Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 322 pp
Description
"A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." So reads Noah's curse on his son Ham, and all his descendants, in Genesis 9:25. Over centuries of interpretation, Ham came to be identified as the ancestor of black Africans, and Noah's curse to be seen as biblical justification for American slavery and segregation. Examining the history of the American interpretation of Noah's curse, this book begins with an overview of the prior history of the reception of this scripture and then turns to the distinctive and creative ways in which the curse was appropriated by American pro-slavery and pro-segregation interpreters.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Devil_llama
The author details the history of biblical justification of slavery, using the curse of Ham, laid on him by his father, Noah. The book is scholarly and gets a bit dense at times, but if a person is willing to be persistent, there is a lot there.
LibraryThing member dono421846
Although it reads like a revised dissertation (which it may perhaps be), the initial chapters offer a useful overview of the employment of Biblical mythology to support and sustain American racism from slavery to Jim Crow. He dwells overlong on the example of one preacher, Benjamin Palmer, and the
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final chapter in which he strives to put a new spin on the tale of Noah's Curse may be skipped for all those not of a theological bent. Show Less
Language
Physical description
xiv, 322 p.; 24 cm
ISBN
0195142799 / 9780195142792
Local notes
Discusses Benjamin Morgan Palmer