thomas McGill, 1860), 5–7.
37. Howell Cobb, A Scriptural Examination of the Institution of Slavery in the United
States; with Its Objects and Purposes ([Perry?], Ga.: printed for the author, 1856),
27.
38. Leander Ker, cited in Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 74; “The Mark of Cain and the
Curse of Ham,” Southern Presbyterian Review (January 1850): 415–26; Joseph C.
Addington, Reds, Whites and Blacks, or the Colors, Dispersion, Languages, Sphere
and Unity of the Human Race, as Seen in the Lights of Scripture, Science and Ob-
servation (Raleigh, N.C.: Strother & Marcom, 1862), 30. A military man stationed
        -  

in Kansas, Ker spent a good deal of time in the South: “During my residence in
the South, which was several years, I for the most part spent my time on large
cotton and sugar plantations, on which were hundreds of negroes; and I went
there with the prejudice and feelings of the North in reference to slavery, and I
looked in vain for those scenes of horror and cruelty of which I had read and
heard in my childhood; but I saw them not.” See Slavery Consistent with Christi-
anity, 3d ed. (Weston, Mo.: Finch & O’Gormon, 1853), 32.
39. Robinson, Pictures of Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 23.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., 22.
42. Ibid., 26.
43. John Henry Hopkins, D.D., LL.D., A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View
of Slavery, from the Days of the Patriarch Abraham, to the Nineteenth Century,
Addressed to the Right Rev. Alonzo Potter, D.D., Bishop of the Prot. Episcopal Church,
in the Diocese of Pennsylvania (1864; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press,
1968).
44. Ibid., 71–72.
45. Ibid., 7. Italics in the original.
46. Priest’s is a very interesting case, for his interpretation of Genesis 9 actually falls
into several of the categories I am describing here. At some points of his rather
lengthy treatment of the text, he is cautious in describing Ham’s transgression. For
instance, he writes that “why, or on what account, Ham came to intrude on the
sacredness of his father’s rest is not known; but so it was. . . .” In the next para-
graph, Priest mentions the “the awful conduct of Ham,” which his brothers con-
sidered a “crime of the deepest dye; a transaction if perpetrated at the present
time, would mark the actor as a character of the basest and lowest kind.” Yet Priest
does not describe the act. A few paragraphs later, he characterizes Ham’s sin as
an “unchaste, unfilial, and unholy deed.”
47. Joseph P. Thompson, Teachings of the New Testament on Slavery (New York: Joseph
H. Ladd, 1856), 9.
48. The claim that biblical defenders of slavery were literalists, though misleading, is
frequently advanced. For example, Clement Eaton writes that “one of the most
powerful arguments in the pro-slavery dialectic was the alleged support of the
Bible, for the overwhelming majority of Southern people were firmly indoctrinated
in a belief in the sacredness of the literal word of the Bible.” See A History of the
Old South (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 386.
49. According to Bayle (Dictionaire Historique et Critique par Mr. Pierre Bayle; avec la
vie de l’auteur, par Mr. Des Maizeaux [Amsterdam: Par La Compagnie des Li-
braries, 1734], 403), Rabbi Samuel related that Ham “did a thing so vile and abom-
inable that I want to say nothing about it for fear that I should hurt chaste ears.”
50. Andrew Murray, Presbyterians and the Negro, 75. Particularly during Reconstruc-
tion, the potential for sexual aggression and desire for amalgamation attributed to
blacks by Southern whites were chief arguments in the defense of racial segrega-
tion.
51. Randall C. Bailey shows that this process can be detected in Hebrew Bible texts
(including Genesis 9), where “the difference between ‘in’ and ‘out’ is expressed in
labeling the other as one who practices a taboo sexual act” (“They’re Nothing but
Incestuous Bastards: The Polemical Use of Sex and Sexuality in Hebrew Canon
250         - 

Narratives,” in Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert, eds., Reading from This
Place, Vol. 1, Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States [Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 1994], 124).
52. “Whenever, wherever, race relations are discussed in the United States, sex moves
arm in arm with the concept of segregation.” See Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1949), 102.
53. In private correspondence, Eugene D. Genovese has emphasized the likely influ-
ence of Calvin on proslavery divines such as Baptist John L. Dagg and Presbyterian
Benjamin Palmer. Because American advocates of the curse almost never cited
sources, it is difficult to gauge the extent of this influence. But if Calvin’s comments
on Genesis did influence professed Calvinists, one would expect them to invoke
him as an authority.
54. Bertram Wyatt-Brown observes, “Middle Eastern cultures, then and now, have
been partly based upon rigid rules of honor and heightened fears of disgrace and
humiliation. In Holy Scripture, the worship of God was conceptualized in terms
of that code. The prophets’ jeremiads denounced the wayward Israelites for the
dishonoring offense of impugning the blamelessness of God. They took from God
due honor and glory—two interconnected modes of praise rendered in the one
Hebrew word kabod. . . . Southern Protestants had no difficulty in adopting such
an approach.” See “Church, Honor, and Secession,” in Randall M. Miller, Harry
S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds., Religion and the American Civil War
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 101–2.
55. Julian Pitt-Rivers, “Honor,” in David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences, 18 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 505.
56. Wyatt-Brown, “Church, Honor, and Secession,” 89–109, 101–2.
57. John Hope Franklin, The Militant South: 1800–1861 (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1956), 34–35.
58. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, 75; Patterson, Slavery and
Social Death, 94.
59. Clement Eaton, “The Role of Honor in Southern Society,” Southern Humanities
Review 10 (1976, supplement): 52. In 1986, Wyatt-Brown confirmed this view, not-
ing that “it was threat of honor lost, no less than slavery, that led [Southerners]
to secession and war” and that “whites in the antebellum South were a people of
honor who would not subject themselves to the contempt of a ruthless enemy, as
the Yankee supporters of Abraham Lincoln and abolitionists were thought to be”
(Honor and Violence in the Old South, 5, viii). Charles Reagan Wilson points out
that by 1830 the formerly liberal South “had developed a new image of itself as a
chivalric society, embodying many of the agrarian and spiritual values that seemed
to be disappearing in the industrializing North. The cult of chivalry developed,
focusing on manners, women, military affairs the idea of the Greek democracy,
and Romantic oratory.” See Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause 1865–
1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), 3.
60. Michael P. Johnston, “Planters and Patriarchy: Charleston, 1800–1860,” Journal of
Southern History 46, no. 1 (1980): 33.
61. Ibid., 46.
62. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “Modernizing Southern Slavery: The Proslavery Argument
Reinterpreted,” in J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, eds., Religion,
Race and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward (New York: Oxford
         - 

University Press, 1982), 30. In this article, Wyatt-Brown identifies three stages in
the evolution of Southern slavery: (1) crude chattel bondage, characteristic of the
colonial period; (2) state racial regulation requiring civil bureaucracies and legal
professionalization, which made only limited progress before 1861; and (3) the
patriarchal model, a form that became prominent in the early national years,
largely as a result of Christian evangelicalism.
63. Ibid., 30, 36. According to Wyatt-Brown, the domestic view of slavery was “inti-
mately connected with evangelical and indeed scriptural reverence for familial
government.” For those Wyatt-Brown calls the “Southern church fathers,” slavery
was a condition rather than a moral evil and, as such, “resembled the family, civil
government, hierarchies, all elements of social organization with which God had
forever equipped his fallen, self-seeking creatures” (32).
64. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, viii, 33; Kenneth S. Greenberg,
Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers,
Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunt-
ing, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press,
1996), 7, 9. Greenberg writes that in the Old South “the man of honor was the
man who had the power to prevent his being unmasked. Anyone could unmask
the dishonored. For those who aspired to honor, what you wore mattered less than
whether you could and would risk your life to repel any man who tried to remove
what you wore”(25).
65. Pitt-Rivers, “Honor,” 508.
66. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery, 14.
67. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 80.
68. Ted Ownby notes both the centrality of alcohol in Southern male culture and the
way it served as a stimulant to aggressive behavior. He describes the “drinking
establishment as a setting for the typically masculine combination of drink, pro-
fanity and violence.” See Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation and Manhood in the
Rural South, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 53.
69. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, 59, 33. Franklin, The Militant
South, 202–3.
70. Eaton, “The Role of Honor in the Old South,” 47, 48; Steven M. Stowe, Intimacy
and Power in the Old South: Ritual in the Lives of the Planters (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1987), 49. According to Stowe, “The affair [of honor]
was theatre and ideology; it happened and it explained what happened. . . . Partic-
ular affairs inevitably developed into stories about the social meaning of a man’s
personal morality” (47).
71. “The central concern of Southern men was to have their words treated with re-
spect. . . . Words of masters had to be respected because they were the words of a
man of honor” (Greenberg, Honor and Slavery, 7, 11).
72. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery, 41. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old
South, 31.
73. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, 39; John Hope Franklin, The
Militant South, 202–03, and Pitt-Rivers, “Honor,” 506.
74. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, 74.
75. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery, 107–11.
76. Armstrong, The Christian Doctrine of Slavery, 110.
77. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 100; Eaton, “The Role of Honor in Southern
252          -  

Society,” 49; Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, vii; Christine
Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Chapel Hill and
London: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 249.
78. Ownby, Subduing Satan, 12.
79. Ibid., 14.
80. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “God and Honor in the Old South,” Southern Review 25
(April 1989): 283. In Honor and Violence in the Old South, Wyatt-Brown distin-
guished the “primal honor” derived from the Indo-European system of ethics and
the “gentility” that arose from the English Deists. “Ancient largesse became, under
Stoic influence, Aristotelian magnanimity, which in turn grew into Christian char-
ity” (38). The South’s concern with the classics, Wyatt-Brown said, “reflected the
continued relevance of Stoic traditions of honor and virtue” (47). “During the
eighteenth century, under the influence of the rationalism of the Enlightenment,
the Southern model of honorable conscience conformed with the classical heritage.
. . . By the 1830s, however, religious precept, somewhat democratic in character,
transformed Southern gentility” (51, 53).
81. Wyatt-Brown, “God and Honor in the Old South,” 285.
82. Ibid., 289.
83. Ibid., 295.
84. Ibid. Wyatt-Brown comes closer than any other scholar to clarifying the link be-
tween the biblical defense of slavery and the culture of honor. He even notes that
the traditional ethic of honor was readily incorporated by Southern clergy, in part
because of the “narratives and codification of honor to be found in Scripture,
particularly in the Old Testament” (ibid., 284).
85. Edward R. Crowther, “Holy Honor: Sacred and Secular in the Old South,” Journal
of Southern History 58, no. 4 (1992): 619–636.
86. Ibid., 620.
87. Ibid.
88. Ibid., 631.
89. John H. Hopkins’s reading of the story, in which “eminen[ce]” and “piety” are
connected in Noah, slavery and “the abominations of heathen idolatry” in Ham,
provides another glimpse of holy honor at work.
90. H.O.R., The Governing Race, 7–9.
91. Significantly, a similar interpenetration of honor and righteousness is evident in
Calvin’s comments on Genesis 9:20–27, which may have influenced some proslav-
ery divines. In Calvin, the language of holiness (“piety,” “impious,” “abominable,”
“divine judgment,” “divine blessing,” “ungodly,” “depraved,” “wicked,” “repro-
bate,” “grace,” “mercy”) is thoroughly integrated with the language of honor and
shame (“modesty,” “dignity,” “honor,” “polluted,” “disgraced,” “impure,” “shame-
ful”). See John Calvin, (Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, 2
vols., trans. John King (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1948), 1: 300–307.
92. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, 24.
93. C. E. McLain, Place of Race (New York: Vantage, 1965), 25. Biblical commentaries
and devotional aids published during the first half of the twentieth century often
intimated that Ham’s transgression had a sexual component. For instance, Keil
and Delitzsch, though they do not characterize the offense, cite the view that the
“chief characteristic” of the Hamitic race is sexual sin. See C. F. Keil and F. De-
litzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. 1, The Pentateuch, trans.
James Martin (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1949), 157.
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94. Carey Daniel, “God the Original Segregationist: The Bible Basis of Racial Segre-
gation,” in God the Original Segregationist and Seven Other Segregation Sermons
(n.p, n.d.), 9. This sermon was originally delivered 23 May 1954.
95. Ibid., 32.
96. During the Civil Rights era, sexual readings of Genesis 9 could be found among
antisegregationists as well. Writing in 1959, T. B. Maston offered a familiar retelling
of the tale of Noah and his sons: “After the Flood Noah planted a vineyard, made
some wine, drank too much, and got drunk. While drunk he became uncovered,
or literally uncovered himself. One of his sons, Ham, saw his nakedness and re-
ported it to the other sons, possibly ridiculing his father or making immodest
statements concerning him. When Noah awoke from his stupor, he found out
about the incident and pronounced a curse upon Canaan, the youngest son of
Ham.” The references in Maston’s text to ridicule and immodesty seem to place
it within the American tradition of nonsexual readings of Genesis 9. But on the
following page, Maston explains that Canaan may have been the object of Noah’s
curse because he “was already walking in the sensual footsteps of his father.” See
T. B. Maston, The Bible and Race (Nashville: Broadman, 1959), 109, 110.

Chapter 5

1. James McBride Dabbs, Who Speaks for the South? (New York: Funk & Wagnalls,
1964), 130–138, 131.
2. Ibid., 135, 137.
3. James Oscar Farmer Jr., The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and
the Synthesis of Southern Values (Macon: Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1986), 155.
4. Thomas V. Peterson, Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic World of Whites in
the Antebellum South (Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library Association,
1978), 113.
5. Ibid., 83.
6. Joseph C. Addington, Reds, Whites and Blacks, or the Colors, Dispersion, Language,
Sphere and Unity of the Human Race, as Seen in the Lights of Scripture, Science and
Observation (Raleigh, N.C.: Strother & Marcom, 1862), 28.
7. “The Black Race in North America: Why Was Their Introduction Permitted?”
Southern Literary Messenger (1855), 658.
8. See Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 81–84.
9. James A. Lyon, “Slavery, and the Duties Growing out of the Relation,” Southern
Presbyterian Review 16, no. 1 (1863): 14.
10. Slavery Ordained of God, in Kristen E. Kvam, Linda S. Schearing, and Valarie H.
Ziegler, eds., Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings on Genesis
and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 325.
11. Slaveholding Not Sinful (1856), in Kvam et al., Eve and Adam, 327. See also Eugene
D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, “The Social Thought of Antebellum
Southern Theologians,” in Looking South: Chapters in the Story of an American
Region, ed. Willam B. Moore Jr. and Joseph F. Tripp, Contributions in American
History 136 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1989), 38ff.
12. See Steven A. Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1970), 59. Harper wrote in 1837.
13. See Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 37–41.
254           -  

14. Leander Ker, Slavery Consistent with Christianity, 3d ed. (Weston, Mo.: Finch &
O’Gormon, 1853), 32.
15. “Hammond’s Letters on Slavery,” in The Proslavery Argument as Maintained by
the Most Distinguished Writers of the Southern States, Containing the Several Articles
on the Subject by Chancellor Harper, Governor Harper, Dr. Simms and Professor
Dew (1852; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968), 143.
16. William Gilmore Simms, “The Morals of Slavery, in The Proslavery Argument, 201–
2.
17. Thomas R. Dew, “Professor Dew on Slavery,” in The Proslavery Argument, 463.
18. In Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 68–69.
19. Dew, in The Proslavery Argument, 326.
20. From Fitzhugh’s pamphlet Slavery Justified (1851), cited in C. Vann Woodward,
“George Fitzhugh, Sui Generis,” in Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without
Masters, ed. C. Vann Woodward (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1960), xvi.
21. Ibid., 85.
22. Ibid., xix.
23. Ibid., 244.
24. Ibid., 35.
25. Ibid., xxxix.
26. Genovese and Genovese, “The Social Thought of Antebellum Southern Theologi-
ans,” 37. On the association of abolitionism with fanatacism, see Genovese, “Slavery
Ordained of God”: The Southern Slaveholders’ View of Biblical History and Modern
Politics, twenty-fourth annual Fortenbaugh Mermorial Lecture (Gettysburg, Pa.:
Gettysburg College, 1985), 21 and 29 n. 55.
27. Lyon, “Slavery, and the Duties Growing out of the Relation,” 4, 18, 21, 34, 8–9.
The link between slavery and order is reflected in Lyon’s opposition to the slave
trade on the grounds that it introduces a “savage and barbarous element” among
semicivilized slaves.
28. John B. Adger and John L. Girardeau, eds., The Collected Writings of James Henley
Thornwell, D.D., LL.D., 4 vols. (Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian Committee of Pub-
lication, 1873), 4:434.
29. Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause 1865–1920
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), 106; see 102ff.
30. “The Colored Man in the South,” Southern Presbyterian Review (January 1877): 85,
passim.
31. Robert L. Dabney, A Defence of Virginia and through Her, of the South, in Recent
and Pending Contests agaisnt the Sectional Party (1867; reprint, New York: Negro
Universities Press, 1969), 101–2.
32. Ker, Slavery Consistent with Christianity, 10.
33. Josiah Priest, Slavery as It Relates to the Negro or African Race (1843; reprint, New
York: Arno, 1977), 70, 75.
34. See The New Interpreter’s Bible: General Articles & Introduction, Commentary and
Reflections for Each Book of the Bible, including the Apocryphal Deuterocanonical
Books. Vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 405.
35. Priest writes: “Noah was born but 178 years after the death of Adam, whose father
was the Patriarch Lamech, born 182 years before Adam’s death, there being but
one intermediate Patriarch between Noah and Adam; of necessity, therefore, how
intimate must the mind of Noah have been with all that appertained to the knowl-
         -  

edge of God and his providences from the beginning till his own time, and how
capable he must have been of instructing his own house in all true knowledge, as
well as the arts, after the flood, as he lived 350 years after that event” (Slavery as
It Relates to the Negro or African Race, 69).
36. Josephus, Antiquities I: 6, in Complete Works of Josephus, In Ten Volumes, A New
and Revised Edition Based on Havercamp’s Translation (Cleveland: World, 1940),
25. The laughter theme may have originated in Jewish rabbinic commentary. Ac-
cording to one tradition, Canaan castrated his father and Ham responded by
“smiling as if it were a jest for idlers in the marketplace.” See Robert Graves and
Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (New York: Greenwich, 1983),
121. Josiah Priest, who quoted approvingly from Josephus’s Antiquities and capi-
talized the word “LAUGHING” for emphasis, may have been a proximate source
for the proslavery theme of Ham’s laughter, although the reluctance of slavery
apologists to cite their sources makes it difficult to know for sure. Priest explains
that “when Ham had been within the tent, and had seen the condition of his
father, he was noticed by them to rush out in a state of very great excitement,
yelling and exploding with laughter” (Slavery as It Relates to the Negro or African
Race, 76–77).
37. On Ambrose, see Jean Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western Art, Vol. 2, part
1 William Granger Ryan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976–79), 55. Or-
igen describes Ham’s progeny as people who are “prone to a degenerate life and
quickly sink to slavery of the vices. Look at the origin of the race and you will
discover that their father Cham, who had laughed at his father’s nakedness, de-
served a judgment of this kind . . .” (“Genesis Homily XVI,” in Homilies on Genesis
and Exodus, trans. Ronald E. Heine [Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 1982], 215). In his Chronicle, Sulpicius Severus writes: “But Ham,
who laughed at his father drunk with wine, earned a curse from his father. His
son, Chus by name, gave birth to the giant Nebroth [Nimrod], by whom it is said
the city of Babylon was constructed” (in Devisse, The Image of the Black in Western
Art, Vol. 2, part 1, 221 n. 173).
38. Christian receptivity to the laughter theme may have been rooted in patristic com-
parisons of Noah and the suffering Christ. As was noted in chapter 2, the church
fathers saw in the drunkenness of Noah a prefiguration of Christ’s passion. Fol-
lowing this typological take on the story, because Ham represented those who
ridiculed the suffering Christ, his irreverence was interpreted as mockery. See Sally
Fisher, The Square Halo and Other Mysteries of Western Art: Images and the Stories
That Inspired Them (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995), 17–18.
39. Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testament, The Text
Carefully Printed from the Most Correct Copies of the Present Authorized Translation,
Including the Marginal and Parallel Texts, with a Commentary and Critical Notes;
The Old Testament, Vol. 1, Genesis to Deuteronomy (1810; reprint, New York:
Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1977), 82–83.
40. Even contemporary scholars have been known to valorize the tradition that Ham
“made sport” of his father. See Latta R. Thomas, Biblical Faith and the Black
American (Valley Forge, Pa: Judson, 1974), 33. For an example in the Muslim tra-
dition, see the story “The Man of Al-Yaman and His Six Slave-Girls” in Thousand
and One Nights (in Werner Sollors, Neither Black nor White yet Both: Thematic
Explorations of Interracial Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 96.
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41. In premodern traditions of interpretation, Ham’s laughter was often tied to sex-
uality: Ham mocks Noah upon seeing his “natural member” or after Noah dis-
covers his scheme to have relations with his wife on the ark. The sexual element
in this laughter tradition is evident in European visual art, where the laughing
Ham is sometimes portrayed as luridly peering through the curtains of Noah’s
tent.
42. In Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 49.
43. Forrest G. Wood, The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from
the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1991), epigraph at the beginning of the chapter titled “The Curse.” Another ex-
ample of the laughter theme’s internalization is provided by slave creation legends,
which often explain Ham’s black skin and subservience as “punishment for laugh-
ing at his father’s nakedness.” See Deborah McDowell, in the annotations to Nella
Larsen, Passing (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986), cited in
Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 455.
44. Jefferson Davis Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches, Vol. 4, ed. Dunbar
Rowland (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923), 230–31:
“Remarks of Jefferson Davis on the bill for the benefit of schools in the District
of Columbia. April 12, 1860.”
45. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986), 156.
46. “A South Carolinian,” A Refutation of the Calumnies Circulated against the Southern
and Western States, Respecting the Institution and Existence of Slavery Among Them,
to Which is Added a Minute and Particular Account of the Actual State and Con-
dition of Their Negro Population, Together With Historical Notices of all the Insur-
rections That Have Taken Place Since the Settlement of the Country (1822; reprint,
New York: Negro Universities Press, 1996), 61.
47. Charles Grier Sellers Jr., “The Travail of Slavery,” in The Southerner as American,
ed. Charles Grier Sellers Jr. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960),
69.
48. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, 161, 164, 167.
49. Although Peterson does not elucidate the theme of order (or the subtheme of
impudence) in antebellum readings of Genesis 9, he does note that the story of
Noah and his sons pictured blacks as “mirthful” (Ham and Japheth, 101).
50. Given their assumption that blacks were ill prepared by experience and character
to exercise freedom, following emancipation many Southern whites were con-
vinced that liberty would spell blacks’ ruin as a people, and some went so far as
to predict their literal extinction. When census data in 1870 and 1880 appeared to
contradict this “retrogression theory” (i.e., that left to their own devices the black
race would swiftly degenerate and disappear), some Southerners remolded their
argument and contended that it was precisely Negro success, and the racial conflict
it would engender, that portended the demise of African Americans. Some even
called for the mass deportation of blacks as an expedient to forestall conflict. See
Guion Griffis Johnson, “The Ideology of White Supremacy, 1876–1910,” in Essays
in Southern History ed. Fletcher Melvin Green (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1949), 139ff.
51. “The Black Race in North America,” 658.
52. Frederick Dalcho, Practical Considerations Founded on the Scriptures Relative to the
Slave Population of South-Carolina (Charleston, S.C.: A.E. Miller, 1823), 33–36.
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53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., 4.
55. Ibid., 5.
56. Samuel A. Cartwright, Essays, Being Inductions Drawn from the Baconian Philosophy
Proving the Truth of the Bible and the Justice and Benevolence of the Decree Dooming
Canaan to be Servant of Servants: And Answering the Question of Voltaire: “On
demande quel droit des etrangers tels que les Juifs avaient sur le pays de Canaan?”
in a Series of Letters to the Rev. William Winans (Vidalia, La.: n.p., 1843), 12.
57. “Sandell had been an officer in a Mississippi infantry regiment during the Civil
War, and during the last days of the conflict he came to see the resemblances
between it and the prophecies recorded in the biblical books of Daniel and Rev-
elation. He continued pondering the similarities for forty years, publishing his
conclusions after the turn of the century” (Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 64).
58. J.W. Sandell, The United States in Scripture. The Union Against the States. God in
Government (Magnolia, Miss., 1907), 41.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid., 44.
61. According to Sethian doctrine, two angels had intercourse with Eve, producing
Cain and Abel. The divine mother sent a flood to destroy this corrupt brood, but
other angels frustrated her plan by ensuring that Ham, one of the race she wished
to destroy, was taken into the ark. In this way, the seed of malice survived to fill
the earth. See Jack P. Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood
in Jewish and Christian Literature (Lerden: E.J. Brill, 1968), 109.
62. See also Priest, Slavery as it Relates to the Negro or African Race, 72 (although
Fletcher does not appear to be dependent upon him): “It cannot be supposed for
a moment, that Noah would allow the three distinct complexions, or races of his
family to mingle or amalgamate, for he knew it was God who had produced for
a wise purpose, these very characters; amalgamation, therefore, would certainly
have destroyed what God so evidently had ordained and caused to exist. The
amazing fact of the existence of three complexions, of his own sons, by the same
mother, was to Noah, a sufficient reason, even without a Divine revelation on the
subject, that these were to be kept sacredly asunder, and pure from each other’s
blood forever. That this view of the subject was held as binding upon these families
for many ages, we have no doubts—each dreading to break over a barrier which
the creator had evidently placed between them; amalgamation therefore, during
the 350 years of Noah’s life after the flood, it is not likely often happened among
them.” In The Arrogance of Faith, Forrest Wood ascribes a similar view to Fletcher’s
contemporary Nathan Lord, president of Dartmouth College, who in 1860 spoke
of Ham’s “forbidden intermarriage with the previously wicked and accursed race
of Cain.” The intermarriage theme is also prominent in the two-seed line fantasies
of the late-twentieth-century Christian Identity Movement. See Michael Barkun,
Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, rev.
ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), chaps. 7–9.
63. John Fletcher, Studies on Slavery, In Easy Lessons, compiled into Eight Studies, and
subdivided into Short Lessons for the Convenience of Readers (1852, reprint, Miami:
Mnemosyne, 1969), 250.
64. The explanation that Ham’s sin was his marriage to “Naamah, the daughter of
Lamech, of the race of Cain,” conveniently allowed Fletcher to attach Cain’s
mark—which he interpreted as black skin—to the descendants of Ham (ibid.,
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449). Linking the curse of slavery to Cain’s physical and symbolic stigmata was
not an original contribution. Particularly in colonial South America, many de-
fenders of slavery and the inferiority of blacks had argued that black Africans were
descendants of Cain. The association was also common in eighteenth-century
North America. See David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), 171, 236, 459. Cf. Elihu Coleman,
Testimony against that Anti-Christian Practice of Making Slaves of Men, Wherein it
is Shewed to be Contrary to the Dispensation of the Law and Time of the Gospel,
and Very Opposite Both to Grace and Nature (1733; reprint, New Bedford, Mass.:
Adam Shearman, 1825), 16: “But some may object, as I myself have heard them,
that there was a mark set upon Cain, and they do believe that these negroes are
the posterity of Cain, because of their hair, and their being so black, differing from
all others, and that Canaan was to be a servant of servants to his brethren, whom
they take to be of the same lineage. . . .”
In the 1830s, Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, wrote that the mark
placed upon Cain was dark skin and that when Ham married a woman of Cain’s
lineage, he and Canaan were cursed with servitude and with Cain’s mark. See
Naomi Felicia Woodbury, “A Legacy of Intolerance: Nineteenth Century Pro-
Slavery Propaganda and the Mormon Church Today” (master’s thesis, University
of California at Los Angeles, 1966), 70. Just before the Civil War, Samuel Cart-
wright took a similar position with regard to Cain and Ham. But Fletcher’s version
of the parallel between Cain’s mark and Ham’s curse was less vulnerable to the
observation—made by abolitionists as far back as Coleman in 1733—that Negroes
could not be of the line of Cain because his descendants perished in the Flood.
65. Fletcher, Studies on Slavery, 446.
66. Ibid., 433.
67. “Ariel” [Buckner H. Payne], The Negro: What Is His Ethnological Status: Is He the
Progeny of Ham? Is He a Descendant of Adam and Eve? Has He a Soul? Or Is He
a Beast in God’s Nomenclature? What Is His Status as Fixed by God in Creation?
What Is His Relation to the White Race? 2d ed. (Cincinnati: n.p., 1867), 48. Emphasis
in the original.
68. Ibid., 47–48. Emphasis in the original.
69. The practice of unlocking meanings from obscure Hebrew words is as old as Bible
reading itself, and it was applied to Ham early in the interpretive tradition. Recall
that Augustine surmised that because “Ham” means “hot,” Noah’s son represented
“the tribe of heretics, hot with the spirit, not of patience, but of impatience.”
70. Priest, Slavery as it Relates to the Negro or African Race, 33. Emphasis in the original.
71. Ibid.
72. The complex link between honor and order in the proslavery imagination may be
evident in the fact that “impudence”—a term crucial for comprehending proslav-
ery affirmations of Ham’s laughter—literally means “shamelessness.”
73. James A. Sloan The Great Question Answered; or, Is Slavery a Sin in Itself (Per Se)
Answered According to the Teaching of the Scriptures (Memphis: Hutton, Gallaway,
1857), chap. 4, “The Origin of Color and Slavery.”
74. Ibid., 75. Emphasis in the original.
75. Ker, Slavery Consistent with Christianity, 10.
76. In Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 145. Peterson observes that antebellum slavery apol-
ogists viewed Ham’s misdeed as “an attack against the authority of the family and
thereby against God’s chosen institution for governing the human race”(49).
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77. Kenneth S. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a
Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery
Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1996) 123.
78. Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South, 39.
79. Cited in Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, Vol. 2, 1861–1890 (Rich-
mond, Va.: John Knox, 1973), 61–62.
80. In the rare instances when it was cited, Noah’s curse no longer carried the burden
of defending racial slavery per se. For instance, the four-page section on “The
Curse upon Canaan” in Dabney’s A Defence of Virginia (1867) rehearsed many of
the claims advanced by antebellum proponents of the curse but included the un-
usual admission that it was not essential to link Noah’s curse to present-day Af-
ricans. In fact, Dabney concluded, “this passage of Scripture is not regarded, nor
advanced, as of prime force and importance in this argument. Others more de-
cisive will follow” (104).
81. Humphrey K. Ezell, The Christian Problem of Racial Segregation (New York: Green-
wich, 1959).
82. Ibid., 13.
83. Ibid., 14.

Chapter 6

1. Cited in Cain Hope Felder, “Race, Racism and the Bible Narratives,” in Felder,
ed., Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1991), 134.
2. Many who applied Genesis 9–11 to American history asserted that Nimrod was
master builder at the Tower of Babel. They failed, however, to cite Josephus, Lu-
ther, Milton, or any other ancient authority in support of this identification. This
raises the possibility that the nexus between Ham, Nimrod, and the tower evolved
naturally from the proslavery association of Ham and his posterity with rebellion
and disorder.
3. Josiah Priest, Slavery as it Relates to the Negro or African Race (1843; reprint, New
York: Arno, 1977), 210. See also 212: “[Ham] laughed at his holy father and despised
his religion and doctrine. After he had separated from his father . . . he established
both a new government and a new religion. His grandson Nimrod likewise sinned
against both the government and the church. He did not cultivate the true religion;
and he practiced unjust tyranny on his cousins, whom he expelled from their
paternal lands.”
4. An intriguing example of Priest’s influence in the South is Joseph Henry Lumpkin,
chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia. In 1853, while considering a case
involving manumission of a slave, Lumpkin read Priest’s Slavery. Soon afterward,
he wrote to a friend that the book “should be in the house and hands of every
southern slaveholder. It agrees with and fully confirms all of my previous notions
as to the Bible doctrine of slavery. Which in short are neither more nor less than
this—that the tribe of Ham are cursed. That they are judicially condemned to
perpetual bondage. Did you ever suspect that Jezebel was a Negro wench with a
black skin and wooly head? And that Nimrod was a big Negro fellow? Priest proves
this incontestably.” The letter is cited in Timothy S. Huebner, “The Southern
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Judicial Tradition: Southern Appellate Judges and American Legal Culture in the
Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 1993), 136.
5. Priest, Slavery as it Relates to the Negro or African Race, 48.
6. Ibid., 233.
7. Ibid., 234.
8. Ibid., 319. As Priest seems to be aware, the association of Nimrod with “rebellion
against Noah and Shem’s religion” is founded on Jewish tradition. Priest is unusual
among antebellum proslavery writers in his obvious dependence upon Jewish
sources, especially Josephus, from whom he adopts the notion that the tower was
built to withstand a second flood. See especially 320.
9. Ibid., 321.
10. Ibid., 56.
11. See, e.g., Joseph C. Addington, Reds, Whites and Blacks, or the Colors, Dispersion,
Language, Sphere and Unity of the Human Race, as Seen in the Lights of Scripture,
Science and Observation (Raleigh, N.C.: Strother & Marcom, 1862), 23. Addington
believes that following the Babel episode each “color” had its own peculiar lan-
guage.
12. Priest, Slavery as it Relates to the Negro or African Race, 39. Priest writes that it
was the policy of Nimrod and “his coadjutors to draw a line of separation between
his people and those who adhered to the religion of Noah” (237). In Priest’s portrait
of Nimrod, there is obvious tension between the religious schismatic and the great
consolidator.
13. Ibid., 237. Departing from the typical American view of “Hamites,” Priest asserts
that Nimrod possessed the sort of knowledge upon which civilizations are built.
The tower “was wholly of Negro invention, who had the requisite geometrical
knowledge at the time, derived from the house of Noah, who brought this knowl-
edge with all other from beyond the flood. On this account, for some hundred
years, the first people of those countries had more scientific knowledge than the
nations, many of them, had a thousand years afterwards” (319).
14. Jerome B. Holgate, Noachidae: or, Noah and His Descendants (Buffalo: Breed, But-
ler, 1860), 25. See also 90–91, 143, 147.
15. According to Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, “the Persians called the constel-
lation Orion ‘Nimrod’; thus linking him with the rebel angel Shemhazai, and with
the Greek hero Orion, also ‘a mighty hunter’ who offended his god” (Hebrew
Myths: The Book of Genesis [New York: Greenwich, 1983], 128). See also Alexander
Hislop, who identifies Nimrod with Orion (The Two Babylons [1858; reprint, New
York: Loizeaux Brothers, 1953], 13).
16. Holgate, Noachidae, 171–73.
17. Noachidae provides Orion-Nimrod many opportunities to demonstrate his leg-
endary physical prowess: He crushes a serpent with his bare hands, forces a boulder
“the size of a boy’s head” down the throat of a ravenous lion, brings down a tiger
with one thrust of his spear, raises a horse on his shoulder, and grinds stones to
powder.
18. Holgate, Noachidae, 262.
19. Ibid., 254.
20. Ibid., 287.
21. Ibid., 294. One of the novel’s more dramatized scenes is an encounter between
Nimrod and Noah. When the aged patriarch arrives to inspect the Tower of Babel,
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Orion exhibits no respect. Rather, “stretching out his brawny arms, and expanding
his chest to its utmost limits,” he says simply, “I am potent.” Noah responds that
if he were as potent spiritually as physically there should be reason to rejoice.
“Spiritually! . . . what’s that?” is Nimrod’s predictable answer. As the interview
ends, Noah gives Orion a new name: “N!” he exclaims, “with peculiar
vehemence, which made the entire assemblage start, for the word signifies ,
and could not have been applied to him previous to this time. . . .” Ibid., 281–82.
22. According to Jewish legend, earth and fire from heaven each destroyed a third of
the tower, while a third remained standing (Graves and Patai, Hebrew Myths, 126).
23. Holgate, Noachidae, 297.
24. Ibid., 262. Cf. Matthew Henry, who writes that “the builders were scattered abroad
upon the face of the whole earth . . . to the several countries and places allotted to
them in the division that had been made, which they knew before, but would not
go to take possession of till now that they were forced to it” (Matthew Henry’s
Commentary on the Whole Bible, Wherein Each Chapter Is Summed up in Its Con-
tents: The Sacred Text Inserted at Large in District Paragraph Reduced to its Proper
Heads: The Sense Given, and Largely Illustrated with Practical Comments, and Ob-
servations, Vol. 1, Genesis to Deuteronomy [New York: R. Carter, 1880], 81).
25. Holgate, Noachidae, 272.
26. Frederick Dalcho, Practical Considerations Founded on the Scriptures Relative to the
Slave Population of South-Carolina (Charleston, S.C.: A.E. Miller, 1823), 8, 10, 12.
27. J. Wm. Flinn, ed., Complete Works of Rev. Thomas Smyth, D.D., Vol. 8 (Columbia,
S.C.: R. L. Bryan, 1910), 125, 112. Smyth cites a Mr. Faber, who “pursues at great
length” the view that the triple division of the earth by the sons of Noah is reflected
in extrabiblical myths. He does so by “an illustration of the primitive dominion
secured by Nimrod and his Cushites over their brethren, as manifested in the
existence of distinct castes or races, and in other customs found among nations
in every quarter of the globe” (114). In a note, Smyth instructs the reader to “See
the authorities given by Faber, vol. iii, 475–498.” See also Samuel Davies Baldwin,
Dominion: or, the Unity and Trinity of the Human Race; with the Divine Political
Constitution of the World, and the Divine Rights of Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Nash-
ville: Stevenson and F. A. Owens, 1858), where the author alludes to “Nimrod the
apostate” (378).
28. At least one antebellum writer invoked the legend of Nimrod without any mention
of Ham. In a sermon delineating the doctrine of “Bible slavery,” W. T. Hamilton
of Alabama noted that “Nimrod, the mighty hunter, is often asserted to have been
the first slaveholder, Gen. 10:9.” See W. T. Hamilton, The Duties of Masters and
Slaves Respectively: or Domestic Servitude as Sanctioned by the Bible: A Discourse,
Delivered in the Government-Street Church, Mobile, Ala., on Sunday Night, Decem-
ber 15, 1844 (Mobile: F. H. Brooks, 1845), 9.
29. In 1838, Sara Grimké wrote that the first effect of the Fall was “the lust of domin-
ion.” But while woman was its first victim, this lust for dominion was afterwards
“exhibited by Cain in the murder of his brother, by Nimrod in his becoming a
mighty hunter of men, and setting up a kingdom over which to reign.” See “Letters
on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman,” in Kristen E. Kvam,
Linda S. Schearing, and Valarie H. Ziegler, eds., Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian,
and Muslim Readings on Genesis and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana State Univer-
sity Press, 1999), 344.
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30. Joseph P. Thompson, Teachings of the New Testament on Slavery (New York: Joseph
H. Ladd, 1856), 8.
31. William Henry Brisbane, Slaveholding Examined in the Light of the Holy Bible
(Philadelphia, 1847), 20.
32. James W. C. Pennington, A Text Book of the Origin and History &c. &c. of the
Colored People (Hartford: L. Skinner, 1841), 32.
33. “Ariel” [Bucker H. Payne], The Negro: What is His Ethnological Status: Is He the
Progeny of Ham? Is He a Descendant of Adam and Eve? Has He a Soul? Or is He
a Beast in God’s Nomenclature? What is His Status as Fixed by God in Creation?
What is His Relation to the White Race? 2d ed. (Cincinnati 1867), 32.
34. Ibid., 33.
35. Ibid., 31. “Ariel” cites other biblical traditions as well: “This view of Nimrod as a
mighty hunter, will be sustained, not only by the facts narrated in our Bible, of
what he did, but to the mind of every Hebrew scholar, it will appear doubly strong
by the sense of the original. We see that God, by his prophets, gives the name
hunter to all tyrants, with manifest reference to Nimrod as its originator. In the
Latin Vulgate, Ezekiel xxxii: 30, plainly shows it.” Emphasis in the original.
36. “Ariel” opines that the “daughters of men” referred to in Genesis 6 were Negroes
who married “sons of God,” i.e., children of Adam and Eve.
37. “Ariel,” The Negro, 31.
38. Ibid., 32.
39. J. W. Sandell, The United States in Scripture. The Union Against the States. God in
Government (Magnolia, Miss., 1907), 41, 44. About the same time, Pauline Hopkins
wrote that “Nimrod first arose to national greatness as a monarch so that until
this day his name is great among the princes of the earth. He was the founder of
the great Assyrian Empire . . . Previous to this time the people were governed by
patriarchs.” See Pauline E. Hopkins, A Primer of Facts Pertaining to the Early Great-
ness of the African Race and the Possibility of Restoration by its Descendants—with
Epilogue (Cambridge, Mass.: P. E. Hopkins, & Co., 1905), 10.
40. Sandell, The United States in Scripture, 48. Sandell perceives a similar force at work
in America’s “tendency to the centralization of power even at the sacrifice of the
rights of the States and the people.”
41. According to H. C. Leupold, “the tendency of this Cushite must have been to rise
up against, and to attempt to overthrow, all existing order.” See H. C. Leupold,
Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1950), 366.
42. See W. H. Griffith, Genesis: A Devotional Commentary (1946; reprint, Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Kregel, 1988), 103: “It would seem as though Nimrod represented
a revival of the antediluvian spirit of independence and rebellion with its disregard
of God and His authority.” Interestingly, a few of these commentaries cite archeo-
logical evidence in support of the tradition. For instance, the architectural ruins
near modern Babylon (known as Birs Nimrud) are said to represent the remains
of the failed tower (a fact that presumably confirms Nimrod’s role in its construc-
tion).
43. The assumption that Nimrod tyrannized men, though unsupported by the biblical
text, was shared by popular and critical commentaries alike during the first half
of the twentieth century. In A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), John Skinner wrote that Nimrod was “famous
as the originator of the idea of the military state, based on arbitrary force” (207).
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According to Paul E. Kretzmann’s Popular Commentary of the Bible, The Old Tes-
tament, Vol. 1, The Historical Books of he Old Testament: Genesis to Esther (St.
Louis: Concordia, 1923), Nimrod’s work was undertaken “over against God, in
opposition to Jehovah, in the haughtiness and pride of his own mind, a fact which
also made him a tyrant toward men” (24).
44. Joseph S. Exell, The Biblical Illustrator, Vol. 1, Genesis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker,
1956), 504.
45. See Arthur W. Pink, Gleanings in Genesis (Chicago: Moody, 1950), 131–32.
46. Ibid., 135. Emphasis in the original.
47. Harry Lacey, God and the Nations (New York: Loizeaux Brothers, 1947), 25.
48. Ibid., 23.
49. Ibid., 23, 25.
50. Ibid., 26. Of course, as Regina M. Schwartz has noted, “the Bible itself describes
the origins of the nations as a punishment, the punishment for challenging the
sovereign power of the heavenly deity, the punishment for building an idol heav-
enward.” See The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1997), 38.
51. Lacey, God and the Nations, 23.
52. Congressional Record, 88th Cong., 2d sess., 1964, 110, pt. 10:13207. Byrd also invoked
Genesis 1, Leviticus 19, Matthew 20, and Acts 17 in his case against the civil rights
bill. See Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America during the King Years 1963–65 (New
York: Simon and Shuster, 1998), 336.
53. In the same genre are the following works: T. B. Maston, The Bible and Race
(Nashville: Broadman, 1959); and Segregation and Desegregation: A Christian Ap-
proach (New York: Macmillan, 1959); Everett Tilson, Segregation and the Bible (New
York and Nashville: Abingdon, 1958); James O. Buswell III, Slavery, Segregation
and Scripture (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1964); Ralph L. Moellering, Chris-
tian Conscience and Negro Emancipation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1965); and Alan
P. Grimes, Equality in America: Religion, Race, and the Urban Majority (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1964).
54. Cited in Latta R. Thomas, Biblical Faith and the Black American (Valley Forge, Pa.:
Judson, 1974), 27–28.
55. See, e.g., Maston, Segregation and Desegregation, in which the author laments that
“the only reason to give any space to ‘the curse of Ham’ is the fact that so many
people are using it today to justify the present racial pattern, just as their forefa-
thers used it to defend slavery” (99).
56. A notable exception is Buswell, who in Slavery, Segregation and Scripture writes
that “the all-important case [of supposed segregation in the Old Testament] is that
of the ‘segregation’ in Genesis of Noah’s three sons who are supposed to be the
progenitors of the three races” (58–59). To his credit, Buswell notes the tower’s
association with “the sinful and ‘rebellious’ character of Ham” and the connection
of both with nineteenth-century racism.
57. G. T. Gillespie, A Christian View of Segregation. An Address Made Before the Synod
of Mississippi of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S., November 4, 1954 (Greenwood:
Association of Citizens’ Councils of Mississippi, 1954), 16.
58. Ibid., 9.
59. Gillespie’s debt to readings of Genesis that stress the maintenance of order is
evident in his claims that forced integration of the schools will lead either to
264         -  

intermarriage or to “a state of constant friction and tension . . . which would

greatly complicate the problem of discipline and administration” and will “imperil
the stability of the social order and the future welfare of the race” (ibid., 4, 11).
60. Kenneth R. Kinney, “The Segregation Issue,” Baptist Bulletin (October 1956): 9–
10.
61. Ibid., 9.
62. Ibid. Emphasis in the original.
63. Finnis Jennings Dake, ed., Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible (Lawrenceville, Ga.:
Dake Bible Sales, 1991), 9.
64. Ibid., 159.
65. Dake refers to Genesis 9:24ff as a “great racial prophecy” dealing with a “servile
posterity” and claims that “the three sons of Noah were to produce 3 distinct
classes of people.”
66. This phrase appears throughout a 1960 prosegregation address by Bob Jones Sr.
See Is Segregation Scriptural? (Greenville, S.C.: Bob Jones University, 1960), 12.
67. Carey Daniel, “Segregation’s Archenemy Hiss’ United Nations, Or, Let’s Get the
U.S. Out of the U.N.,” in God the Original Segregationist and Seven other Segre-
gation Sermons (n.p, n.d.), 53–54.
68. According to Daniel (ibid., 15): “If we are to trace the Scriptural doctrine of
Segregation to its origin we must go back even behind the tenth chapter of Genesis
to the first chapter and the story of Creation. There in that opening passage of
the Bible we are told repeatedly for the sake of emphasis—   
   —that God made each of His creatures ‘after his kind.’ . . .
This means that the Lord made each creature with a gregarious instinct so that it
would associate only with its own kind and reproduce only after its own kind. . . .
Segregation is therefore a Divine Principle that operates throughout all nature, and
mongrelization is a sinful and satanic mockery of it. . . . So the Lord pronounced
His original creation, this highly segregated creation of His, to be  —
not bad. It is the Devil who would have us believe that segregation is bad.”
69. Ibid., 17.
70. Ibid.
71. “When later [the Canaanites] dared to violate God’s sacred law of segregation by
moving into and claiming the land farther east [from the land allotted them along
the Mediterranean coast], so that the Hebrew territory became known as ‘the land
of Canaan,’ the Lord justly commanded His chosen people to wage war upon
them and ‘utterly destroy them’ (Deut. 7:1, 2)” (ibid., 9).
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., 18. Daniel translates the verse thus: “He (God) stood, and measured the
earth: he beheld, and    ; and the everlasting moun-
tains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow:    . I
saw the tents of Cushan in affliction. . . .” Daniel comments: “We might almost
say that the Old Testament begins and ends with the doctrine of racial segregation.
In the last chapter of Habakkuk, one of the last short books of the Old Testament,
we find that inspired prophet referring to the Lord’s ‘scattering’ of the ‘nations’
at the Tower of Babel recorded in the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis, the
first book of the Old Testament. . . . The Bible word for ‘race’ is ‘nation.’ So when
it says that God has ‘driven asunder the nations,’ it means that He has forcibly
separated and segregated the races of this earth, and that He means for them to
 that way at least as long as this present world shall last” (53–54).
          -  

74. Ibid., 53ff.

75. Ibid., 54.
76. Ibid. Daniel goes on to say: “That comparison between the ancient and modern
towers of Babel must have been one of the things that Christ had in mind when
He said, ‘As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be’
(Matt. 24:37). This text is generally used in making comparisons between present-
day conditions and those just before the great flood. But Noah lived many years
after the flood, and the conditions that gave rise to the building of Babel began
to take shape during his lifetime. It was undoubtedly in the days of Noah that
God gave His first command for racial segregation (sadly, unheeded) that by
Noah’s three sons should the nations be divided in the earth after the flood (Gen.
10:32)” (55).
77. The source for this connection may be Alexander Hislop, who linked Nimrod with
the “Giants [who] rebelled against Heaven.” But the link goes deep into the history
of interpretation, perhaps as far as 1 Enoch (third century ...).
78. C.E. McLain, Place of Race (New York: Vantage, 1965), 35. The 1936 edition of
Hislop’s The Two Babylons is cited in a note. McLain reveals Hislop’s influence
also in his claim that “the pagan religions of the world had their inception on this
occasion [the building of the tower]—‘Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of
harlots and abominations of the earth’ (Rev. 17:5)” (37).
79. See Griffith, Genesis, 110–11: “When outward unity is attempted, the result will be,
as in this case [the Tower of Babel], separation, dispersion, confusion. What a
lesson we have here in connection with all attempts at church unity.”

Chapter 7

1. See Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, Vol. 2, 1861–1890 (Rich-
mond, Va.: John Knox, 1963). Even African American divines were known to refer
to Palmer’s sermons. In 1862, Edward W. Blyden cited Palmer’s words “in the
famous sermon of this distinguished divine on Slavery a Divine Trust,” where
Palmer had acknowledged the fruits of black labor on Southern soil. See “The Call
of Providence to the Descendants of Africa in America,” in Howard Brotz, ed.,
Negro Social and Political Thought 1850–1920: Representative Texts (New York: Basic
Books, 1966), 121.
2. James Oscar Farmer Jr., The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell
and the Synthesis of Southern Values (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1986),
10.
3. Eugene D. Genovese emphasizes that many Southern Presbyterian divines—in-
cluding Thomas H. Thornwell, Robert L. Dabney, George Howe, John Adger, and
Joseph L. Wilson—failed to invoke the Noahic curse with specific reference to
blacks. See A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White
Christian South, Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures 41 (Athen and Lon-
don: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 4, 81, 160 n. 7.
4. Ibid., 96.
5. Noll, “The Bible and Slavery,” 47. Noll notes three principles that were constitutive
of the Reformed approach to scripture so prevalent in America before 1860: scrip-
tura sola (the Bible as a unique authority), the “regulative principle” (the require-
ment to do what the Bible commands and not do those things about which the
266           -  

Bible is silent), and the “Third Use of the Law” (the view that the moral teaching
of Scripture provided a blueprint for life). Mark A. Noll, “The Bible and Slavery,”
in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall N. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and
Charles Reagan Wilson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 43–73.
6. Ibid., 63.
7. See especially C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 3d ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
8. See, e.g., “National Responsibility before God,” in God’s New Israel: Religious In-
terpretations of American Destiny, ed. Conrad Cherry (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1971); and Wayne C. Eubank, “Benjamin Morgan Palmer’s Thanks-
giving Sermon, 1860,” in Antislavery and Disunion, 1853–1861: Studies in the Rhetoric
of Compromise and Conflict, ed. J. Jeffery Auer (New York: Harper and Row, 1963),
291–309.
9. Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 2:41.
10. Palmer, “The Import of Hebrew History,” Southern Presbyterian Review 9 (April
1856): 582–610.
11. Ibid., 591.
12. Ibid., 595.
13. Palmer, Our Historic Mission, An Address Delivered before the Eunomian and Phi-
Mu Societies of La Grange Synodical College, July 7 1858 (New Orleans: True Witness
Office, 1859).
14. Ibid., 4–5.
15. Ibid., 7.
16. Schlegel’s actual statement is: “Even America . . . occupies here a comparatively
subordinate rank; and it is only in latter ages, and since its discovery, that it can
be said to belong to history. . . . America may be regarded as a remote dependency
[of Europe], and, as it were, a continuation of old Europe on the other side of
the Atlantic.” See James Burton Robertson, ed., The Philosophy of History: In a
Course of Lectures Delivered at Vienna by Frederick von Schlegel, Translated from
the German with a Memoir of the Author (London: H. G. Bohn, 1852), 109.
17. Palmer, Our Historic Mission, 8.
18. Ibid., 10. According to Palmer, these “problems of the historical calculus” are
political (the possibility of self-government), ecclesiastic (the proper relationship of
church and state), educational, and economic.
19. Ibid., 30.
20. Schlegel took seriously the early chapters of Genesis as he sketched his “historical
land chart of civilization.” However, his view of human origins diminished the
influence he was to have upon Palmer. Specifically, Schlegel’s biblically derived
dualism—in which an original conflict between Cain and Seth is reflected through-
out subsequent history—did not suit Palmer’s purposes, in that it provided no
firm textual basis for assigning the relative destinies of Anglo-Saxons and African
Americans. Thus, before it could inform Palmer’s conception of American history
and destiny, Schlegel’s notion of historic peoples had to be fused with Rougemont’s
conviction that with the Flood human history had begun again, and according to
a novel pattern: The postdiluvian age features three rather than two historical
antagonists, and each is prepared by Providence and by their distinctive characters
for a unique role in the history of redemption. For Rougemont, as for Palmer, the
interrelationships between the descendants of Noah’s sons are clarified in the
prophecy of their common ancestor.
         - 

21. Schlegel’s influence on Palmer can be traced to the “cultural nationalism” that
burgeoned in South Carolina during his years in Columbia (1843–56). As he in-
teracted with notable theorists of Southern values including Joseph LeConte and
James Henley Thornwell, Palmer imbibed both European Romanticism and the
native sociology of LeConte, in which human societies were perceived as “organ-
isms” subject to natural laws of development. See Farmer, The Metaphysical Con-
federacy, 106–9; and Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the
Lost Cause, 1865–1920 (Athens, Ga: Univ. of Georgia, 1980), 3.
22. Farmer, The Metaphysical Confederacy, 31–2.
23. Thomas Carey Johnson, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1906;
reprint, Edinburgh and Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Trath Trust, 1987), 187–88. Johnson
writes that Palmer “took quickly and easily the very first place not only in his city
and Presbytery, but in his Synod and in the vast section of the Southwest” (191).
24. H. Shelton Smith, In His Image, But . . . : Racism in Southern Religion, 1780–1910
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972), 173. See also Samuel Wilson Jr., The
First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans (Louisiana Landmarks Society, 1988), 36;
Johnson, Life and Letters, 219, 237; James W. Silver, Confederate Morale and Church
Propaganda (New York: Norton, 1957), 17, 95.
25. Smith, In His Image, But . . . , 175.
26. Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 175.
27. In a letter of December 20, 1860, J. H. McHuaine of Princeton, New Jersey wrote
to his cousin Jos. S. Copes, M.D., that “we in these parts are all grieved at Dr.
Palmer’s sermon. Did you hear it? It has utterly destroyed our confidence in him
as a man of large and capacious mind.” Letter in Howard-Tilton Memorial Library,
Tulane University, Manuscripts Division, “Palmer, Dr. B. M.” personnel folder.
28. “Review of a Discourse Delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, New Orleans,
Nov. 29, 1860, by Rev. B. M. Palmer, D.D.,” Boston Atlas and Bee, 12 January 1861,
1. The review occupies four of seven columns on the paper’s front page.
29. According to Eugene Genovese’s A Consuming Fire, the language of “trust” was
popular among proslavery writers in the antebellum period, particularly Presby-
terians and Episcopalians. Note that in the “Thanksgiving Sermon” the language
of instinct, interest, and duty prominent in Palmer’s writings from the 1850s has
been displaced and greater stress placed on “providence.” See also Palmer’s “Se-
cession and the South,”Southern Presbyterian Review 14, no. 1 (1861): 156: “It is
therefore the duty of the South, in the discharge of a great historic trust, to con-
serve and transmit [slavery].”
30. See Johnson, Life and Letters, 215, where Palmer refers to the abolitionist threat,
saying “we have seen the trail of the serpent five and twenty years in our Eden,”
and 218, where he invokes the story of Abraham’s separation from Lot as a model
for peaceful secession.
31. “Abstract of a Discourse Delivered in the First Presbyterian Church before the
Crescent Rifles, on Sabbath Morning, May 26,” New Orleans Sunday Delta, 2 June
1861, 1.
32. Johnson, Life and Letters, 237–38. Palmer maintained this view of the conflict until
at least December 1862, when he asserted that “no nation was ever called to con-
duct a great struggle so completely under the shadow of Jehovah’s throne. . . . The
sanctity of our war is found in the fact that in its issue the supremacy and pre-
rogatives of the Divine Ruler of the world are distinctly implicated. . . . To the
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people of our Confederacy the sublime mission is assigned of standing guard for
the Divine supremacy.” See Address Delivered at the Funeral of General Maxcy
Gregg, in the Presbyterian Church, Columbia, S.C., December 20, 1862 (Columbia,
S.C.: Southern Guardian Steam-Power Press, 1863), 10.
33. Ibid.
34. Eubank, “Benjamin Morgan Palmer’s Thanksgiving Sermon,” in Auer, Antislavery
and Disunion, 308.
35. See Cherry, God’s New Israel, 177–94. In this sermon, Palmer laments that “eleven
tribes sought to go forth in peace from the house of political bondage: but the
heart of our modern Pharaoh is hardened, that he will not let Israel go. In their
distress, with the untried sea before and the chariots of Egypt behind, ten millions
of people stretch forth their hands before Jehovah’s throne, imploring him to ‘stir
up his strength before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, and come and save
them.’ ”
36. Ibid., 179.
37. Ibid., 179–80. The “accordingly” that begins the second sentence in this passage
signals the way biblical and historical “facts” have been assimilated in Palmer’s
perception of the African “race.” Increasingly throughout his subsequent career,
Palmer would utilize the “evidence” of history to undergird the authority of Noah’s
prophecy.
38. Ibid., 180.
39. See, e.g., C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1981), 644, 674, 677, 703, 730; Virginia Ingraham Burr, ed., The
Secret Eye: The Journal of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, 1848–1889 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 196, 210; and Earl Schenk Miers, ed.,
When the World Ended: The Diary of Emma LeConte (Lincoln: University of Ne-
braska Press, 1957), 26, 77, 95. Chesnut and LeConte relate hearing Palmer preach
in Columbia, South Carolina, Thomas in Augusta, Georgia.
40. On Southern Presbyterians’ attitude toward slavery during the war, see Smith, In
His Image, But, 205: “The plain truth is that the white ruling class in the Confed-
erate South was bent upon maintaining Negro servitude, even though the slave
code fell short of ‘the Gospel standard.’ By and large, the Confederacy’s religious
leaders were equally determined to perpetuate it. We have a striking exhibition of
this determination in the ‘Narrative on the State of Religion,’ which was adopted
by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States at
Charlotte, North Carolina, in the spring of 1864. Said the Narrative: ‘The long-
continued agitations of our adversaries have wrought within us a deeper conviction
of the divine appointment of domestic servitude, and have led to a clearer com-
prehension of the duties we owe to the African race. We hesitate not to affirm
that it is the peculiar mission of the Southern Church to conserve the institution
of slavery, and to make it a blessing both to master and slave.’ ”
41. The Rainbow Round the Throne; or Judgment Tempered with Mercy: A Discourse
Before the Legislature of Georgia, Delivered on the Day of Fasting, Humiliation and
Prayer, Appointed by the President of the Confederate States of America, March 27th,
1863 (Milledgeville, Ga.: Doughton, Nisbet & Barnes, 1863), 39.
42. Ibid., 31.
43. Ibid., 31–32. The passage continues: “The explanation of all this lies upon the face
of the story. Having covenanted with Noah that he would not a second time
destroy mankind with a deluge, God must restrain human depravity that it may
         - 

not rise again to the gigantic proportions of the Antediluvians. This is done by
the institution of civil government; the germ of which was planted in the Death
penalty, ‘whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,’ and that
human magistrates [could make an] effective restraint against wickedness, the race
is distributed into sections, each living under its own constitution, government
and laws. These communities in their turn, check and restrain each other: and it
has been by balancing nation against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, that
God has held under a measure of restraint the super-abounding wickedness of the
world.”
44. Ibid., 32.
45. Palmer also uses the Babel image in this address to justify the South’s departure
from the stream of American history. He acknowledges that “we have sinned
against God in the idolatry of our history. We have looked out from our palaces
and towers and said, ‘Is not this great Babylon that we have built for the house
of the kingdom, by the might of our power for the honor of our majesty.’ ” Palmer
also opines that “the South will not cower beneath the hardships by which a truly
historic people proves itself worthy of a truly historic mission” (32).
46. A Discourse before the General Assembly of South Carolina, on December 10, 1863,
Appointed by the Legislature as a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer (Columbia,
S.C.: Charles P. Pelham, 1864), 3. Palmer’s text mistakenly refers to the passage as
Psalm 55.
47. Ibid., 5.
48. Ibid., 21.
49. Ibid., 15.
50. Ibid., 7.
51. Ibid., 6, 8.
52. Ibid., 14.
53. The New Orleans Daily True Delta, 11 July 1865 noted: “The Rev. Dr. Palmer,
formerly pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, arrived in the city last Saturday,
from Mobile. The arrival of this eminent divine, whose eloquence is only equaled
by his piety, and his learning by his benevolence and the practice of all Christian
virtues, will be hailed with unalloyed satisfaction by numerous friends. We do not
know what the intentions of the Doctor are in regard to the future, but we are
much mistaken in our estimate if he is not called upon to adorn some pulpit in
New Orleans ere long” (4).
54. Johnson, Life and Letters, 310. According to an advertisement appearing in a New
Orleans newspaper in 1870, Palmer was president of the school’s board of directors.
Johnson writes: “There can be little question that Dr. Palmer’s labors in the [Lar-
ned] institute, as well as his influence in its behalf, contributed much to its success.
. . . Once established he gave the [school] his church specially fathered not a little
valuable service.” This service included a series of lectures on history Palmer de-
livered to students at the institute.
55. It is interesting to note that sometime in the early 1870s, when the white citizens
of New Orleans rallied “to denounce the contact of the races in school relations,”
the event was held in Lafayette Square, the location of First Church. See George
Washington Cable, “My Politics,” in Arlin Turner, ed., The Negro Question: A
Selection of Writings on Civil Rights in the South (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1958), 13.
56. Palmer, “George Washington and Robert E. Lee” (1870) in Thomas McCaleb, ed.,
270             -   

The Louisiana Book: Selections from the Literature of the State (New Orleans: R. F.
Straughan, 1894), 165–67.
57. Palmer, The Present Crisis and its Issues, an Address Delivered before the Literary
Societies of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va., 27th June, 1872 by Rev.
B. M. Palmer, D.D. (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1872). Palmer’s biographer refers to
the address as “The Present Crisis and its Issue,” which is the title used herafter.
58. Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 158.
59. “The Present Crisis and its Issue,” 20.
60. Ibid., 18.
61. Ibid., 18–19.
62. A turning point may be discerned in Palmer’s Fast Day addresses in March and
December 1863. In March, the dispersion of peoples after the Flood is described
as part of God’s providential organization of the world; by December, the same
phenomenon is depicted as God’s intervention in human affairs to prevent sin
and conquest. Surely much of the change is attributable to the inexplicable decline
in Southern fortunes during the middle of 1863—the period of Stonewall Jackson’s
death and the defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
63. It is possible that the source for the association in Palmer’s mind between Nimrod
and the tower was Paradise Lost; tradition reports that when Palmer was a child
his mother read Milton to him.
64. Recall that in 1856 Palmer had taken the view “that society is broken up into these
small and independent communities, where the human will is first subdued, and
obedience to authority enforced, under the mild despotism of the family. Hence,
in the original formation of society, the Patriarchal rule must be held as preceding
every other . . .” (“The Import of Hebrew History,” 595). For Palmer, as for com-
mentators in earlier ages, Nimrod seems to represent the establishment of des-
potism on the ruins of patriarchy.
65. “The Present Crisis and its Issue,” 19.
66. The overture had originated the previous year in a committee Palmer chaired for
the Synod of Mississippi. See Smith, In His Image, But, 241–42: “In 1874, wide-
spread pressure from the lower judicatories prompted the General Assembly to
take more decisive action on the tantalizing subject [of the establishment of sep-
arate churches for Blacks]. When the assembly of that year convened at Columbus,
Mississippi, overtures from the Presbytery of Memphis (Tennessee), South Caro-
lina, and Mississippi urged the high court to set the freedmen apart in a completely
independent African communion. The most impressive overture came from the
Synod of Mississippi, in the form of a lengthy paper which had been adopted by
that body in November, 1873, upon the recommendation of a committee headed
by Benjamin Morgan Palmer.“
67. Ibid. Palmer’s words “instinct of race” are reminiscent of a phrase popularized by
Senator Albert Beveridge around the turn of the century in his famous “March of
the Flag” address. Beveridge spoke of a God whose “great purpose [is] made
manifest in the instincts of our race” (Forrest G. Wood, The Arrogance of Faith:
Christianity and Race in American from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century.
[Boston: Northeastern, University Press, 1991], 226.)
68. In Johnson, Life and Letters, 472. Note that the language used by Palmer to describe
divine action has shifted once again: The relatively benign terms distribution and
separation Palmer utilized in the 1860s are now absent. Rather, he writes of a God
        -  

who “divided the human race into several distinct groups, for the sake of keeping
them apart.” The apocalyptic note of the immediate postwar period is gone, but
God’s action is decisive and clear in intent.
69. Ibid., 472.
70. Ibid., 472–73.
71. The Southern Historical Society was reorganized and moved to Richmond in 1873.
The United Confederate Veterans organized in New Orleans in 1889. In 1900, in
an address before the Confederate Reunion in Louisville, Kentucky, Palmer uttered
these words: “It is about five and thirty years since the Confederate War was closed,
and about thirty-nine years since it was begun, and it is sometimes asked why we
should stir the ashes of that ancient feud? Why should we not bury the past in its
own grave, and turn to the living issues of the present and the future? To this
question, comrades, we return the answer with a voice loud as seven thunders,
because it is history, because it is our history and the history of our dead heroes
who shall not go without their fame. As long as there are men who wear the gray,
they will gather the charred embers of their old campfires and in the blaze of these
reunions tell the story of the martyrs who fell in the defense of country and of
truth. [The remote origin of the war] explains how we of the South, convinced of
the rightfulness of our cause can accept defeat without the blush of shame mantling
the cheek of a single Confederate of us all; and while accepting the issue of the
war as the decree of destiny, openly appeal to the verdict of posterity for the final
vindication of our career.“
72. Testimonial signed by J. D. Hill, Jos. McConnell, and H. Yinder, Howard-Tilton
Memorial Library, Tulane University, Manuscripts Division, Louisiana Historical
Archives, “Confederate Personnel, 1861–” Collection.
73. “Address of Rev. Dr. B. M. Palmer,” Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 10
(Richmond, Va.: n.p., 1882): 251.
74. “Discourse of Rev. B. M. Palmer, D.D.,” Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 18
(Richmond, Va.: n.p., 1890): 210–17. Palmer observes that the “Divine rule is ex-
tended over the whole breadth of history through all ages. . . . Thus, we find men
distributed into races and nations, each enclosed within corporate limits, under
such environment and acted upon by such influences as to evolve a composite
character.“
75. Ibid., 214.
76. Ibid.
77. Ibid.
78. Ibid.
79. Johnson, Life and Letters, 570.
80. The Address of Rev. B. M. Palmer, D.D. LL.D. Delivered On the First Day of the
New Year and Century in The First Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, La., at the
Request of Citizens, And Members of the Church, of Which He Has Been Pastor Since
December 30, 1856 (New Orleans: Brotherhood of the First Presbyterian Church,
n.d.), 2.
81. Ibid.
82. Thomas V. Peterson, Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic World of Whites in
the Antebellum South (Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library Association,
1978), 8; see also 97ff.
83. Palmer writes: “Then put your hands next upon the tenth chapter of Genesis,
272           -  

immediately following that prophetic outline; and there you have the most ancient
and the only reliable historic chart by which you may recognize the genealogy of
the nations of the earth as they were distributed in their respective portions of
territory; for, as was said by the great apostle, in that marvelous address which he
made from Mars Hill before the men of Athens: ‘God hath made of one blood
all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation’ ” (The Address . . .
Delivered On the First Day of the New Year, 3).
84. Ibid., 10. An anonymous article appearing in the Southern Literary Messenger in
January 1856 included a passage strikingly similar to this section of Palmer’s ser-
mon: “[The white man] has . . . subdued the wilderness, and made those vast sol-
itudes, hitherto unbroken save by the war-whoop of the Indian and the scream of
the eagle, vocal with the hum of industry and songs of Christian praise. . . . ” See
“The Black Race in North America: Why Was Their Introduction Permitted?” 2.
85. The Address . . . Delivered On the First Day of the New Year, 10–11. In a foreshad-
owing of the “Century Sermon,” Palmer wrote in “Our Historic Mission” that “by
its quiet and silent force, [the Anglo-Saxon race] has . . . built a mighty empire in
the bosom of a once unbroken wilderness—it has substituted commerce for con-
quest, and supplanted the sword and spear of the warrior by the plow and the axe
of the colonist” (9). Palmer’s words here and in the “Century Sermon” are re-
markably similar to those of Andrew Jackson, who in 1830 had asked: “What good
man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand
savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous
farms, embellished with all of the improvements which art can devise or industry
execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people and filled with the bless-
ings of liberty, civilization and religion[?]. See Wood, Arrogance of Faith, 226–27.
Similarly, in 1846 Thomas Hart Barton argued that “the Red race has disappeared
from the Atlantic coast: the tribes that resisted civilization, met extinction. This is
a cause of lamentation with many. For my part, I cannot murmur at what seems
to be the effect of divine law. I cannot repine that this Capitol has replaced the
wigwam—this Christian people, replaced the savages—white matrons the red
squaws—and that such men as Washington, Franklin and Jefferson, have taken
the place of Powhattan, Opechanecanough, and other red men, howsoever respect-
able they may have been as savages.” See Congressional Globe (28 May 1846).
86. This attitude of whites toward the fate of the Native American can be traced as
far back as the colonial response to the great massacre of Good Friday, 1622. It
became common in the seventeenth century, in fact, for Puritan writers to argue
that as God had expelled the Canaanites before the ancient Israelites, he was driv-
ing the Indian tribes out of “New Canaan” before the Puritans. See Wood, Arro-
gance of Faith, 19, 210, passim. Palmer himself had proclaimed in 1861 that God
had “emptied out [the continent’s] former inhabitants who melted away as the
Canaanites before Israel”(“National Responsibility before God,” in Cherry, God’s
New Israel, 185).
87. Historical readings of the blessing viewed Japheth as representing the nations that
at one time or another had invaded and occupied the land of Israel and, for a
time at least, “dwelt in the tents of Shem.” That is, the biblical phrase was regarded
as a prediction of one or more historical triumphs over the Hebrew descendants
of Shem. This tradition was adapted by American abolitionists such as John Ran-
       

kin, who in 1830 wrote that Noah’s prediction regarding Japhet “was doubtless
accomplished when the Greeks and Romans, who were descendants of Japhet, by
conquest took possession of the tents of Shem.” See William H. Pease and Jane
H. Pease, eds., The Antislavery Argument (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 120.
Proslavery writers also historicized the reference to Japheth’s enlargement. For
instance, Josiah Priest saw the rule of Japheth over Shem and Ham fulfilled in the
establishment of a Greek colony in Africa “in the very first ages”(Slavery as it
Relates to the Negro or African Race [1843; reprint, New York: Arno, 1977], 239).
Other American interpreters saw Japheth’s “enlargement” as a reference to an as-
yet-unaccomplished European colonial expansion into formerly “Semitic” lands.
In the 1840s, Hollis Read interpreted this concept to include “an enlargement
eastward, the discovery of the great East, by the Cape of Good Hope.” See The
Hand of God in History; or, Divine Providence Historically Illustrated in The Exten-
sion and Establishment of Christianity (Hartford: H. E. Robins, 1849), 85–86.
Alongside this historicizing tradition there developed a series of spiritual read-
ings that took Japheth as a symbol of the Gentile nations that, as Noah foresaw
through divine inspiration, would inherit Shem’s blessings at the appearance of
Jesus. For instance, Augustine asked, “is it not also in the houses of Christ, that
is, in the churches, that the ‘enlargement’ of the nations dwells? For Japheth means
‘enlargement’ ”(City of God XVI: 2, in Philip Schaff, ed. A Select Library of the
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Church, 8 vols. [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd-
mans, 1955]). Calvin interpreted the text to mean “God shall gently bring back,
or incline Japheth,” until both sons “again coalesce in one body and have a com-
mon home” at the coming of Christ (Commentaries on the First Book of Moses
Called Genesis, 2 vols. trans. John King [Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1948] 1:
308–09). This tradition also appeared in America, for instance, in the work of
Samuel Davies Baldwin, a rough contemporary of Palmer, who in 1858 opined
that Japheth’s enlargement, “it is accorded by all, relates especially to the reception
of Christianity by the Japhethites” and that Japheth received Shem’s birthright
when the latter “spurned” Christianity from his “tents”(Dominion; or, the Unity
and Trinity of the Human Race; with the Divine Political Constitution of the World,
and the Divine Rights of Shem, Ham and Japheth [Nashville: Stevenson and F. A.
Owen, 1858], 67, 118–19).
It is possible that Palmer was influenced by Louisianan Samuel Cartwright’s
explication of the phrase “tents of Shem,” which appeared in 1843: “The prophecy,
‘God shall enlarge Japheth, he shall dwell in the tents of Shem and Canaan shall
be his servant,’ remained to be fulfilled. But how was Japheth, cooped up in
Europe, the smallest division of the earth, to be enlarged? . . . At length, in the
fullness of time, Japheth unexpectedly discovered an unknown hemisphere, thinly
inhabited by the race of Shem, and hastened to take possession of it and to dwell
in the tents of Shem. . . . By the discovery of America Japheth became enlarged, as
had been foretold three thousand eight hundred years before. He took the whole
continent. He literally dwelt in the tents of Shem in Mexico and South America.
At this day, in our own country, he is dwelling in the wilderness, which constituted,
a few years ago, the tents of Shem. No sooner did Japheth begin to enlarge himself,
and to dwell in the tents of Shem, than Canaan left his fastnesses in the wilds of
Africa, where the white man’s foot had never trod, and appeared on the beach to
get passage to America, as if drawn thither by an impulse of his nature to fulfill
274            -   

his destiny of becoming Japheth’s servant”(Essays, Being Inductions Drawn from

the Baconian Philosophy Proving the Truth of the Bible and the Justice and Benev-
olence of the Decree Dooming Canaan to be Servant of Servants: And Answering the
Question of Voltaire: “On demands quel droite des erangers tels que les juifs avaient
surle pays de Cannan?” in a Series of Letters to the Rev. William Winans [Vidalia,
La.: n.p. 1843], 9–10). See also Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 91–96.
88. Palmer invoked this Canaanite ideology in his “National Responsibility before
God” sermon of 1861, when he claimed that God gave the American nation “a
broad land and full of springs—He emptied out its former inhabitants who melted
away as the Canaanites before Israel and His gracious providence was a wall of
fire around their armies through a long and painful war” (Cherry, God’s New Israel,
185).

Chapter 8

1. New Orleans Daily Delta, 30 November 1860, 1; “Dr. Palmer’s Sermon on Thanks-
giving Day,”New Orleans Sunday Delta, 2, December 1860, 1.
2. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “Church, Honor, and Secession,” in Religion and the Amer-
ican Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 103.
3. Ibid., 101.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 100.
6. Ibid., 101.
7. Conrad Cherry, ed., God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations, of American Destiny
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 190.
8. Ibid., 156.
9. See, e.g., “The Southern Church’s Role in the Rebellion,” in Robert L. Stanton’s
The Church and the Rebellion: A Consideration of the Rebellion against the Govern-
ment of the United States; and the Agency of the Church, North and South, in
Relation Thereto (New York: Derby & Miller, 1864).
10. Julia Cobbs McGowan, “The Presbyterian Churches in New Orleans during Re-
construction”(master’s thesis, Tulane University, 1937), 6.
11. Palmer, Review of Robert J. Breckenridge, Discourse Delivered by Rev. Dr. R. J.
Breckenridge, on the Day of National Humiliation, January 4th, 1861, at Lexington,
Ky; and Our Country: Its Peril and its Deliverance. From Advance Sheets of the
Danville Quarterly Review for March, 1861, Southern Presbyterian Review 14 (April
1861): 134–177.
12. Ibid., 141.
13. Ibid., 144.
14. Ibid., 146, 175.
15. Ibid., 149.
16. Ibid., 175.
17. Ibid., 160.
18. Palmer, Address Delivered at the Funeral of General Maxcy Gregg, in the Presbyterian
Church, Columbia, S.C., December 20, 1862 (Columbia, S.C: Southern Guardian
Steam-Power Press, 1863), 8.
         -  

19. B. M. Palmer, “Oath of Allegiance,” Louisiana Historical Association Collection,

Manuscripts Division, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New
Orleans.
20. The Pastoral Letter of 1870: A Historical and Official Document Setting Forth Three
“Great Principles” that “Our Church Has Declared in the Most Solemn and Emphatic
Manner” to be “Among the Fundamental Principles of our Organization,” 12; Car-
oliniana Library, University of South Carolina.
21. Ibid., 13.
22. The diary of Robert H. Catmell, entry of 10 September 1902, 4. Robert H. Catmell
papers, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
23. J. Treadwell Davis, “The Presbyterians and the Sectional Conflict,” Southern Quar-
terly 8, no. 2 (1970): 124.
24. Thomas Carey Johnson, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1906;
reprint, Edinburgh and Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 49–50.
25. Ibid., 50.
26. This version of the story appears in the diary of Robert H. Catmell, entry of 10
September 1902, 6–7. The account seems to be a paraphrase of newspaper stories
that circulated after Palmer’s death that May. Robert H. Catmell Papers, Tennessee
State Library and Archives, Nashville.
27. Johnson, Life and Letters, 51.
28. Letter to Dr. Charles Hodge, 13 June 1860. Presbyterian Department of History,
Montreat, North Carolina. In a letter to his congregation written in May 1864,
Palmer assured his parishioners that “the ties which bind me to New Orleans are
not only those of affection, but of honor”(Johnson, Life and Letters, 279).
29. Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Chapel
Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 252.
30. Ibid., 249.
31. B. M. Palmer, An Address at the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Organization
of the Nazareth Church and Congregation in Spartanburg, S.C. (Richmond, Va.:
Shepperson, 1872), 35.
32. “Thanksgiving Sermon”(1860), in Johnson, Life and Letters, 211.
33. Ibid.
34. B. M. Palmer, The Family, in Its Civil and Churchly Aspects, An Essay, in Two Parts
(1876; reprint, Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle, 1981), 123–24.
35. Ibid., 133, 134. Later, Palmer writes, “So long as this remains a sinful world, where
man is under discipline for a holier and happier life hereafter, just so long must
servitude, in some one of its diversified forms, continue to be a permanent rela-
tion; and in the Family, where human authority is first enforced, must the con-
ditions of servitude first be regulated”(148).
36. Johnson, Life and Letters, 214.
37. Conrad Cherry, God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny, rev.
ed. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 194–95.
38. See Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate
States of America, 1861–1864 (Augusta, Ga: The Assembly, 1865–).
39. Johnson, Life and Letters, 218.
40. According to Thomas Peterson, it was common for proslavery authors to raise
“the specter of emancipated blacks engaged in massacres and barbarism by de-
picting the situation in Santo Domingo”(Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic
276           - 

World of Whites in the Antebellum South [Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological

Library Association, 1978] Theological Library 37). Thomas R. Dew discusses Haiti
in “Professor Dew on Slavery,” in The Proslavery Argument, as Maintained by the
Most Distinguished Writers of the Southern States, Containing the Several Essays, on
the Subject, of Chancellor Harper, Governor Hammond, Dr. Simms, and Professor
Dew (1852; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968), 430–31. See also
J. B. Thrasher’s reference to “the bloody scenes in St. Domingo—the destruction
of the white race, and the relapsing into barbarism of the black race”(Slavery A
Divine Institution, by J.B. Thrasher of Port Gibson, A Speech Made before the Breck-
inridge and Lane Club, November 5th, 1860) [Port Gibson, Miss.: Southern Reveille
Book and Job Office, 1861], 5).
41. In Johnson, Life and Letters, 207.
42. In Cherry, ed., God’s New Israel, rev. ed., 191.
43. Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 15.
44. Ibid., 38.
45. In Johnson, Life and Letters, 207.
46. Ibid., 212.
47. In Cherry, ed., God’s New Israel, rev. ed., 188.
48. Ibid., 183. According to Thomas Smyth, a contemporary and friend of Palmer, the
South’s vision had been sharpened so that it could see that the war was God’s
judgment on the North for its abolitionist fanaticism. Smyth cited the “principles
substantially recognised by our fathers in framing the Constitution—but ultimately
subverted by the infidel maxims of the Declaration of Independence [i.e., the
absolute freedom and equality of all men] and their demoralizing influence on the
increasing mass of ignorant foreign citizens: the result—liberty lost, the Union
broken up, and war, subjugation, and lawless tyranny”(cited in Thompson, Pres-
byterians in the South, 2: 59). Here Smyth links disorder and servitude to argue
that those fighting to end slavery are wreaking on American society precisely the
sort of disorder (“lawless tyranny”) that thralldom was instituted to prevent. In
an article published in the Southern Presbyterian Review in 1861 Smyth described
the Federal government as being “without law or constitution—fanatical, remorse-
less and tyrannical” (Ernest Trice Thompson, Presbyterians in the South, 3 vols.
[Richmond, Va.: John Knox, 1963–73], 2:70). Similarly, when Robert L. Dabney
published A Defence of Virginia in 1867, he claimed that slavery had been forced
upon Virginia by the tyranny of England. See Thompson, Presbyterians in the
South, 2:196.
49. William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, eds. The Antislavery Argument (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 128–142.
50. Ibid., 12.
51. Ibid., 12–13. Palmer’s mentor, James Henley Thornwell, wrote in “The Christian
Doctrine of Slavery” that “the parties in this conflict [over slavery] are not merely
Abolitionists and Slaveholders; they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Re-
publicans, Jacobins on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom
on the other.” See John B. Adger and John L. Girardeau, eds., The Collected Writ-
ings of James Henley Thornwell, D.D., L.L.D., 4 vols. (Richmond, Va.: Presbyterian
Committee of Publication, 1871–73), 4:405.
52. Ibid., 15.
53. In Johnson, Life and Letters, 472.
        -   

54. Ibid., 473.

55. It is not clear whether Palmer’s reading of Nimrod’s “primary rebellion” was in-
fluenced by one of the many Bible interpreters—from Josephus to Milton—who
viewed the tower as a tribute to Nimrod’s vanity or by American proslavery writer
Josiah Priest.
56. In Doralyn J. Hickey, “Benjamin Morgan Palmer: Churchman of the Old
South”(Ph.D. Dissertation, Duke University, 1962), 6.
57. Ibid., 17.
58. In Ibid., 8. It is important to place this morbid prediction in the context of
nineteenth-century child mortality. As one commentator has noted, parents in
former centuries could not “allow themselves to become too attached to something
that was regarded as a probable loss.” See Robert W. Lynn and Elliott Wright, The
Big Little School: Sunday Child of American Protestantism (New York: Harper &
Row, 1971), 43.

Chapter 9

1. It is possible that Gillespie, who was born about 1885, knew Palmer, who died in
1902. He certainly would have been familiar with the racial views of the great
nineteenth-century Presbyterian divine.
2. See Thomas Carey Johnson’s The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1906;
reprint, Edinburgh and Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987); Douglas Kelly,
Preachers with Power (Edinburgh and Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1992);
and the website of Presbyterian Heritage Publications, Dallas, which posts Palmer’s
“The Warrant and Nature of Public Worship, a Sermon Preached on 9 October
1853 in Columbia, South Carolina.” One may order photocopies of Palmer’s The
Family in Its Offices of Instruction and Worship (1876) and Husbands, Wives, and
Parents: Their Biblical Place and Duties (1876) from http://www.swrb.com/puritan-
books.htm.
3. The Palmer Memorial Tablet, Palmer Hall, Rhodes College.
4. It was widely assumed during the antebellum period that Noah’s words contained
a message for the young American nation. For instance, in 1856 an anonymous
writer in the Southern Literary Messenger dramatized the history of settlement in
North America by casting the sons of Noah as the eponymous ancestors of the
various races. The writer opined that when the first African slaves arrived at James-
town in 1620, “for the first time, the white man, the black man, and the red man
stood face to face, and gazed upon each other in the New World.” They were
destined to “fulfil upon a large scale that remarkable prophecy uttered thousands
of years before by the Patriarch Noah, when, standing upon the mount of inspi-
ration, and looking down the course of future time, he proclaimed: ‘God shall
enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his
servant.’ ” See “Africa in America,”Southern Literary Messenger (22 January 1856):
1. In the November 1855 issue of the periodical, an article presumably by the same
author “The Black Race in North America: Why Was Their Introduction Permit-
ted?” imagined “a conference between two of the better informed of either race
as the ship which bore these unhappy beings first drew up near the Virginia
shore”(657). Such dramatic inventions involving Noah’s sons were common in the
278           -   

1850s, and the author’s notion that “standing upon the mount of inspiration,”
Noah looked “down the course of future time” is strikingly similar to Palmer’s
image of Noah’s prophecy as a lens for taking in the landscape of human history.
5. Jerome B. Holgate, Noachidae: or, Noah and his Descendants (Buffalo: Breed, But-
ler, 1860). Holgate indicates in his preface that this was the first of a planned two-
volume study: “In this volume we bring the reader down to the dispersion at
Babel; in the second we shall take up that branch of dispersion which settled
Canaan and Egypt, and unfold the rise of exceedingly interesting kingdoms in
those countries”(viii).
6. Ibid., 25. See also 90–91, 143, 147.
7. Ibid., 155.
8. Ibid., 156.
9. Ibid., 160.
10. Ibid., 162–63.
11. On the other hand, Ham is depicted again and again with a “dark” look or ex-
pression, and the brothers get a good laugh when Ham is aped by an orangutan.
See, e.g., 250, 260, 278.
12. Ibid., 53–54. Cf. Adam Clarke, quoting “Dr. Hales”: “The chief renown of Shem
was of a spiritual nature”(The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments,
The Text Carefully Printed from the Most Correct Copies of the Present Authorized
Translation Including the Marginal Readings and Parallel Texts, with a Commentary
and Critical Notes; The Old Testament, Vol. 1, Genesis & Deuteronomy [1810; reprint,
New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1977], 83).
13. Blyden, “The Call of Providence to the Descendants of Africa in America,” in
Howard Brotz, ed., Negro Social and Political Thought, 1850–1920: Representative
Texts (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 121.
14. Thomas V. Peterson, Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic World of Whites in
the Antebellum South (Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library Association,
1978), 47.
15. Cited in Theopus H. Smith, Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black Culture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 236–37. Cf. Marcus Garvey’s statement,
“As by the action of the world, as by the conduct of all the races and nations it
is apparent that not one of them has the sense of justice, the sense of love, the
sense of equity, the sense of charity, that would make men happy, and God sat-
isfied. It is apparent that it is left to the Negro to play such a part in human
affairs. . . . ” See Leonard E. Barrett, The Rastafarians (Boston: Beacon, 1997), 78.
16. In Alonzo Potter Burgess Holly, God and the Negro: Synopsis of God and the Negro
or the Biblical Record of the Race of Ham (Nashville: National Baptist Publishing
Board, 1937), 150–51.
17. Ibid., 122.
18. Even white supremacists could view Noah’s curse as predicting a dominant role
for Ham at some future date. In 1879, Richard Taylor wrote that “all the armies
and all the humanitarians can not change [the white race’s rule] until the ap-
pointed time arrives for Ham to dominate Japhet.”Destruction and Reconstruction:
Personal Experiences of the Late War, cited in Claude H. Nolen, The Negro’s Image
in the South: An Anatomy of White Supremacy (Lexington: University of Kentucky
Press, 1967), 42.
19. See, e.g., Concordia Theological Monthly 15, no. (1944): 346, where the editor ac-
         -  

knowledges that “frequently in our publications the view that ‘the Bible has put a
curse upon the Negro race’ has been expressed and defended.“
20. Not surprisingly, these commentaries maintain remarkable conformity with the
orthodox interpretive paradigm established centuries before: Ham’s “wickedness,”
though typically undefined, is denounced in the strongest terms. His behavior is
“contumacious,” “unnatural,” “a very great sin,” “a sensual act rightly punished”;
it demonstrates “moral impurity” and “shameless sexuality”; it is “an exhibition
of juvenile depravity.” Ham’s failure to honor his father is “evidence of a heart
thoroughly depraved.” He is said to have reported to his brothers with “malignant
pleasure,” to have “mocked at his father and despised him.” “Like all fools, he
made a mock of sin.” Judging from his “sin against filial respect and honor,” Ham
possessed “no sense of filial love or even of common decency.” By enjoying his
father’s shame and making it “a matter of scornful joking,” he evinced “a bold
and impious disposition of mind.” Canaan no doubt emulated Ham in his “sinful,
wicked disposition” and shared his “inclination to the unclean.”
Meanwhile, the behavior of Shem and Japheth is characterized as loving,
chaste, respectful, and honorable. These men of “pure mind” go about their task
of covering their father with “silent sorrow,” doing “what filial reverence de-
manded.” They approach Noah with “filial love, true purity, and . . . profound sor-
row.” Their deed manifests their “childlike reverence as truly as their refined purity
and modesty” and makes them types of “servants of Christ and ministers of the
Gospel.”
21. E.g., Marcus Dods, The Book of Genesis, The Expositor’s Bible, Series One, Vol. 2
(New York: A. C. Armstrong, 1901), 71. See also Arthur W. Pink, Gleanings in
Genesis (Chicago: Moody, 1950), 119–20, where the author discerns a “tenfold cor-
respondence or likeness” between Adam and Noah.
22. W. H. Griffith, Genesis: A Devotional Commentary (1946; reprint, Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Kregel, 1988), 94. Though atypical in this regard, Pink identifies Noah as a
type of Christ, elaborating sixteen points where he finds Noah’s typological status
compelling. See Gleanings in Genesis, chap. 12, “Noah a Type of Christ,” and chap.
13, “The Typology of the Ark.”
23. Ibid., 119.
24. Dods, The Book of Genesis, 78. Dods writes that “Noah’s sin brought to light the
character of his three sons—the coarse irreverence of Ham, the dignified delicacy
and honour of Shem and Japheth. . . . They are the true descendants of Ham,
whether their faces be black or white, and whether they go with no clothes or with
clothes that are the product of much thought and anxiety, who find pleasure in
the mere contemplation of deeds of shame.”
25. Pink, Gleanings in Genesis, 123.
26. H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1950), 349; Pink,
Gleanings in Genesis, 128.
27. See, e.g., Lewis Fowler, O House of Israel and Thou Judah (New York: Maranatha
Publishers, 1941), an interpretation of the historical roles of Noah’s sons by a
proponent of British Israelism. Since in Fowler’s typology Americans are descen-
dants of Shem rather than Japheth, Shem’s blessing is considered to be both ma-
terial and spiritual. Fowler perceives the various characters of Noah’s sons in the
antagonists of Second World War: “Under the leader of fascism, the Babylonian-
Hamitic peoples will make a great bid for power. . . . It will be at this time that
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Japheth—The Dragon—Russia, and Prussia—Stalin and Hitler—will rise up

against Ham—the Beast—and they will finally be completely destroyed” (56). “The
Beast is Ham, and Ham is, today—the papacy. Mussolini, the Fascist, is truly
Hamitic” (57). “Ham is intrigue, mental manipulation, spiritual perversion, polit-
ical confusion, social enslavement, and total human exploitation. It is all that is
the antithesis of God and His Kingdom and Truth. As a principle it must be burned
out of racial consciousness” (62). “The final conflict will be between the forces of
Ham, Japheth and Shem . . . that is between good and evil, godliness and ungod-
liness” (102). Fowler explicitly rejects the traditional racial view of Noah’s sons:
“There are those who seem to believe that Japheth is the yellow race and that Ham
is the negro race. This is untrue since Ham, Shem, and Japheth were brothers,
sons of Noah; as far as we know, of one mother. They were all white. . . . It is true
that Ham married into the negro race and is responsible for a major portion of
all dark races apart from the negro today. But Ham and all Hamites were and are
white people” (69).
28. Basil C. Atkinson, The Pocket Commentary of the Bible: The Book of Genesis (Chi-
cago: Moody, 1957), 99. See also Joseph S. Exell, The Biblical Illustrator, Vol. 1,
Genesis (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1956), 495: “Such as abuse sonship in the
Church, may justly look to be made slaves unto it.”
29. William Ballman writes that “the Negro is the leading living descendant of Ham
and Canaan, and history shows that the Negro has been the slave of the world.”
See Why Do I Believe the Bible Is God’s Word? (St. Louis: Concordia, 1946), 11.
Arthur Pink simply observes that “the negroes who were for so long the slaves of
Europeans and Americans, also claim Ham as their progenitor” (Gleanings in Gen-
esis, 126).
30. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. 1, The
Pentateuch, trans. James Martin (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1949), 157.
31. Ham’s laughter at his father is another element of the tradition that sometimes
appears in these commentaries.
32. See Benjamin E. Mays, Seeking to Be Christian in Race Relations (New York: Friend-
ship, 1957), 44–46; and L. Richard Bradley, “The Curse of Canaan and the Amer-
ican Negro,” Concordia Theological Monthly 42 (Fall 1971): 109.
33. John C. Whitcomb Jr. in “The Prophecy of Noah’s Sons,” Freedom Now (August-
September 1966): 7–8; Thomas O. Figart, A Biblical Perspective on the Race Problem
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1973); John H. Hewett, “Genesis 2:4b–3:31; 4:2–16; 9:
20–27; 19:30–38,” Review and Expositor 86 (1989): 237–41; Leon Kass, “Seeing the
Nakedness of the Father,” Commentary (June 1992): 43–45.
Figart includes a ten-page excursus on “the Noahic curse on Canaan” (53–
64) in which he emphasizes that because the curse has no bearing on “Negroid
peoples,” it cannot be applied to “the American slavery question nor to the seg-
regation issue today” (62). Nevertheless, his analysis of Genesis 9 conforms to the
interpretive tradition that nurtured racist readings of the Bible for centuries.
Hewett writes that Ham’s dishonor toward his father constituted a double
outrage—he should neither have gazed upon his father’s nakedness nor reported
it to his brothers. “What he should have done was simply cover his father” (239).
Kass declares that “Ham’s viewing—and telling—is, metaphorically, an act of pat-
ricide and incest, of overturning the father as a father. Without disturbing a hair
on Noah’s head, Ham engages in father-killing.” In response, Noah quite appro-
         -   

priately “unfathers” Ham. Kass also cites approvingly Robert Sacks: “Anticipating
the various paganisms that will soon be founded by his descendants, Ham, ‘the
father of Canaan,’ gives primacy to the merely temporal and amoral beginnings”
(44). Kass adds that “as the stance of Ham points downward toward Canaanite
paganism, so the stance of Shem points upward to the sacred” (47).
34. Arthur C. Custance, Noah’s Three Sons, The Doorway Papers, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Zondervan, 1975), 12. Custance interprets Hamite servitude as rendering
“extraordinary service to mankind from the point of view of the physical devel-
opments of civilization.”
35. See also Clyde T. Francisco, “The Curse on Canaan,” Christianity Today (24 April
1964): 9, 10. Acknowledging that Genesis 9 is “often used even today to defend
segregation by earnest, Bible-loving Christians,” Francisco insists that “this passage
in no way relates to the present tensions between the races.” Despite his disclaimer,
however, Francisco’s comments adhere strictly to the parameters of orthodox in-
terpretation. On Noah’s drunkenness, he writes that “perhaps the temptation to
taste the product of his own labor was too strong for Noah and he soon became
quite drunk, revealing that he was not accustomed to the habit. A man who gets
drunk only once is not a drunkard.” On Ham: “What did Ham do to his father?
He disgraced him by exposing his shame to the world. . . . What his brothers did
he should have done: he should have covered his father.”
36. Robert Brow, “The Curse of Ham—Capsule of Ancient History,” Christianity To-
day (26 October 1973): 8.
37. Figart, A Biblical Perspective on the Race Problem, 59; Whitcomb “The Prophecy of
Noah’s Sons,” 7.
38. Allen P. Ross, “The Curse of Canaan,” Bibliotheca Sacra 137 (July–September 1980):
223. Ross’s reading of the story strikes many prominent themes in the history of
interpretation. As a transgression of sexual morality, the action of Ham was an
affront to the dignity of his father. “Because of this breach of domestic propriety,
Ham could expect nothing less than the oracle against his own family honor. . . .
[Ham’s] seeing is the disgusting thing. Ham’s frivolous looking, a moral flaw,
represents the first step in the abandonment of a moral code. Moreover, this
violation of a boundary destroyed the honor of Noah” (231). Ross contrasts Ham’s
hubris with the sensitivity and piety of his brothers and suggests that Ham “com-
pleted” Noah’s nakedness by bringing the garment to his brothers. Because he
disregarded both patriarchal honor and the sanctity of family, Ham deserves
Noah’s malediction, which “was in harmony with God’s will for the preservation
of moral purity” (235). The Canaanites were doomed to perpetual slavery for acting
as their ancestor did, and thus becoming “enslaved sexually.”
39. Ibid., 224. The relationship between Noah’s oracle and the episode recorded in
Genesis 9 is described thus: Shem acted in good taste and was blessed with knowl-
edge of the true God. Japheth also acted properly and was promised geographical
expansion. Ham acted wrongly, and as a result some of his descendants were
cursed with subjugation.
40. Students in my Religion and Racism course have discovered this fact in interviews
with local pastors. When asked how they explain human diversity, clergy from a
variety of Christian denominations cite the Tower of Babel story.
41. Ibid., 41. Although this account of Babel’s aftermath has a scientific ring, the Amer-
ican readings of Genesis 11 detailed in chapters 5 and 6 force us to consider the
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possibility of regression to more sinister interpretations of the story. Particularly

when Figart dates the tower to the generation of Noah’s descendant Peleg (whose
name connotes “division”), the unconscious link with segregationist readings of
Genesis 11 becomes visible. See Figart, A Biblical Perspective on the Race Problem,
22, 35.
42. Ibid., 24.
43. Custance, Noah’s Three Sons, 120.
44. Kass, “Seeing the Nakedness of His Father,” 44.
45. In James Morrow, Bible Stories for Adults (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996), 61–
84.
46. Ibid., 78.
47. Ibid., 83.
48. Cain Hope Felder, ed., The Original African Heritage Study Bible, King James Ver-
sion, with Special Annotations Relative to the African/Edenic Experience (Nashville:
James C. Winston, 1993), 15.
49. Brooklyn: A&B Publishers, 1999; Chicago: Research Associates School Times
Publications, 1996. In The Trick (Chino, Calif.: Chick Publications, n.d.), a Bible
tract published by infamous anti-Catholic crusader Jack T. Chick, a character de-
scribed as a former witch provides a brief history of Halloween: “It came from an
ancient Druid custom set up for human sacrifices on Halloween night. Druids
offered children in sacrifices. They believed that only ‘the fruit of the body’ offered
to Satan was for the ‘sin of the soul’.” The note reads: “Paraphrased from The
Two Babylons by Hislop, page 232.”
50. William F. S. Miles, “Hamites and Hebrews: Problems in ‘Judaizing’ the Rwandan
Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 2:1 (March, 2000): 107–115; 108.
51. Ibid., 109.
52. Ibid., 113.
53. John Hanning Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (Mineola,
N.Y.: Dover, 1996), xvii, 495–96. See also 241–42.
54. Saul Dubow, Scientific Racism in South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1995), 84. “Napolean’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 was the catalyst for a new
twist to the Hamitic myth: the discovery that Egyptian civilisation predated the
classical world of the Greeks and Romans had to be squared with the established
view that Egyptians were “Negroid.” One way out of the problem . . . was to re-
interpret the Bible. By the early decades of the nineteenth century many authorities
declared that only Canaan-son-of-Ham had been cursed. Thus the Egyptians re-
emerged as the uncursed progeny of Ham by way of his other son, Mizraim.” One
revision of the biblical typology yielded the concept of the “caucasoid Hamite,”
an idea that enabled white theorists to maintain Negro inferiority while affirming
that “development could come to him only by mediation of the white race” (Ibid.,
85).
55. Johnson, Life and Letters, 211 and 217.
56. Palmer, The Rainbow Round the Throne: or Judgment Tempered with Mercy: A
Discourse Before the Legislature of Georgia Delivered on the Day of Fasting, Humil-
iation and Prayer, Appointed by the President of the Confederate States of America,
March 27th, 1863 (Milledgeville, Ga.: Doughton, Nisbet & Barnes, 1863), 36.
57. Ibid, 38.
58. Ibid. See also Palmer’s December 1863 Fast Day sermon, where he opined that the
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North’s “false philanthropy” threaten the Negro’s “early and inevitable extermi-
nation” (12). In 1843, Josiah Priest had already alluded to the fate of ancient Ca-
naanites as a precedent for his own time: “The destruction of the Old Canaanites
by the Jews was a judicial act of God, who straightly commanded them, by the
ministration of Moses, see Deut. vii, 2, that they should not spare them, nor show
mercy or pity toward them. . . . That dreadful affair, the exterminating decree of
God against the negroes of old Canaan, was not by the will of man, but of
God. . . .” See Josiah Priest, Slavery as it Relates to the Negro or African Race, (1843;
reprint, New York: Arno, 1977), 86.
59. “Address of Rev. Dr. B. M. Palmer,” Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 10
(Richmond, Va., 1882), 251.
60. “Discourse of Rev. B. M. Palmer, D.D.,” Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 18
(Richmond, Va., 1890), 212.

Chapter 10

1. Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, Vol. 1, Bible Times and Characters from the
Creation to Jacob, trans. Henrietta Szold (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,
1968), 1:159.
2. Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Bible (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of
America, 1956), 79.
3. The rabbis go so far as to claim that Noah’s drunkenness caused exile for himself
and his descendants. See Jack P. Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and
the Flood in Jewish and Christian Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), chap. 6,
“The Rabbinic Noah.“
4. Although the fathers could not avoid the question of Noah’s drunkenness, they
attempted to explain it naturally: “Origen explains that Noah did not know the
potency of wine, and Epiphanius excuses Noah on the grounds of his advanced
years. Chrysostom thinks that he did not know how to qualify his wine. . . .” See
Don Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah: Renaiseance Rationalism in Art, Science
and Letters (Urban: University of Illinois Press, 1963), 73.
5. Augustine, “City of God” XVI: 2, in Philip Schaff, ed., A Select Library of the
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 8 vols. (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmanss, 1955).
6. Examples include the Cathedral of Bourges, the palace of the Doges at Venice,
Ulm an der Donau, Sainte Chapelle at Paris, the Florence Campanile, the carved
wood of the lectern in the cloister at Maulbronn, and various miniatures. See
Allen, Legend of Noah, 162–63.
7. Ibid., 173.
8. Guillaume Du Bartas, La Seconde Sepmaine, “L’Arche,” lines 511–20, passim.
Translation by James Vest.
9. Ibid., lines 561–70. Translation by James Vest.
10. John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, 2 vols., trans.
John King (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1948), 1:300–1.
11. Ibid., 1:301. Emphasizing the grave consequences of Noah’s transgression, Calvin
adds that “such a debasing alienation of mind in the prince of the new world,
and the holy patriarch of the Church, could not less astonish [Shem and Japheth],
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than if they had seen the ark itself broken, dashed in pieces, cleft asunder, and
destroyed”(302).
12. Calvin is confident that after awaking the patriarch repented from his grievous
sin: “We ought not to doubt, that the holy man was truly humbled (as he ought
to be) under a sense of his fault, and honestly reflected on his own deserts. . . .”
This presumed repentance lends credibility to Noah’s role as “the herald of Divine
judgment.” Noah assumed this role reluctantly; being “one of the best of parents,
he would pronounce his sentence upon his son with the most bitter grief of
mind”(ibid., 304).
13. The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, Gervase Babington, Late Bishop of
Worcester. Containing Comfortable Notes Upon the First Bookes of Moses (London:
Miles Flesher, 1637) 33.
14. Babington warns: “And could [excess wine] so disfigure Noah, a man of such
goodnesse, so highly commended before, and not disfigure us that are a thousand
degrees behind him? . . . Think of it, and if you shame in Noahs behalfe to thinke
how unseemingly hee lay, take heed to your selfe . . .” (ibid., 33–34; emphasis in
the original).
15. Andrew Willet, Hexapla in Genesin (London: Tho. Creede, 1608), 105. See also
110.
16. Ibid.
17. Matthew Henry’s, Commentary on the Whole Bible, Wherein Each Chapter, Is Sum-
moned Up in Its Contents: The Sacred Text Inserted at Large in Distinct Paragraphs;
Each Paragraph Reduced to its Proper Heads: The Sense Given, and Largely Illus-
trated with Practical Remarks and Observations, Vol. 1, Genesis to Deuteronome
(New York: R. Carter, 1880), 73.
18. Thomas Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies, Which Have Remarkably Been
Fulfilled, and at This Time are Fulfilling in the World (New York: William Durell,
1794), 15.
19. Marcus Dods, The Book of Genesis, The Expositor’s Bible, Series 1, Vol. 2 (New
York: A. C. Armstrong, 1901), 75
20. Ibid., 76.
21. In Werner Sollors, Neither Black nor White yet Both: Thematic Explorations of
Interracial Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
22. “Certain it is,” Bolingbroke continues, “that no writer but a Jew could impute to
the economy of Divine Providence the accomplishment of such a prediction, nor
make the Supreme Being the executor of such a curse.” See “Letters on the Study
and Use of History,” Letter III, in The Works of Lord Bolingbroke in Four Volumes
(Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1841), 2:209–10.
23. Ibid., 209.
24. Ibid., 210.
25. Ibid.
26. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor-
nell University Press, 1966), 316–17. Examples include William Edmunson and
Elihu Coleman.
27. Samuel Sewall, The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial, ed. Sidney Kaplan (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1969). See also Theopus H. Smith, Conjuring
Culture: Biblical Formations of Black Culture (New York: Oxford University Press,
1994), 84ff.
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28. Sewall, The Selling of Joseph, 12.

29. Ibid., 13.
30. Ibid., 12–14. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? Sewall asks rhetorically. “This
shows Black Men are the Posterity of Cush: Who time out of mind have been
distinguished by their Colour.”
31. See Theodore Dwight Weld, The Bible Against Slavery: An Inquiry into the Patri-
archal and Mosaic Systems on the Subject of Haman Rights (New York: Anti-Slavery
Society, 1838.)
32. Caroline L. Shanks, “The Biblical Anti-Slavery Argument of the Decade 1830–
1840,” The Journal of Negro History 15, no. 2 (1931): 132.
33. William Henry Brisbane, Slaveholding Examined in the Light of The Holy Bible
(Philadelphia, 1847), 25. See also John Bell Robinson, Pictures of Slavery and Anti-
Slavery. Advantages of Negro Slavery and the Benefits of Negro Freedom. Morally,
Socially and Politically Considered (Philadelphia, 1863), 19.
34. Shanks writes that “most of the abolitionists who questioned this genealogy at all
contented themselves with demanding proof that the Africans were indeed the
offspring of Canaan and not of some other son” (“The Biblical Anti-Slavery Ar-
gument,” 137).
35. For instance, John Rankin. See ibid., 138.
36. This view is succinctly expressed by Thornton Stringfellow, who declares that
when Noah said “cursed be Canaan,” he was speaking “in God’s stead.” See “A
Scriptural View of Slavery,” in Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South, ed.
Eric L. McKitrick, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 86.
37. This claim has enjoyed a long life in American interpretive history. It was used
in 1900 by Charles Carroll, who denied that the drunken Noah had authority to
call down a divine curse on his son. See “The Negro, A Beast” or “In the Image
of God”; The Reasoner of the Age, the Revelator of the Century! The Bible as it is!
The Negro and His Relation to the Human Family (1900; reprint, Miami. Mine-
mosyne, 1969). Ironically, Carroll resurrected this abolitionist strategy to deny the
equality of the races. It surfaced again in the writings of Christian advocates of
racial integration in the 1950s and 1960s. See, e.g., L. Richard Bradley, “The Curse
of Canaan and the American Negro,” Concordia Theological Monthly 42 (Fall 1971):
110.
38. Brisbane, Slaveholding Examined in the Light of The Holy Bible, 19–20.
39. Sollors cites Charles W. Gordon (1887) and John W. Tyndall (1927) as examples
of abolitionist writers who adopt this approach. See Neither Black nor White, 104.
40. “John Rankin Asserts That Religious Teaching Is against Slavery,” in William H.
Pease and Jane H. Pease, eds., The Anti-Slavery Argument (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1965), 120.
41. In 1848, John Gregg Fee wrote that “a mere form of prophecy never justifies those
who fulfil it; otherwise the Egyptians who oppressed the Hebrews—Judas who
betrayed Christ, and the Jews who crucified him, were innocent. For it was fore-
told that they would do these things.” See An Anti-Slavery Manual (1848; reprint,
New York: Arno and New York Times, 1969), 20. See also George Bourne, Picture
of Slavery in the United States of America (Boston: I. Knapp, 1838), 70: “God has
emphatically attested, that his wrath shall be effused upon Babylon; but the per-
sons who shall execute the judgment will doubtless perform the grand design,
from selfish and ambitious views. Christians will mark the progress of the ven-
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geance, and rejoice in the destruction, but they will not actively participate in the
horrors of the tremendous overthrow.” Albert Barnes (An Inquiry into the Scrip-
tural Views of Slavery, 86) emphasized that “the prediction of the Saviour that he
would be betrayed by Judas, and even the command to him to do ‘what he was
about to do’ quickly, (John xiii.27,) did not justify the act of the traitor.” See also
Brisbane, Slaveholding Examined in the Light of The Holy Bible, 22.
42. Brisbane, Slaveholding Examined in the Light of the Holy Bible, 20.
43. “John Rankin Asserts that Religious Teaching is Against Slavery,” in William H.
Pease and Jane H. Pease, eds., The Anti-Slavery Argument, 120.
44. J. L. Stone, Slavery and the Bible; or, Slavery as Seen in its Punishment (San
Francisco: B. F. Sterett, 1863), 11.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 12.
47. George B. Cheever, God against Slavery: and the Freedom and Duty of the Pulpit
to Rebuke It, As a Sin Against God (1857; reprint, New York: Arno, 1969), 100–
102.
48. Ibid., 102.
49. For example, William Henry Brisbane argued at length that Noah’s curse did not
justify slavery of any kind and that the entire argument as advanced by slavery’s
supporters was a non sequitur. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that in the story
“Ham was the offender.” See Slaveholding Examined in the Light of The Holy Bible,
chap. 2, “Canaan’s Curse” (19ff).
50. Eliku Coleman, Testimony against that Anti-Christian Practice of Making Slaves of
Men, Wherein it is Shared to be Contrary to the Dispensation of the Law and Time
of the Gospel, and Very Opposite Both to Grace and Nature (1733; reprint, New
Bedford, Mass.: Adam Shearman, 1825), 16.
51. Seeking to drive a wedge between the curse and American slavery, Isaac Allen
wrote: “Canaan thus became the servant (not slave) of Shem; and when afterward
Israel was oppressed and rendered tributary to other nations, the Canaanites be-
came thus not only ‘servants,’ but ‘servants of servants.’ ” See Is Slavery Sanctioned
by the Bible? (Boston: American Tract Society, 1860), 5. Similarly, Presbyterian
George Bourne, while insisting that Ham’s other posterity were excluded from
the curse’s purview, averred that “the denunciation of Noah has been remarkably
verified in the history of the Canaanites, who from the period when the iniquity
of the Amorites was full, have seldom been released from the exactions of foreign
tyrants.” See Picture of Slavery in the United States of America, 69.
52. James W. C. Pennington, A Text Book of the Origin and History, &c. &c of the
Colored People (Hartford: L. Skinner, 1841), chap. 1. This problem—endemic to
any approach that is limited to a proper exegesis of Genesis 9:20–27—became
evident again during the 1950s, when Christian opponents of segregation ener-
getically refuted the curse’s application to contemporary race relations. For in-
stance, in The Bible and Race (Nashville: Broadman, 1959), T. B. Maston argued
that the “curse of Ham” could not be used to justify American segregation be-
cause it was not Ham but Canaan who was cursed, the latter being quite de-
serving of Noah’s malediction. See chap. 8, “ ‘Cursed Be Canaan,’ ” 105–17.
Similarly, in “The Curse of Canaan and the American Negro” (1970), L. Rich-
ard Bradley asserted that the curse could not be utilized to justify de facto seg-
regation because “the curse applied only to Canaan and his descendants and
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therefore three-fourths of the descendants of Ham are exempt from the curse”
(100). The implication, of course, is that the “Canaanites,” whoever they may
be, are not exempt.
53. An exception is Stephen M. Vail, who in 1864 wrote that Ham had “just opened
his eyes and then turned away as any pure minded man would.” See The Bible
against Slavery, with Replies to the “Bible View of Slavery,” by John H. Hopkins,
D.D., Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont; and to “A Northern Presbyter’s Second Letter
to Ministers of the Gospel,” by Nathan Lord, D.D., Late President of Dartmouth
College; and to “X,” of the New-Hampshire Patriot (Concord, N. H.: Fogg, Hadley,
1864). Cited in Sollors, Neither White nor Black, 96.
54. Significantly, Albert Barnes’s 1857 tract of nearly 400 pages devoted only one
footnote to the malediction upon Ham-Canaan. Barnes called the argument from
Noah’s curse “weak,” observing that it was pronounced on Canaan rather than
on Ham and adding that, in any case, Noah’s words were a mere prediction of
what would be and thus “no justification of wickedness.” With a note of disdain,
Barnes concluded “it is surprising that [this argument] was ever used” (An Inquiry
into the Scriptural Views of Slavery, 86).
55. Adrianus Van Selms offers further historical-critical observations on this text: (1)
that Canaan is described as a son of Ham to make a political rather than a
genealogical point (i.e., that Canaan is part of the Egyptian empire); (2) that the
blessings pronounced on Shem and Japheth must be post-Mosaic in origin be-
cause they contain the divine name YHWH; (3) that the “tents of Shem” indicate
nomadic invaders from the east; (4) that the name “Japheth” is probably related
to “Iapetos,” regarded as an ancestor of the human race in Greek mythology; (5)
and that the blessing of Shem and Japheth and cursing of Canaan reflect “a
program of cooperation between the Hebrew invaders from the East and the
Pessagic invaders from the West against the settled population of Canaan.” See
“The Canaanites in Genesis,” Oudtestamentische Studien 12 (1958): 182–213. See
also Frederick W. Bassett, “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse of Canaan: A Case
of Incest? Vetus Testamentum 21 (1971): 232.
56. Randall C. Bailey, “They’re Nothing But Incestuous Bastards: The Polemical Use
of Sex and Sexuality in Hebrew Canon Narratives,” in Reading from This Place,
Vol. 1, Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States, ed. Fernando
F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (Minneapolis Fortress, 1994). 135–36. Bailey
summarizes: “In effect, the Priestly school says: Why venerate Hamites? They’re
nothing but sexual deviants, destined to be slaves to Shemites. And if there is any
question about it, listen to what YHWH has to say about them in Leviticus 18
and 20”(137).
57. Gene Rice, “The Curse That Never Was (Genesis 9:18–27),” Journal of Religious
Thought 29 no. 1 (1972): 7. See Rice for a list of scholars who have maintained
this understanding of the story, a list that indicates that “after its introduction in
the 1870s the interpretation presented [here] quickly won the assent of the ma-
jority of authorities and has maintained that position to the present”(8). Rice
notes, however, that a number of biblical scholars have defended the unity of
Genesis 9:18–27.
58. Ibid., 16.
59. Gunther Wittenberg, “Let Canaan Be His Slave” (Genesis 9:26). Is Ham Also
Cursed?” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 74 (March 1991): 49, 52.
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60. Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, part 2, From Noah to
Abraham, Genesis 5:19 to 11:32 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1949), 149.
61. Ibid., 155.
62. Nonetheless, Cassuto emphasizes that the received text indicates Ham’s sin was
in seeing only (150).
63. Albert I. Baumgarten, “Myth and Midrash: Genesis 9:20–29,” in Christianity, Ju-
daism and Other Greco-Roman Cults, ed. Jacob Neusner, Vol 12, part 3, Studies in
Judaism in Late Antiquity (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), 63.
64. Ibid., 64. Noting that the earliest hints of Ham doing more than looking on his
father appear in second-century translations of the text by Aquila, Symmachus,
and Theodotion; that the first appearance of the castration story is in the work
of Theophilus of Antioch (late second century ..); and that the first datable
rabbinic allusion to castration is early third century .., Baumgartner concludes
that the castration tradition was not preexisting but was created by the rabbis in
the second century to explain textual difficulties, particularly those dealing with
transfer of the curse (67).
65. Frederick W. Bassett, “Noah’s Nakedness and the Curse of Canaan: A Case of
Incest? Vetus Testamentum 21 (1971): 232–37; Anthony Phillips, “Uncovering the
Father’s Skirt,” Vetus Testamentum 30, no. 1 (1980): 38–43. Phillips argues that the
case of Ham and Noah explains the Deuteronomistic prohibition against sexual
relations between father and son in Deut. 27:20, which he translates, “Cursed be
he who lies with the wife of his father for he has uncovered the skirt of his father.”
66. Bailey, “They’re Nothing but Incestuous Bastards,” 134.
67. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. 1, The
Pentateuch, trans. James Martin (Grand Rapids, Mich: Ferdmans, 1949), cited in
Bradley, “The Curse of Canaan and the American Negro,” 103 n. 21.
68. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, 153.
69. Robert Graves and Raphael Patai, Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis (New York:
Greenwich, 1983), 122. Graves and Patai do not find plausible Canaan’s use of a
cord to castrate his grandfather. Rather, they suggest the original instrument may
have been a pruning knife from Noah’s vineyard.
70. Wittenberg, “Let Canaan Be His Slave,” 55–56.
71. Rice, “The Curse That Never Was,” 18.
72. Thomas V. Peterson, Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic World of Whites
in the Antebellum South (Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library Associ-
ation, 1978), 131.
73. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Mono-
theism (Boston: Beacon, 1994), 97.
74. H. Hirsch Cohen, The Drunkenness of Noah (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 1974), 8, 12.
75. Ibid., 18.
76. Ibid., 19.
77. Ibid., 29.
78. Arthur Frederick Ide, Noah and the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homophobia and
Heterosexism in the Flood Story and Its Writing (Las Colinas, Tex: Monument,
1992).
79. Ibid., 19.
80. One example will suffice: “Covertly introduced, [the story] probes the darkest
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recesses of the mind, exposing the raw erection of ideas that impregnate the
world’s most erotic literature. Dramatically it massages the imagination until the
moist poignant details erupt in a jet of emotions that leave the reader panting”
(Noah and the Ark, 42).
81. Ibid., 44.
82. Ibid., 44–45.
83. Ibid., 51.
84. Ibid., 49. To strengthen his case that Ham should be viewed as the story’s hero,
Ide observes that he is the only one of Noah’s sons after whom a country is
named (cf. the biblical description of Egypt as “the land of Ham”).
85. Ibid., 33.
86. Ide’s reading is also dangerously anti-Jewish. It blames suppression of the sodomy
incident on “the priests of Shiloh,” who wished to spiritually enslave people so
they could devote their time to the Temple. Like some feminist rereadings of the
Bible, Ide assigns to “male-dominated” Israelites responsibility for “mysogynistic
attitude[s] toward women.”
87. Regina M. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 106.
88. Ibid., 112.
89. Ibid., 115.
90. Ibid., 108.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid., 110.
93. Schwartz regards the pattern in Israelite narrative in which siblings compete with
one another instead of with their father as “another expression of the priestly
interest in protecting the preserve of divinity” (ibid. 115).
94. In Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 105.
95. Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth, ed. Bernard Devoto (New York: Harper, 1991),
35.
96. The Short Fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt, ed. Sylvia Lyons Render (Washingon,
D. C.: Howard University Press, 1981), 177–82. See Sollors, Neither Black nor White,
108.
97. Cited in Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 451. Sollors also quotes a statement of
Baldwin describing his sentiments on the curse: “I realized that the Bible had
been written by white men. I knew that, according to many Christians, I was a
descendant of Ham, who had been cursed, and that I was therefore predestined
to be a slave. This had nothing to do with anything I was, or contained, or could
become; my fate had been sealed forever, from the beginning of time” (Neither
Black nor White, 95–96).
98. Zora Neale Hurston, “The First One: A Play in One Act,” in Ebony and Topaz:
A Collectanea, ed. Charles Spurgeon Johnson (1927; reprint, Freeport, N.Y.: Books
for Libraries Press, 1971), 53–57.
99. Pauline Hopkins is a black author who does not affirm the curse per se but
perpetuates many views of Noah’s family, color differentiation, and geographical
dispersion that were associated with the curse in the nineteenth century. See
Pauline E. Hopkins, A Primer of Facts Pertaining to the Early Greatness of the
African Race and the Possibility of Restoration by its Descendants—with Epilogue
(Cambridge: P. E. Hopkins, 1905), chaps. 1–3.
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100. Walker and Douglass are cited in Sollors, Neither Black nor White, 105–7.
101. See ibid., 107. See also Charles B. Copher, “Three Thousand Years of Biblical
Interpretation with Reference to Black Peoples,” in Gayraud S. Wilmore, ed.,
African American Religious Studies: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1989), 121–23.
102. Peterson, Ham and Japheth, 46–7.
103. See Charles B. Copher, “Three Thousand Years of Biblical Interpretation with
Reference to Black Peoples,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center
13 (Spring 1986): 242. From the reference to Nimrod in Genesis 10, Copher con-
cludes that an ancient Hebrew writer believed that civilization in Mesopotamia
owed its origins to a son of Cush. Copher, “The Black Presence in the Old
Testament,” in Cain Hope Felder, ed., Stony the Road We Trod: African American
Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 153–54.
104. Copher, “Three Thousand Years of Biblical Interpretation with Reference to Black
Peoples; in African American Religious Studies, ed. Wilmore, 167–68.
105. Alonzo Potter Burgess Holly, God and the Negro: Synopsis of God and the Negro
or the Biblical Record of the Race of Ham (Nashville: Nation Baptist Publishing
Board, 1937), 122. In chapter 2 “The Curse of Noah,” Holly affirms that Canaan
is the ancestor of the Negro “race” but, following Exodus 20:5 (in which God is
said to punish only to the third and fourth generation), claims that Noah’s curse
remained in effect for no more than one hundred years.
106. Copher’s writings have been particularly influential for a generation of African
American scholars seeking to reassess and recapture the black presence in the
Bible.
107. See Latta R. Thomas, Biblical Faith and the Black American (Valley Forge, Pa.:
Judson, 1974). Thomas stresses the ego needs of white Bible readers and the eti-
ological dimensions of the original biblical text. In an attempt to “unmask the
hermeneutical distortions of White Christians,” Katie Geneva Cannon attacks the
mythology of black inferiority rooted in “the metonymical curse of Ham.” See
Cannon, “Slave Ideology and Biblical Interpretation,” in Randall C. Bailey and
Jacquelyn Grant, eds., The Recovery of Black Presence: An Interdisciplinary Explo-
ration: Essays in Honor of Dr. Charles B. Copher (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 119,
121.
108. Felder, “Race, Racism and the Bible Narratives,” in Stony the Road We Trod, 127.
109. Ibid., 131.
110. P. K. McCary, Black Bible Chronicles: From Genesis to the Promised Land (New
York: African American Family Press, 1993).
111. Some advocates of the new Hamite hypothesis regard Cush as an exception to
this generalization. But the fundamental point is that because sub-Saharan Afri-
cans were not within the purview of the biblical writers, none of the persons
mentioned in Genesis 9–11 should be regarded as black. See Felder, ed., Stony the
Road We Trod, 150–51; and Copher, “Blacks and Jews in Historical Interaction:
The Biblical/African Experience,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological
Center 3 (Fall 1975): 9–10.
112. See Copher, “Three Thousand Years of Biblical Interpretation,” 244.
113. See, e.g., the photograph entitled “Noah and his Sons” in Cain Hope Felder, ed.,
The Original African Heritage Study Bible, King James Version, with Special An-
notations Relative to the African/Edemic Experience (Nashville: James C. Winston,
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1993), following 47; and George W. Gentry, Black Madonna, Infant Jesus (Okolona,
Ark.: n.p., 1999), 3: “Japheth, Shem & Ham were all Black as the Bible makes so
explicitly clear.”
114. Jeanette Winterson and James Morrow are among the contemporary authors who
irreverently revisit the story of Noah and the Flood. The characters in Winterson’s
Boating for Beginners (London: Methuen, 1985) include Noah’s sons Japheth, Ham,
and Shem, along with “their lovely wives Sheila, Desi and Rita.” Japheth is a
“jewellery king, Ham the owner of that prestigious pastrami store, More Meat,
and Shem, once playboy and entrepreneur, now a reformed and zealous pop
singer” (21). Yet despite her satirical treatment of the history behind the Genesis
flood story and her portrayal of Noah as Yahweh’s inventor, Winterson ignores
the tale of Noah and his sons narrated in Genesis 9. Morrow’s “Bible Stories for
Adults, No. 17: The Deluge” is a “deconstruction of the Flood legend” in which
Noah and his sons rescue a sinful survivor of the Deluge named Sheila. While
Morrow does not refer to the tale of Noah’s drunkenness, he characterizes Ham
as “low and slithery,” a merciless man who votes to murder “the whore” and
agrees to be her executioner (Bible Stories for Adults [New York: Harcourt Brace,
1996), 1–14).
115. Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who (San Francisco: Har-
per, 1979), 46–47. Buechner’s commentary is critical of the story’s misuse, noting
that for generations certain preachers have regarded it as “biblical sanction for
whatever form of white supremacy happened to be going on at the time all the
way from literal slavery to separate but equal schools, segregated toilet facilities,
and restricted housing.” Nevertheless, by ignoring the role of Canaan, Buechner’s
retelling places the curse less ambiguously upon Ham.
116. Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 101⁄2 Chapters (New York: Knopf, 1989),
8, 16–17. Among the modern authors who refer to Noah’s fondness for wine is
G. K. Chesterton, who has Noah say: “It looks like rain . . . But I don’t care where
the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.” See Allen, Legend of Noah, 154–55.
117. Alicia Suskin Ostriker, The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 15.
118. Ibid., 43–44.
119. In The First One, Zora Neale Hurston writes that while “Mrs. Ham” gazes in
horror at the dead who float in the receding waters of the deluge, Noah seeks the
“juice of the grape to make us forget.” “Drink wine, forget water—it means death,
death!,” he cries. Biblical commentator Leon Kass opines that “given his ordeal
upon the waters, one can perhaps understand Noah’s turn to drink. He may well
have sought solace in the grape, or even forgetfulness.” Commenting on the role
of wine in the biblical story, Kass notes that it causes not only drunkenness but
also “the erosion of the ability to make distinctions, of chaos.” See Kass, “Seeing
the Nakedness of His Father,” Commentary (June 1992): 43–44.
120. Kass, “Seeing the Nakedness of His Father,” 43.
121. In the Hebrew Bible, fermented drink functions as an ambiguous symbol. On
one hand, the grape harvest symbolizes God’s blessings of life and fertility. See
The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 403. On the other
hand, passages such as Proverbs 31:4–5 indicate a keen awareness of the conse-
quences of human intoxication: “It is not for kings, O Lemuel, / it is not for
kings to drink wine, / or for rulers to desire strong drink; / or else they will drink
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and forget what has been decreed, / and will pervert the rights of all the afflicted.”
Some texts even connect fermented drink with nakedness and shame; for instance,
Habbakuk 2:15: “ ‘Alas for you who make your neighbors drink, / pouring out
your wrath until they are drunk, / in order to gaze on their nakedness!’ ”; and
Lamentations 4:21: “Rejoice and be glad, O daughter Edom, / you that live in the
land of Uz;/ but to you also the cup shall pass;/ you shall become drunk and
strip yourself bare.” The temporary effects of intoxication—nakedness and ex-
posure—are prophetic images of Israel’s apostasy (New Interpreter’s Bible, 1:404).
And the Apocryphal book of 3 Baruch identifies the “forbidden fruit” of Adam
and Eve as excessive wine drinking. See Kristen E. Kvam, Linda S. Schearing, and
Valarie H. Ziegler, eds., Eve and Adam: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Readings
on Genesis and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 43–4. It is
interesting that in the New Testament, violence and wine are related. See, for
instance, 1 Timothy 3:1–5; Titus 1:7.
122. Ginzberg, Legends of the Bible, 79.
123. Jacob Neusner, ed., Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis,
a New American Translation, 30.
124. Anbraham Rosse, An Exposition on the Fourteene First Chapters of Genesis, by Way
of Question and Answere, Collected Out of Ancient and Recent Writers: Both Brifely
and Subtilly Propounded and Expounded (London: B. A. T. F., 1626), 60. Rosse
may have been infuenced by the rabbinic notion that wine was responsible for
the sin of “Adam, whose fall had also been due to wine, for the forbidden fruit
had been the grape, with which he had made himself drunk” (Ginzberg, Legends
of the Bible, 79).
125. I am indebted to René Girard for this understanding of the pharmakon. According
to Girard, “the word pharmakon in classical Greek means both poison and the
antidote for poison, both sickness and cure—in short, any substance capable of
perpetrating a very good or very bad action, according to the circumstances and
the dosage. The pharmakon is thus a magic drug or volatile elixir, whose admin-
istration best be left by ordinary men in the hands of those who enjoy special
knowledge and exceptional powers—priests, magicians, shamans, doctors, and so
on.” See Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins University Press, 1977), 95.

Chapter 11

1. In 1867, “Ariel” gave this stark, but simple advice: “Subdue the negro as we do
the other animals, and like them, teach them all we can; then turn them loose,
free them entirely from the restraints and control of the white race, and, just like
all other animals or beasts so treated, back to his native nature and wildness and
barbarism and the worship of daemons, he will go” (The Negro: What is His
Ethnological Status: Is He The Progency of Ham? Is He a Descendant of Adam and
Eve? Has He a Soul? Or is He a Beast in God’s Nomenclature? What is His Status
as Fixed by God in Creation? What is His Relation to the White Race? 2d ed. (Cin-
cinnati n.p. 1867), 44).
2. American Bible readers have utilized traditional readings of Genesis to combat the
polygenetic version of human origins propagated by American racists from “Ariel”
to Charles Carroll to the preachers of Christian Identity.
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3. The compulsion to defend the Christian notion of human unity helps explain the
remarkable popularity of Acts 17:26 as a proof-text in Christian discussions of race
relations. While preaching in Athens, Paul proclaimed that “From one ancestor
[God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of
their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live.” While
progressives have tended to cite the first half of this verse as evidence for the
“brotherhood of man,” conservatives from Benjamin Palmer to Bob Jones Sr. have
seen in Paul’s message the felicitous combination of two ideas—the unity of hu-
mankind and God’s active role in separating peoples. See Jones, Is Segregation
Scriptural? (Greenville, S.C.: Bob Jones University, 1960), 4–6.
4. On this point, Regina Schwartz’s critique of proslavery Bible readings is mislead-
ing. She writes that “the more people were victimized by the institution of slavery
in the United States, the more persistent became the cultural effort to imagine
them as another ‘race,’ that is, another ‘family of man,’ and often worse, as a
subhuman species” (The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism [Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1997], 103). Antebellum Christians who devel-
oped a consistent proslavery ideology never wavered in their conviction of blacks’
humanity.
5. The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 1:405. See also Laur-
ence A. Turner, Genesis, (Sheffield: Sheffield, Academic Press, 2000). 54–56. Terry
J. Prewitt notes these parallels between the genealogies of Adam, Noah, and Terah:
“Each had three sons, all of whom figure more or less prominently in the narrative
texts of Genesis. Cain’s opposition to his brother Abel is similar to the opposition
of Ham, the ‘father of Canaan,’ to his brothers Shem and Japheth.” See The Elusive
Covenant: A Structural-Semiotic Reading of Genesis (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1990), 5.
6. The prophecy that an elder brother will serve a younger is a leitmotif in the
Pentateuch. It is operative in the relationship of Abraham’s eldest son, Ishmael,
and his younger brother, Isaac, and is especially prominent in the story of Isaac’s
sons by Rebekah, Jacob and Esau. Genesis 25:22–23 says of Rebekah when she is
pregnant with Esau and Jacob: “The children struggled together within [Rebekah];
and she said, ‘If it is to be this way, why do I live?” So she went to inquire of the
L. And the L said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb,/ and two peoples
born of you shall be divided;/ the one shall be stronger than the other,/ the elder
shall serve the younger.’ ” Note, however, the differences between this passage and
Genesis 9. The prediction of the brothers’ relationship is made before their birth;
it is a statement of fact rather than a punishment; instead of a father announcing
that one of his adult sons will serve the other two, God responds to a mother’s
query with the observation that one of her contending sons will be subdued by
the other. The prediction is fulfilled later in the same chapter when Esau convinces
a famished Jacob to trade his birthright for stew. In chapter 27 we read of a second
fulfillment of the reversal, when Isaac, old and blind, asks Esau to hunt game for
him in exchange for a paternal blessing. While he is gone, Rebekah schemes with
Jacob to impersonate Esau and usurp the dying father’s blessing. The plan is suc-
cessful. Adumbrations of Genesis 9 in this text include the fact that both Jacob
and Esau enter into Isaac’s tent and that Isaac cannot see them (27:18), that Jacob
is concerned with the possibility that Rebekah’s scheme may elicit a curse from
his father rather than a blessing (27:12), that Isaac is given wine to increase the
likelihood that the ruse will work (27:25), and that the blessing and curse pro-
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nounced on Jacob and Esau, respectively, emphasize that one brother will serve
the other.
7. James G. Williams, The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth
of Sanctioned Violence (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity, 1995), 60.
8. Turner, Genesis, 56.
9. Prewitt, The Elusive Covenant, 74.
10. This theme is “the keynote of the dominant priestly version of the story: the earth,
once described as ‘good’ (Genesis 1.31), is seen to be corrupt owing to human
violence or willful, lawless deeds, beginning with rebellion in the garden.” See The
New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books ed. Bruce
M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991),
annotation to Genesis 6:11–12.
11. “The Surrogate Victim,” in René Girard, The Girard Reader, ed. James G. Williams
(New York: Crossroad, 1996), 29.
12. According to Girard, the Flood and Tower of Babel are metaphors of crisis that
belong to the first moments in the origin of culture. In Things Hidden since the
Foundation of the World: Research Undertaken in Collaboration with Jean-Michel
Oughourlian and Guy Lefort (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987),
Girard includes several brief references to Noah and the Flood: “Since the single
victim brings reconciliation and safety by restoring life to the community, it is not
difficult to appreciate that a sole survivor in a world where all others perish can,
thematically, amount to the same thing as a victim extracted from a group in
which no one, save the victim, perishes. Noah’s Ark, which alone is spared by the
Flood, guarantees that the world will begin all over again. . . . For Noah, the final
reorganization [of order] is implied not only in the Covenant after the Flood, but
also in the confinement of prototypes of all species within the Ark; here we have
something like a floating system of classification, on the basis of which the world
will repeople itself in conformity with the norms of God’s will” (“The Bible’s
Distinctiveness and the Gospel,” in The Girard Reader, 147–48). “The Flood also
results from an escalation that involves the monstrous dissolution of all differences:
giants are born, the progeny of a promiscuous union between the sons of the gods
and the daughters of men. This is the crisis in which the whole of culture is
submerged, and its destruction is not only a punishment from God; to almost the
same extent it is the fatal conclusion of a process which brings back the violence
from which it originally managed to get free, thanks to the temporary benefits of
the founding murder” (ibid., 151).
13. I have been encouraged in the application of Girardian analysis to Genesis 9 by
James Williams, Robert Hamerton-Kelly, and Gil Baillie, who have employed mi-
metic theory in rereading other biblical stories that have been generative of vio-
lence.
14. “The Scapegoat as Historical Referent,” in The Girard Reader, 105.
15. Editor’s introduction to “Stereotypes of Persecution,” in The Girard Reader, 107.
16. “Stereotypes of Persecution,” in The Girard Reader, 108.
17. Ibid., 113.
18. Ibid., 110.
19. Ibid.
20. Leo Kuper, Foreword to Robert Melson’s Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins
of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992), x.
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21. Editor’s introduction to “Triangular Desire,” in The Girard Reader, 33.

22. Ibid., 38.
23. The Girard Reader, 271.
24. Editor’s introduction to “Sacrifice as Sacral Violence and Substitution,” in The
Girard Reader, 69.
25. The Girard Reader, 12.
26. “The Surrogate Victim,” in The Girard Reader, 28.
27. The Girard Reader, 11.
28. In Violence and the Sacred (trans. Patrick Gregory [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1977]) Girard discusses the story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4) as
well as that of Jacob and Isaac (Genesis 27). He comments that “a frequent motif
in the Old Testament, as well as in Greek myth, is that of brothers at odds with
one another. Their fatal penchant for violence can only be diverted by the inter-
vention of a third party” (“Sacrifice as Sacral Violence and Substitution,” in The
Girard Reader, 74).
29. Randall C. Bailey, “They’re Nothing but Incestuous Bastards: The Polemical Use
of Sex and Sexuality in Hebrew Canon Narratives,” in Reading from This Place,
Vol. 1, Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States, ed. Fernando
F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 134.
30. “Mimesis and Violence,” in The Girard Reader, 12.
31. To the extent that he accuses Noah of all manner of crimes, Arthur Frederick Ide
challenges this paradigm. But like other modern readers who foreground the dy-
namics of desire, he ignores its imitative nature.
32. See, e.g., figures 23 and 24 in Dom Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah: Renais-
sance Rationalism in Art, Science and Letters (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1963). These are illustrations from the Cologne Bible and Lubeck Bible (both fif-
teenth century) that depict one of the brothers covering Noah’s nakedness while
the other two watch.
33. Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part 2, From Noah to
Abraham, Genesis 5:19 to 11:32 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1949), 163. Randall Bailey inti-
mates the brothers’ rivalry and its dire consequences for the community when he
writes that “the narrator . . . spends meticulous details in describing how carefully
and awkwardly the other two sons place a robe on their shoulders (which is gen-
erally an idiom for burdens that only the deity can remove), walk backward (which
is generally associated with death), and without seeing, cover their father” (“They’re
Nothing but Incestuous Bastards,” 134).
34. Figure 23 in Allen, Legend of Noah.
35. John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis, 2 vols., trans.
John King (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1948), 1:309.
36. Cf. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, “Mimesis and Mirror Images in History,” paper de-
livered at the annual conference of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion,
Stanford University, 27 June 1996.
37. Schwartz, The Curse of Cain, xi, 115.
38. Marcus Dods raised this possibility in 1901: “Many questions must have arisen in
[Noah’s] mind regarding the relation of the new to the old. Was there to be any
connection with the old world at all, or was all to begin afresh? Were the promises,
the traditions, the events, the genealogies of the old world of any significance now?”
(The Book of Genesis, The Expositor’s Bible, series 1, Vol. 2 [New York: A.C. Arm-
strong, 1901], 71–72).
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39. The brothers are typically referred to as “Shem, Ham and Japheth” (Gen. 5:32; 6:
10; 7:13; 9:18; 10:1; 1 Chron. 1:4). But if Ham is Noah’s “youngest son” (Gen. 9:24),
why is he listed as the middle child? Adding to the confusion, Genesis 10:21 can
be read so that Shem is designated “the brother of Japheth the elder.” Biblical
commentators have suggested many solutions to the enigma of birth order—for
instance, that Shem and Ham are listed in succession because their descendants
live in proximity, or that the arrangement Shem, Ham, and Japheth is “euphonic
rather than chronological.” See J. Ernest Shufelt, “Noah’s Curse and Blessing: Gen.
9:18–27,” Concordia Theological Monthly 17 (1946): 737; and Clyde T. Francisco,
“The Curse on Canaan,” Christianity Today (24 April 1964): 9.
40. “Triangular Desire, in The Girard Reader, 40.
41. “Mimesis and Violence,” in The Girard Reader, 13.
42. According to Girard, “the unity of novelistic conclusions consists in the renunci-
ation of metaphysical desire. The dying hero repudiates his mediator” (“Desire
and the Unity of Novelistic Conclusions,” in The Girard Reader, 48). In Genesis
9, Noah denounces the brothers’ rivalry, uttering on their behalf “words which
clearly contradict their former ideas”(47).
43. Generative violence must remain hidden; thus, the theme of chance recurs in
folklore, myth, and fable: “The motif of chance has its origin in the arbitrary
nature of the violent resolution. . . . The selection is not made by men, but left to
divine Chance, acting through violence”(“The Surrogate Victim,” in The Girard
Reader, 24, 26).
44. According to Girard, this differentiation is the effect rather than the cause of the
scapegoat’s misdeed: “The mythical sequence is a scapegoat inspired reversal of
cause and effect.” See “Python and His Two Wives: An Exemplary Scapegoat
Myth,” in The Girard Reader, 118.
45. Ibid., 119.
46. Violence and the Sacred, 7. Girard writes that those who sacrifice the pharmakos
“are striving to produce a replica, as faithful as possible in every detail, of a
previous crisis that was resolved by means of a spontaneously unanimous victim-
ization. All the dangers, real and imaginary, that threaten the community are
subsumed in the most terrible danger that can confront a society: the sacrificial
crisis. The rite is therefore a repetition of the original, spontaneous ‘lynching’ that
restored order in the community by reestablishing, around the figure of the sur-
rogate victim, that sentiment of social accord that had been destroyed in the
onslaught of reciprocal violence. Like Oedipus, the victim is considered a polluted
object, whose living presence contaminates everything that comes in contact with
it and whose death purges the community of its ills—as the subsequent restoration
of public tranquility clearly testifies. That is why the pharmakos was paraded about
the city. He was used as a kind of sponge to sop up impurities, and afterward he
was expelled from the community or killed in a ceremony that involved the entire
populace” (94–95).
47. Walter Burkert, “The Problem of Ritual Killing,” in Violent Origins: Walter Burkert,
René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, ed.
Robeert G. Hamerton-Kelly (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), 172.
48. See Bailey, “They’re Nothing But Incestuous Bastards.”
49. More than one modern writer has noted that sacrificial themes overflow into
Genesis 9. Leon Kass observes that Noah’s voluntary sacrifice of “scores of his
former ark-mates” immediately after leaving the ark is evidence of his “suscepti-
          -  

bility to Dionysian chaos” and reveals his “lust for meat—or, at the very least, his
blood lust, his willingness to shed blood.” Kass also criticizes Noah’s act of revenge
as a “willingness to ‘sacrifice’ his grandson, Canaan, to Molech” (Kass, “Seeing the
Nakedness of the Father,” Commentary, [June 1992]: 43, 47).
50. Girard, “Sacrifice as Sacral Violence and Substitution,” in The Girard Reader, 76–
77.
51. Ibid., 77–78.
52. Ibid., 81.
53. In the canonical Gospels, Jesus is presented as “an innocent victim of a group in
crisis, which, for a time at any rate, is united against him” (The Bible’s Distinc-
tiveness and the Gospel,” in The Girard Reader, 165).
54. Girard writes that “in the first books of the Bible, the founding mechanism [of
human culture] shows through the texts here and there, sometimes strikingly but
never completely and unambiguously. . . . Throughout the Old Testament, a work
of exegesis is in progress, operating in precisely the opposite direction to the usual
dynamics of mythology and culture.” In the Prophets, Girard believes, there is an
increasing tendency for the victim to be brought to light, along with a subversion
of the pillars of primitive religion, including “the primitive conception of the law
as a form of obsessive differentiation, a refusal of mixed states that looks upon in
differentiation with horror”(“The Bible’s Distinctiveness and the Gospel,” in The
Girard Reader, 154, 55, 57).
55. The Girard Reader, 17, 18.
56. Ibid., 18.
57. Girard writes that “Abel is only the first in a long line of victims whom the Bible
exhumes and exonerates: ‘The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the
ground’ ”(“The Bible’s Distinctiveness and the Gospel,” in The Girard Reader, 151).
Girard goes on to observe that instead of corroborating the accusation that Joseph
has acted inappropriately with the Egyptian’s wife, Genesis declares that the ac-
cusation is false. This supplies quite a contrast, of course, with the narrator’s role
in the story of Ham.
58. Williams, The Bible, Violence and the Sacred, 183, 184.
59. Ibid., 14–15.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. William Stringfellow was an antebellum slavery apologist who presumed to speak
for Ham. In a proslavery tract published in 1861, Stringfellow had a son of Japheth
approach a son of Ham in Africa to offer him the role of servant. Pondering the
history of his people, the young Hamite acknowledged that “Ham, my father, was
a compound of beastly wickedness” while “the descendants of Ham, the beastly
and degraded sons of Noah, were subjected to a degraded servitude to Shem and
Japheth” (in Thomas V. Peterson, Ham and Japheth in America: The Mythic World
of Whites in the Antebellum South [Metuchen, N.J.: American Theological Library
Association, 1978], 130).
63. Williams, The Bible, Violence and the Sacred, 187.
64. While I am generally uncomfortable with the typological mode of interpretation
that Christians have utilized to exploit the riches of the “Old Testament,” I am
emboldened to treat Ham as a type of Christ by the fact that readers of the Hebrew
Bible have not regarded him as a treasure.
65. Du Bois’s “Jesus Christ in Texas,” in Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (New
298            -  

York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 123–33. Cullen’s “The Black Christ” is
anthologized in My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen,
Voice of the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Gerald Early (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
For American artistic depictions of lynching as crucifixion, see “Christmas in
Georgia, .., 1916,” Crisis (December 1916); “Not Kultur, but Americans Passed
This Way,” Richmond Planet (22 November 1919); and Prentiss Taylor, “Christ in
Alabama”(1932). See also Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ (Maryknoll, N.Y.:
Orbis, 1994).
66. See David Novak, The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism: An Historical and Con-
structive Study of the Noahide Laws (New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen, 1983).
67. Canonical antidotes for segregationist uses of the Babel story include Zephaniah
3:9–11 and Isaiah 66:18–23, texts in which Yahweh promises that when the process
of salvation is fulfilled, the curse of Babel will be reversed. See Douglas Bax, “The
Bible and Apartheid 2,” in Apartheid Is a Heresy, ed. John W. DeGruchy and
Charles Villa-Vicencio (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 124. The story of Pentecost
can also be read as a reversal of Babel.
68. Desmond Tutu, The Rainbow People of God: The Making of a Peaceful Revolution
(New York: Doubleday, 1994), 61. See also Allister Sparks, The Mind of South Africa
(New York: Knopf, 1990), 289–91.

Chapter 12

1. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, The Anatomy of Prejudices (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press, 1996), 34.
2. See, e.g., Forrest G. Wood, The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America
from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century (Boston: Northeastern University
Press, 1991).
3. This exegetical tradition, which entered popular lore in Islamic culture, is reflected
in the tale of “The Man of Al-Yaman and His Six Slave-Girls” in Thousand and One
Nights: “And indeed it is told in certain histories, related on the authority of devout
men, that Noah (on whom be peace!) was sleeping one day, with his sons Cham
and Shem seated at his head, when a wind sprang up and, lifting his clothes, un-
covered his nakedness; whereat Cham looked and laughed and did not cover him:
but Shem arose and covered him. Presently, their sire awoke and learning what had
been done by his sons, blessed Shem and cursed Cham. So Shem’s face was whitened
and from him sprang the prophets and the orthodox Caliphs and Kings; whilst
Cham’s face was blackened and he fled forth to the land of Abyssinia, and of his
lineage came the blacks. All people are of one mind in affirming the lack of un-
derstanding of the blacks, even as saith the adage, ‘How shall one find a black with
a mind?’ ” In Werner Sollors, Neither Black nor White yet Both: Thematic Explora-
tions of Interracial Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 91.
On the evolution of the Hamitic myth in the Muslim world, see William McKee
Evans, “From the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea: The Strange Odyssey of
the ‘Sons of Ham,’ ” American Historical Review 85, no. 1 (1980): 15–43.
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Walters, Ronald G. The Anti-Slavery Appeal: Abolitionism after 1830. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Watson, Curtis Brown. Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960.
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Weld, Theodore Dwight. The Bible Against Slavery: An Inquiry into the Patriarchal and
Mosaic Systems on the Subject of Human Rights. New York: American Anti-Slavery
Society, 1838.
Whitcomb, John C., Jr. “The Prophecy of Noah’s Sons.” Freedom Now (August–Sep-
tember 1966): 7–8.
Willet, Andrew. Hexapla in Genesin. London: Tho. Creede, 1608.
Williams, James G. The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of
Sanctioned Violence. Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity, 1995.
Willis, John Ralph, ed. Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, 2 vols. London: F. Cass,
1985.
Wilson, Charles Reagan. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920
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Wilson, Samuel, Jr., The First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans. New Orleans: Lou-
isiana Landmarks Society, 1988.
Winterson, Jeanette. Boating for Beginners. London: Methuen, 1985.
Wittenberg, Gunther. “Let Canaan Be His Slave” (Genesis 9:26). Is Ham Also Cursed?”
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Woodbury, Naomi Felicia. “A Legacy of Intolerance: Nineteenth Century Pro-Slavery
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 Index

abolitionism, 8, 11, 66, 77, 79, 90, 91, 96, postbellum period, 13, 14, 100–01, 126,
103, 111, 116, 135, 148, 156, 181–84, 202 127
and anarchy, 91 and racial discourse, 6
and fanaticism, 155 Amherst College, 151, 159
and infidelity, 91, 154 Andover Seminary, 159
abolitionists. See abolitionism apartheid, 18, 19
Abraham, 27, 111 Appomatox, 139
Abram, 4, 43, 44 “Ariel.” See Buckner H. Payne
Adam, 15, 31, 37, 69, 93, 95, 102, 152, 172, Ararat, 18, 93, 108
178, 190, 192, 194, 199, 201 ark, 27, 31, 35, 93, 197, 215
Addington, Joseph C., 89 Armstrong, George D., 71, 82
Africa, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 23, 26, 27, 28, 34, 48, Army of Tennessee, 128
77, 117, 141, 142, 153, 163, 164, 185 Asia, 5, 6, 28, 49, 117, 141, 142
African Americans Asshur, 109
divines, 164 Assyria, 42, 57
extinction, 173 Atlas, 49
African Servitude, 72, 85, 102 Augustine, 7, 28, 29, 30, 46, 47, 55
Africans, 8, 9, 132 Azurara, Gomes Eanes de, 34
and heathenism, 92
and savagery, 141 Babel. See Tower of Babel
and servitude, 126 Babington, Gervase, 55, 179
Afrocentrism, 196 Babylon, 18, 42, 44, 47, 48, 50, 56, 57, 58,
alcohol, 80 61, 113, 183, 195
Alcuin, 5 Bailey, Randall, 185, 195
Allen, Don Cameron, 31, 34 Baldwin, James, 192
amalgamation. See intermarriage Baldwin, Samuel Davies, 73, 85
Ambrose of Milan, 7, 29, 48, 94 Barkun, Michael, 16
America Barnes, Julian, 196
antebellum period, 9, 10, 12, 65, 66, 69 Bassett, Frederick W., 186–87
colonial period, 8 Battle of Shiloh, 128

314
    

Baumgarten, Albert I., 186 Canaan, 7, 8, 12, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30,
Bayle, Pierre, 37–8 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75,
Bede, Venerable 30, 48 77, 88, 95, 99, 143, 159, 163, 167, 180,
Beecher, Henry Ward, 151 181, 184, 185, 194, 202, 211
Belus, 56, 58 and sexual assault on Noah, 186–87, 190
Berossus, 26, 34, 35 Canaanites, 5, 6, 12, 16, 24, 29, 30, 68, 76,
Best, George, 35, 36 100, 144, 181, 185, 192, 202
biblical criticism, 184 and sexual perversion, 188
Black Bible Chronicles, 195 Cannon, Katie Geneva, 195
black “race,” 132 Carroll, Charles, 15
blackness, 7, 11, 12, 36, 48, 61, 95, 99, 180, Cartwright, Samuel, 82, 98
192, 198 Cash, W. J., 9, 77
and evil, 86 Cassian, John, 30
blacks Cassuto, Umberto, 42, 185, 187, 209
and animality, 98 Chartres Cathedral, 30
as children, 89 Cheever, George B., 183
and disorder, 104 Chesnutt, Charles W., 192
as emotional, 98 China, 141
as savages, 90, 93 Christ. See Jesus
as ungovernable, 97–99 Christian Identity, 16
Blassingame, John W., 10 Christians, 8
Blyden, Edward Wilmot, 164 Chrysostom, 29, 30
Bob Jones University, 3, 4 Church Fathers, 7, 27–30, 31, 33, 44, 46, 47,
Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 180 51, 67, 77, 178
Book of Adam and Eve, The, 26 Chus. See Cush
Book of Enoch, 189 Civil Rights Movement, 86, 201
Book of Jubilees, 26 Civil War, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 69, 79, 88, 92,
Book of the Cave of Treasures, The, 48 102, 126, 138, 150
Book of the Generations of Adam, 189 Clarke, Adam, 40, 57
Boston, Massachusetts, 130 Clement, 29, 33, 47, 88
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry, 191 Cobb, Howell, 74, 89
Braude, Benjamin, 49, 67 Cohen, H. Hirsch, 188–89
Breckenridge, Robert J., 147, 148 Coke, Sir Edward, 68
Brisbane, William H., 111, 182 Coleman, Elihu, 184
Bristowe, Ellen, 15 Cologne Bible, 210
British-Israelism, 16 Columbia Seminary, 152
Brooks, Iveson, 82 Columbia, South Carolina, 133, 147
brother stories, 204, 206 Comester, Peter, 5, 31, 32
Brow, Robert, 168 Confederacy, 83, 128, 131, 135, 136, 154
Brown v. Board of Education, 116 confusion of tongues, 150
Brown, John, 96, 102 Copher, Charles B., 195
Browne, Sir Thomas, 180 covenant, 205
Buechner, Frederick, 196 creation, 203
Butler, Benjamin, 149 Crowther, Edward R., 84
Byrd, Robert, 116 Crummel, Alexander, 194
Cullen, Countee, 218
Cain, 15, 16, 30, 34, 74, 99, 100, 194, 204, curse of Canaan. See Ham, curse
205, 211, 214 Cursor Mundi, 30
Calhoun, John C., 90, 155 Cush, 7, 35, 36, 41, 43, 46, 48, 58, 61, 109,
Calmet, Augustin, 38, 56 194
Calvin, John, 33, 39, 51, 68, 77, 178–79, and Tower of Babel, 59
210 Cushan, 120
Calvinism, 13 Custance, Arthur C., 167, 169
316   

Dabbs, James McBride, 88 Fall, the 28; second, 94

Dabney, Robert L., 71, 93 Felder, Cain Hope, 187, 195
Dagg, J. L., 71 Figart, Thomas, 169
Dake, Finis Jennings, 118 Filaster, 46
Dalcho, Frederick, 71, 97, 111 Fitzhugh, George, 91
Daniel, Carey, 86, 119 Fletcher, John, 17, 71, 99, 112
Dante, 31, 47, 55 Flood, 5, 12, 16, 17, 30, 34, 38, 42, 44, 48,
on Nimrod, 49 53, 72, 100, 108, 110, 115, 129, 133, 142,
Dathan, 35 143, 150, 153, 167, 172, 180, 188, 197,
David, 31, 185, 194 199, 210, 214
Davis, Jefferson, 79, 83, 95, 140 and biblical narrative, 205, 212
de la Peyere, Isaac, 15 and dispersion, 137
Debow, Saul, 173 and wickedness, 137
Delitzsch, Franz, 187 Franklin, John Hope, 9, 78, 81, 82
Deluge. See Flood French Revolution, 154, 155, 156
demons, 30, 31 Freud, Sigmund, 191, 220
desire, 188–191; 209
Devil. See Satan Gale, William Potter, 17
Dew, Thomas Roderick, 82, 90 Garrison, William Lloyd, 91, 156
differentiation, 4–6 Generations of Noah, The, 189
disorder Genesis Rabbah, 24
and African character, 96 genocide, 171
and white fear, 101 Genovese, Eugene D., 11, 12, 13, 14, 112, 126,
dispersion, 4–6, 44, 45, 55, 126 174
Dods, Marcus, 179 Gillespie, Thomas G., 116, 161
Douglass, Frederick, 194 Girard, René, 206–15
Du Bartas, Guillaume De Salluste Sieur, 36– Gnosticism, 99
7, 54, 178 Governing Race, The, 74, 84, 95
on Nimrod, 52–53 Graves, Robert 186–89
Dubois, W. E. B., 218 Grayson, William J., 82
Dutch Reformed Church, 18 Greenberg, Kenneth, 9, 79, 80, 81, 102
Gregg, Maxcey, 149
Gregory of Tours, 30
Early Modern Period, 34–37 Grimké, Sara, 90
Eaton, Clement, 9, 79, 82 Gunkel, Hermann, 185
Eber, 5
Eden, 16, 43, 90, 94, 109, 192, 204 Ham, 3, 5, 6, 8, 16, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34,
Egypt, 132, 183, 184, 195 41, 43, 126, 141
Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard, 188 and black “race,” 12, 24, 25, 89, 101, 162,
Elam, 186 193
Emancipation, 14, 92, 113, 162 and castration, 67, 167, 189
Enlightenment, 37–40, 155 curse of, 6, 8, 47, 66, 78, 94, 103, 165, 166
Enoch, 27 and degradation, 102
Ephrem of Nisibis, 7 and deicide, 67
Esau, 44 and dishonor, 33, 34, 39, 40, 67, 68, 74,
Ethiopia, 172, 181 75, 76, 78, 80, 84, 102, 178, 211
Eubank, Wayne C., 131 and disorder, 101
Europe, 5, 6, 28, 117, 141, 142 and disrespect, 163
Eve, 15, 16–17, 37, 90, 94, 110 eponymous ancestor of Africans, 9, 23,
Ham’s wife, 193 71, 80, 98, 106, 172, 181
Exell, Joseph, 114 and Ethiopia, 164
Exploration, Age of, 6, 35 failure to sexualize his transgression, 69,
Ezell, Humphrey K., 103 71, 74
    

“father of Canaan,” 207 and rebellion, 10, 117, 169;

gaze upon Noah, 67 savage condition of, 129, 132, 133
and greed, 36 and sensuality, 86
and heresy, 69 and servitude, 14, 73, 87, 103, 133
and impiety, 72, 76, 85 and sexual sin, 187
and impropriety, 166 their prophetic mission, 165
and incest, 35, 38, 67, 69, 186, 191 and Tower of Babel, 167
and incontinence at sea, 24, 31, 35–6, 38, and violence, 101
67 and wickedness, 97
and infidelity, 162 and witchcraft, 67
and intermarriage, 99 Hamitic hypothesis, 171–74
and irreverence, 36, 68, 163 Hammond, William Henry, 90
and Jesus, 206 Harper, William, 82, 90
laughter, 24, 26, 29, 31, 32, 33, 87, 94, 95, Haskins, Charles Homer, 48
96, 97, 193 hell, 54, 55
and magic, 29, 31, 32, 34, 38, 69 Henry, Matthew, 39, 57, 179
meaning of his name, 101 Heyrman, Christine Leigh, 82, 152, 157
and mischievous behavior, 10 Hilary, 28, 30
and mockery, 32, 51, 96, 106, 193 Hislop, Alexander, 58, 106, 171
Noah’s youngest son, 204 Hodge, Charles, 151, 152
and paganism, 167 Holgate, Jerome, 107, 108, 162
and physicality, 167 Holly, Alonzo Potter Burgess, 195
and rebellion, 68, 69 Holly, James Theodore, 164
and scapegoating mechanism, 215 Honor
and seduction of Noah, 186 and Christianity, 82
and servitude, 132, 133, 158; in Noah’s family, 70
and sexual assault, 24, 25, 30, 67, 69, 77, and order, 101–02
205, 209 and shame, 78
and social death, 72, 73, 74 and slavery 73
and sodomy, 190 Southern, 8, 9, 11, 12, 66
and territorial expansion, 32 Honorarius of Autun, 30
and theft of Noah’s potency, 18 Hopkins, John H., 75
his transgression, 25, 70, 73, 84, 86, 93, How, Samuel B., 89
99, 146, 180, 195, 201 human diversity, 73
as type of Christ, 217 Hurston, Zora Neale, 193
as type of heretics, 28 Hutus, 172, 173
and vice, 74
as victim, 203, 206, 212, 215, 217
and voyeurism, 187, 189 Iapheth. See Japheth
and wickedness, 71 Ide, Arthur Frederick, 189
Hamites, 6, 27, 43, 47, 51, 182, 201, 203 idolatry, 30, 33, 44
and ambition, 163 India, 128
and astrology, 67 Indians. See Native Americans
and “Bantus,” 171 integration, 103
and barbarism, 135 intermarriage, 4, 17, 103, 118, 157, 194
and cannibalism, 101 and antediluvian corruption, 99
and covetousness, 163 and disorder, 100
and degradation, 71, 76 and divine punishment, 100
and disorder, 88, 99, 106, 107, 118, 157 and white fears, 137
and divine plan, 195 intertextuality, 6, 213
and idolatry, 67, 75 Irenaeus, 29
and inventive genius, 167 Isidore of Seville, 28
and lewdness, 69 Islam, 7, 8, 95, 221
318 

Jackson, Stonewall, 83 Martyr, Justin, 27

Japhet. See Japheth Maston, T. B., 116
Japheth, 5, 24, 28, 30, 32, 36, 40, 41, 42, 70, Maurus, Rabanus, 30
72, 73, 74, 75, 80, 97, 129, 132, 133, 143, Mengele, Josef, 191
158, 163, 164, 182, 184 Michelangelo, 178
and Anglo-Saxons, 166 Middle Ages, 45, 48–50
as conspirator in Ham’s transgression, Midrash, 26, 42
190 Miles, William F. S., 172
and enlargement, 144 Milton, John, 36, 37, 45, 56
and Romans, 165 on Nimrod, 54–55
and white “race,” 89, 99, 100, 103, 117, mimetic crisis, 208
141, 162, 209, 210 mimetic rivalry, 207, 209, 211
Japhethites, 43 miscegenation. See intermarriage
Jerome, 30, 47 Mongols, 32
Jesus, 28, 156, 194 Morrow, James, 170
as innocent victim, 214 Moses, 51
Jews, 8, 16, 28, 35, 183 myth, 207
Jim Crow, 10
Jobson, Richard, 36 Nat (slave stereotype), 10
Johnson, Thomas Carey, 151 National Broadcasting Corporation, 3, 4
Johnston, Michael P., 79 National Public Radio, 3
Joktan, 42 Native Americans
Jonathan, fourth son of Noah, 48, 49, 214 as Canaanites, 144–45
Jordan, Winthrop, 35 extermination as judgment, 144, 145
Joseph, 214 as Hamites, 145
Josephus, 26, 33, 44, 45, 47, 51, 55, 94 as “lost tribes” of Israel, 144
as Semites, 144–45
Kaf ka, Franz, 208 their practical extinction, 143
Kass, Leon, 169 Nebuchadnezzar, 149
Keil, C. F., 187 negroes, 12, 14, 36
Ker, Leander, 90, 93, 95, 102 and barbarism, 96, 156
Kinney, Kenneth R., 117 and disorder, 87
Ku Klux Klan, 17, 92 and immorality, 92
Kugel, James L., 17 as pre-Adamite beasts
Kuper, Leo, 208 and rebellion, 87
and sensuality, 77, 88
Lacey, Harry, 115 stereotypes of, 10
Lactantius, 27, 29 white views of, 70
Landrith, James, 3, 4 Nephilim, 17, 59, 120
Lee, Robert E., 83, 136, 140 New Hamite Hypothesis, 196
Lincoln, Abraham, 83 New Orleans, 13, 125, 127, 128, 133, 135, 140,
Lost Cause, 92, 140, 141 147, 152
Luther, Martin, 32, 33, 68, 88 New York City, 151
on Nimrod, 50–52 Newton, Thomas, 38–9, 40, 179
lynching, 218 Nimrod, 5, 6, 10, 14, 16, 36, 41–61, 104, 126,
Lyon, James A., 89, 92 195
and Adonis, 59
M’Causland, Dominick, 15 and alcohol, 110
McKenzie, Steven L., 187 and ambition, 48, 51, 54, 57, 61, 170
McLain, C. E., 86, 120 and anarchy, 119
Magi, 5, 48 and animal passions, 107
male gaze, 188 and anti-Christ, 56, 115
Mardon, 43 as anti-Noah, 45
Mars, 49, 52 as apostate, 59, 60
    

and asceticism, 53 and magic, 45

and Assyria, 111 meaning of his name, 58, 59, 114, 118
and astrology, 44 messianic prophecy of, 48
and astronomy, 48, 50 mystery cult of, 59, 61
and Baal, 111 negro, 59, 61, 112
and Bacchus, 60 and Northern aggression, 154
and Belus and Osiris, 59, 60
blackness of, 106, 107 as prideful, 46, 47
as builder of Tower of Babel, 49, 50, 51, and proslavery argument, 111
54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 107, 108, 109, 114, and prostitution, 59
119, 133, 158, 159, 168, 170, 171 and rebellion, 43, 45, 49, 50, 54, 57, 60,
as challenger of patriarchal rule, 53, 58, 61, 106, 107, 110, 111, 113, 114, 118, 119,
60 121, 138, 149
and Charles Darwin, 121 and resistance to postdiluvial dispersion,
as child and young man, 52 45, 47, 60, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 115
as city builder, 44, 61 and Satan, 59, 61, 107, 109, 115, 120
clothing of, 43, 44, 56, 60 self-divination of, 43
club of, 108 and sensual pleasure, 59
and confusion, 47, 50, 55, 60, 119 and slaughter of innocents, 44
and consolidation, 138 as son of Cush, 170
and corruption, 110 as son of God, 49
death of, 59 and sovereignty, 49, 51, 54, 57, 58, 60, 107
and demons, 49 and statecraft, 48, 61
and desire for fame, 115 and sun worship, 109
as dictator, 120 and Tammuz, 59
dominion of, 43 and territorial expansion, 42, 47, 61, 158
empire of, 49, 51, 52, 57, 61 throne of, 43, 44
and establishment of Babylonian and Tower of Babel, as protection
monarchy, 54, 115 against second flood, 43, 45, 46, 53,
and Ethiopia, 111 60, 112
and expulsion of Semites, 51–52 turning men from God, 43, 45
and false religion, 118 and tyranny, 45, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55,
and fire worship, 47, 56 56, 57, 58, 60, 106, 112, 114, 118, 138,
gigantic stature of, 46, 47, 49, 50, 56, 58, 170
59, 60, 108 veneration of, 43, 46, 57, 58
as grandson of Ham, 49, 50, 56, 60, 106, and violence, 45, 110
108, 158, 159, 182 nineteenth century, 40
and greed, 56 Ninevah, 182
and heathenism, 111 Ninus, 58
and Hercules, 52, 60, 108 Noah, 4 , 18, 129, 139
and hidden knowledge, 48, 60 alcohol, 188, 197, 199
and human sacrifice, 59 birth of, 204
as hunter (oppressor) of men, 46, 53, 54, blessing of, 75, 132
56, 61, 114, 115, 120 curse of, 7, 34, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83,
as hunter of wild beasts, 42, 43, 46, 52, 85, 96, 108, 125, 131, 132, 134, 143, 154,
57, 58, 60, 61, 108, 109, 170 157, 159, 162, 171
and idolatry, 44, 46, 47, 56, 57, 60, 68, and discrimination among his sons, 116
69, 107, 109, 114 and dishonor, 72
and impiety, 43, 51 drunkenness of, 4, 5, 24, 28, 32, 34, 65,
and insurrection, 158 67, 71, 80, 86, 94, 146, 152, 163, 165, 178–
and integration, 120 80, 183, 190, 193, 198, 214
and intermarriage, 112, 113 fall of, 165, 179
and Karl Marx, 121 and genocide, 190
legend of, 42, 48 as governor of postdiluvian world, 72
320   

Noah (continued ) and language of genocide, 173–74

as head of human family, 72 and law of separation, 128, 133, 134, 136,
and his nakedness, 30, 192, 193, 195, 205 137, 139, 142, 145
and homosexual desire, 190 legacy of, 161
and honor, 72 and Lost Cause, 136
and intemperance, 179 and mastery, 157
legend of, 30, 35 and national character, 131, 132, 133
paternal blessing of, 210 “National Responsibility before God,”
as patriarch, 75 128, 132, 148, 155–56
and plantation life, 69 and necessity of servitude, 153
as planter, 134 on Nimrod, 137
prophecy of, 6, 11, 13, 14, 70, 73, 74, 75, on Noah’s curse and physical separation,
81, 99, 125, 127, 132, 133, 143, 144, 145, 133
146, 148, 159, 164, 165, 166, 180, 182, 211 “Oath of Allegiance,” 149
righteousness of, 24, 31, 36, 69, 177, 206, and order, 152–55
209 “Our Historic Mission,” 129–131
as second Adam, 93, 134, 165, 204 “Pastoral Letter of 1870, The” 150
and shame, 72, 75, 79, 80, 102, 179 as patriarch, 159
sons of, 66, 68 philosophy of history of, 129, 136
as type of Christ, 27, 28, 31, 178 as preacher, 127
as victim, 206 “Present Crisis and Its Issue, The” 136–
Noahides, 218 38, 158
Noll, Mark, 126 and racial hierarchy, 141
Northerners and racial purity, 137, 140
as meddlers in South, 98 and rebellion at Babel, 138
relationship with his father, 159
Oedipus, 212 relationship with his son, 160
Old South, 66, 77, 88, 99 and religious justification for slavery, 132
1 Enoch, 46 and school segregation, 136
order, 8 and scientific racism, 140
and honor, 101–02 and segregation, 137
and the Southern mind, 88–93 and separation of races, 128
Origen, 7, 27, 29, 94 and servitude as normal condition of
Orion. See Nimrod blacks, 135
Ostriker, Alicia Suskin, 197 and South’s providential trust to
Ownby, Ted, 83, 84 preserve slavery, 131, 135
“Thanksgiving sermon,” 128, 130–131,
Palmer, Benjamin M., 13–15 147, 153, 155
address before Crescent Rifles, 131 and the race problem, 136, 139
address before General Assembly of and tripartite division of human race,
South Carolina, 133–35 129, 140, 143
address before Legislature of Georgia, and tyranny, 153, 158
133–34 and victimhood, 158, 159
address before Washington Artillery, 131 “Vindication of Secession and the South,
and America’s mission, 129, 130 A,” 148
“Century Sermon,” 128, 142, 173 and yellow fever epidemic of 1858, 130
and confusion of tongues, 137, 139 Palmer, Edward, 159
and dispersion at Babel, 134, 135 Paradise, 93
Family, in Its Civil and Churchly Aspects, Parham, Charles, 17
The, 153 Patai, Raphael, 186–89
and holy war, 131 patristic writers. See Church Fathers
and honor, 147–52 Patterson, Orlando, 9, 80, 81, 82
“Import of Hebrew History, The” 128 Payne, Buckner H., 17, 100, 112
    

Peleg, 5 revivalism, 155

Pennington, James W. C., 111, 184, 194 Rice, Gene, 106, 185
persecution texts, 207 Robb, Thom, 17
Peter, 48 Robinson, John Bell, 69, 75
Peter of Riga, 31 Rogers, Gus “Jabbo,” 95
Peterson, Thomas, 11, 143, 155, 187 Roman Catholic Church, 58
pharmakon, 199, 200 Romanticism, 81, 88, 127, 141
pharmakos, 212 Ross, Allen P., 168
Phenech, 42 Ross, Fred A., 89
Philistines, 185 Rosse, Abraham, 34, 56, 199
Phillips, Anthony, 186 Rougemont, F. de, 129
Philo, 26, 46 Ruffin, Edmund
Pink, Arthur, 115 Rwanda, 172, 173
Pitt-Reeves, Julian, 78, 81
polygenesis, 15, 202 sacrifice, 205, 208, 213, 214
Portugal, 7 Saffin, John, 8
pre-Adamism, 15–17, 202 Sahara, 129
prejudice, 220 Sambo (slave stereotype), 10, 193
Presbyterians, 13 Samson, 31
Northern, 139, 141, 150, 157, 158 Sandell, J. W., 98, 113
Presbyterian Church in Confederate Santo Domingo (Haiti), 154
States of America, 92, 102 Satan, 31, 32, 33, 51, 55, 69, 156, 198
Southern, 77, 93, 125, 127, 138, 150, 154, scapegoating mechanism, 208, 211, 215
157 Schlegel, Friederich von, 126, 129, 130
Prewitt, Terry, 205 Schwartz, Regina M., 191, 210
Priest, Josiah, 41, 42, 69, 76, 87, 101, 106, Scott, Sir Walter, 9, 88
107 secession, 78, 83, 84, 125, 130, 131, 134, 147
primordial violence, 207, 213 Second Great Awakening, 155
Princeton, New Jersey, 130 segregation, 86, 92, 103, 104, 114, 116, 127,
Princeton Seminary, 152 162
proslavery as providential, 117
argument, 66, 70 as scriptural principle, 118, 119
divines, 66 Semiramis, 59
intellectuals, 11, 65, 67, 69, 76, 77, 78 Semites, 43, 132
Protestant Episcopal Church, 97 Septuagint, 5, 39
Pseudo Methodius, 48 servitude. See slavery
Purchas, Samuel, 35 Sewall, Samuel, 8, 181
Shanks, Caroline L., 182
rabbis, 7, 24–25, 28, 31, 42, 67, 77, 87, 177, Shem, 5, 24, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 40, 42, 43,
198 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 80, 90, 97, 103, 117,
racial hierarchy, 89, 99, 114, 126, 145, 165 129, 132, 133, 141, 143, 163, 164, 182, 184,
racism 188, 193, 209, 210
intuitive, 126 as conspirator in Ham’s transgression,
religious, 126 190
scientific, 13, 103, 113, 126, 127, 174, 202 and Jews, 165
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 53 and red “race,” 89, 99, 162
Rankin, John, 182–83 and spirituality, 167
rebelliousness, 26, 44 “tents” of, 143, 144, 145
Reconstruction, 126, 136, 137, 138 Shinar, 6, 18, 43, 45, 53, 57, 61, 108, 111, 134,
red “race,” 132, 143 170
Reformation, 32–34, 50–56, 95 sibling rivalry, 192
Renaissance, 50–56, 67 Sibylline Oracles, 26
and personal honor, 68 Simms, William Gilmore, 90
322   

slavery, 6, 7, 8, 10, 30, 34, 65, 66, 71 Thompson, Joseph P., 76, 111
and Bible standard, 89, 92 Thornwell, James H., 92, 138
as civilizing influence, 93, 98 Tower of Babel, 4, 6, 10, 13, 18, 41, 43, 44,
as domestic, 89, 130, 131, 152 45, 113, 134, 140, 162, 187
and honor, 75, 81 and city of Babylon, 6, 41, 100
as patriarchal, 129, 135 and dispersion, 114
and rebellion, 77, 90, 92, 96, 97 and human diversity, 169
and slave impudence, 80, 97 and human sin, 218–9
and social control, 91 as symbol of international
and subordination, 91 confederation, 115
slaves, as children, 153 as symbol of internationalism, 120
Sloan, James A., 73, 84, 102 as symbol of modern social ills, 121
Smith, H. Shelton, 130 Travels of Sir John Mandeville, 32, 49
Smith, Joseph, 15 Turner, Nat, 102
Smith, Lillian, 77 Tutsis, 172, 173
Smith, William, 71 Tutu, Desmond, 218
Smylie, James, 70 Twain, Mark, 192
Smyth, Thomas, 111 Life on the Mississippi, 8, 9, 88
Snay, Mitchell, 13
social death, 9, 77 Uncle Remus, 10
Sodom, 30, 66, 86, 100 Uncle Tom, 10
Solomon, 104 United States Constitution, 99, 147, 148,
sons of Noah 156
and unfolding of world history, 165–68
South Carolina, 3, 134, 151, 152, 159 Virginia, 136
Southern Historical Society Papers, 140 Von der Hardt, Hermann, 35
Southern Literary Messenger, 89 von Trimberg, Hugo, 30
Southern mind, 78 Vulgate, 5
and conservatism, 88
and honor, 78 Walker, David, 194
and nationalism, 141 Washington & Lee College, 136
Southerners, as rebels, 134, 138, 148 Wayland, Francis, 71
Spain, 7 Weld, Theodore, 11, 70, 177, 181
Speke, John Hanning, 172 Wellhausen, Julius, 184–88
Spring Resolutions, 148 white domination, 127
Stone, J. L., 183 white “race,” 132
subordination, 73 Willet, Andrew, 33, 34, 56, 179
Sulpicius Severus, 94 Wilson, Charles Reagan, 92
superstition, 29 Winchell, Alexander, 15, 17
Swift, Wesley, 17 Wittenberg, Gunther, 185, 187
Sylvester Larned Institute, 136 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, 9, 79, 80, 81, 82,
83, 84, 85, 102, 147
Table of Nations (Genesis 10), 5, 12, 42, 46,
106, 143, 168, 185 Yonton. See Jonathan
Taylor, Jeremy, 68 Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, 220
Terah, 44
Tertullian, 46 Zohar, 27, 88
Thomas, Latta, 195 Zoroaster, 30, 32