Ham's Curse Was Used As the Basis & Justification of Black Slavery (Interpretations of Genesis 9:25)

The tradition that Ham was a black man developed much later. It is a Rabbinical elaboration,19 not explicitly formulated until the Babylonian Talmud of 500 AD. In the middle ages, European scholars of the Bible picked up on the Jewish Talmud idea that the "sons of Ham" were "blackened" by their sins. These arguments became increasingly common during the slave trade of the 18th and 19th Centuries. A historian, Edith Sanders, concludes that the identification of Ham’s descendents as Black Africans, “gained currency in the sixteenth century.” Thereafter, it “persisted throughout the eighteenth century, [and] served as a rationale for slavery, using Biblical interpretations in support of its tenets. The image of the Negro deteriorated in direct proportion to the growth of the importance of slavery.” Benjamin Braude, Professor of history at Boston College, writes “in 18th and 19th century Euro-America, Genesis 9:18-27 became the curse of Ham, a foundation myth for collective degradation, conventionally trotted out as God's reason for condemning generations of dark-skinned peoples from Africa to slavery.” Sadly this notion has been perpertuated through its uncritical repetition by Bible teachers and writers.