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Biblical and rabbinic understanding of the curse of Noah
Ephraim Isaac

 

The following text is an extract from the unpublished study "The Curse of Ham: History of a Misunderstanding" in which the author does a critical analysis of the paper by Edith Sanders 'The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origins and Functions in Time Perspective" which appeared in Journal of African History, X, 1969, pp. 521-532. In her article Edith Sanders claims to have discovered scientifically that current prejudices against black people have their origin in the Babylonian Talmud. Ephraim Isaac first shows how Edith Sanders has taken her information from secondary and tertiary sources, to the almost complete exclusion of the Jewish and African primary sources. He then presents, in the second part of his study, a positive theory in regard to the biblical and talmudic view of the black race and its position in white society. It is this second part of Professor Isaac's critique that we publish here.

Despite the fact that there is no such thing as a monolithic rabbinic theory about any subject, there is always a general trend of thinking which can be extracted even sometimes from contradictory statements when supported by historical substantiation or other corroborative material. On that basis, it must be stated affirmatively that in no sense in biblical or rabbinic thought can it be said that the curse of Noah directly affected the whole family of Ham, nor can it be said that black people are considered to be the descendants of Canaan who was the accursed son of Ham. The biblical story is sufficiently clear: "When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brother'" (Gen. 9:24-25). In rabbinic literature this is equally clear: Canaan, not Ham, was cursed.' There is an attempt to make an inference by some that Ham was affected/ but we find little support for it in Jewish tradition as a whole.

But it is not until the Middle Ages that the curse became attributed directly to Ham by Christian, Jewish and Islamic writers equally (e.g. Benjamin of Tudela). Cf. Mas'udi who states clearly: -And he said, 'Cursed be Ham ...'" (see text published by C.B. Meynard and P. de Coteille, Les Prairies d'0,, Paris, 1861, ch. III, p. 76). An example from a later period is Richard Jobson, The Golden Trade: Or, a Discovery of the River Gambra, and the Golden Trade of the Aethiopians (1623), ed. Charles G. Kingsley, Teignmouth, 1904, pp. 65f. For an attempt to discuss its history, see Albert Perbal, 'La race negre et la malediction de Chem", Revue de PUniversite d'Ottawa, 1940, vol. X, pp. 157 ff., where it is said that the "curse of Ham" was coined and the punishment was transferred from Canaan alone to Ham's whole family in order to justify slavery and colonialism. Augustine calls Ham the "wicked brother" and says that -Ham (i.e. hot), who was the middle son of Noah, and as it were, separated himself from both and remained between, neither belonging to the first family of Israel nor to the fulness of the gentiles, what does he signify but 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- (De Civitate Dei, Book XVI: 2). Elsewhere he compares him with Cain. Chrysostom likewise speaks about the sons of Noah who received good report because they loved their father "whereas the other was cursed because he had no love for his father" (Homilies on I Thess. 4). Compare also: "Tertia decima generatione cum ex tribus filiis Noe, unus qui erat medius, patri fecisset iniuriam, posteritati suae ex maledicto conditionem servitutis induxit" (Clementis
Romani, Recognitiones Book I:30). It would be.

Explanations for the curse of Canaan

In the thought of the rabbis there was never a question as to the specific individual, Canaan, who was cursed, and the distinction between him and Ham. In fact some of the legends and biblical commentaries grew out of the need to explain why the apparently innocent Canaan was singled out for the curse and the punishment, whereas his apparently guilty father, Ham, was let free. The solution to this difficult problem, which produced many speculative answers and opinions, is a good example of how rabbinic religious thinking may be variegated about any given subject.' And one of the answers given as a solution to the problem indicates how very well the teachers were aware of the differences between Canaan and Cush, the father of black people, and his brothers; for some suggested that the curse fell upon Canaan specifically because God wanted to spare the rest of the family of Ham (Mizraim, Cush, Put) which naturally included them' Others, however, not content with this answer alone, chose to speculate that Noah, stopped by Ham from having a fourth son, in accordance with the law of retaliation cursed Canaan, Ham's fourth son. Still others, not being satisfied with this answer, proposed the syllogism that since God had already bestowed a blessing upon Noah and his sons (Gen. 9:1), and that a blessing could not be retracted or a curse be substituted in its stead, Noah put the curse on his grandson. None of these explanations seeming adequate, others suggested the view that Canaan himself must have been the real culprit, ascribing to him varieties of sins which he might have committed against his father, whether it was he who saw and reported his grandfather's nakedness, or wheher it was he who was involved in the disgraceful act of castration or sexual abuse against him. (Modern critical views prefer this explanation, suggesting also on the basis of Genesis 9:24-27 that Canaan might have actually been Noah's fourth and youngest son himself.)

Nowhere in rabbinic literature do we find an implication that the descendants of the accursed Canaan are black or African people.' Indeed there was never a question in rabbinic thought — it was Cush and not Canaan who inhabited Africa south of Egypt.

From numerous biblical and post-biblical Jewish sources we know that the descendants of Canaan were referred to as the Canaanites," about whom we also now know a great deal from modern archeological and epigraphic sources. The Canaanites were, in geographical, historical and cultural senses, a northwest Semitic people who inhabited most of the territory on the eastern Mediterranean shore west of the river Jordan. They wrote and spoke a language similar to Hebrew. In this as well as in a general racial-ethnic sense, they were related to the Israelites themselves as well as to the Phoenicians,' the famous navigators and traders of the ancient world. It appears that from the time of the Old Kingdom period (third millenium B.C.E.) the Egyptians dominated this part of the world intermittently, controlling it at times firmly and at times loosely. But after the decline of the Egyptian civilization towards the end of the second millenium B.C.E., a number of warring local kingdoms came into being in the areas now occupied by Lebanon, Syria and Israel. It was at that time that the Israelite nation is believed to have been born as one of the cultural and political heirs of the Canaanites. It was also at that time, after they had lost some of their territory to the Israelites and the Philistines, that the Canaanites came into dominance in international commercial expansion in the Mediterranean world and came to be known as the Phoenicians. Though they must have been an agricultural people in the earlier days, as we know from their vegetation deities ('II, Baal and Anat), they must have come to be recognized as the prominent merchants and businessmen of the world of the Israelites as wel1.8

As people who shared the same land or held contiguous territories, and as neighbors and relatives, the Israelites and the Canaanites — like most other states, peoples, and societies — must have continually been at cross-purposes, quarrelling, disputing, fighting wars with each other and becoming perpetual political enemies and antagonists. There is little doubt that the story of the curse of Canaan was invented to explain the feeling of the Israelites towards the Canaanites and the reason of their struggle with the people with whom they were perpetually at odds." This is best spelled out in the book of Jubilees, a post-biblical Jewish work found complete only in the Ge'ez (Ethiopic) version. According to this book,

Canaan saw the land of Lebanon to the river of Egypt, that it was very good. And he did not go to the land of his heritage in the direction of the Western Sea, but dwelt in the land of Lebanon, eastward and westward from the border of Jordan and the border of the sea. So Ham, his father, and Cush and Mizraim, his brothers, said unto him, "You have settled in the land which is not yours and which did not fall to us by lot; do not do so, for if you do so you and your sons will fall in the land and be accursed through sedition; for by sedition you have settled and by sedition your children will fall, and you will be rooted out forever. Dwell not in the dwelling of Shem; for it came to Shem and to his sons by their lot. Cursed are you and cursed shall you be beyond all the sons of Noah, by the oath and curse by which we bind ourselves in the presence of the Holy Judge, and in the presence of our father, Noah." However, he did not listen to them but dwelt in the land of Lebanon ... for this reason the land is named after him.'10

Thus the Canaanites were said to be cursed because their father Canaan violated the divine ordinance of land distribution and usurped the dwelling and inheritance of the Israelites, and later generations elaborated upon this curse. Moreover, the fact that in later times the Canaanites, a formerly agricultural people, were the traders, sailors and businessmen of the world of the Israelite peasantry, they may have come to be stereotyped as exploitive, commanded by their forefather to be "robbers, adulterers, and lazy", and other stories like this must have been invented to justify the Israelite feeling towards them.

Not a racial theory

The biblical story of the curse of Canaan or the later aggadic elaborations and legends about him and his descendants reflect the political and socio-economic realities of the ancient land of Israel. Yet in spite of the slurs, insults, and denigrating remarks that arc heaped upon the Canaanites, nowhere in biblical or later writings is there a denial of their human dignity and their equality with the Israelites as human beings, a form of attitude developed in modern Western ideological and scientific racial theories about non-Europeans. Though the biblical and post-biblical writers and rabbinic teachers believed in the idea of moral chosenness (that God chooses those who obey his laws or that God had chosen Israel to receive the law), racialism, the doctrine that some people are biologically and inherently superior to others, is alien to their thinking. The rabbis, like the ancient Israelites, believed that those who transgress the law of God can be subjected to varieties of punishments, and the concept of "curse and blessing" is applied not only to the Canaanites but even to the Israelites themselves who transgress the law." Thus, inasmuch as the Canaanites arc condemned to perpetual slavery because of their disobedience, so were the Israelites punished in the land of Egypt as slaves of the Egyptians, and in the lands of their exile." As when Ham sinned, his son Canaan is cursed, so when Israel sins his land will be cursed.' According to one rabbi, the sin which the Ten Tribes of Israel committed is even graver than the sin Ham, the father of Canaan, committed, and so their punishment is grayer:

If Ham the father of Canaan who did not smite [his father] but only looked [at his nakedness] was condemned to perpetual slavery with his descendants, then how much more so is the one who both curses and strikes?

This allusion, the rabbi concluded, is "to the Ten Tribes who refused to bear the yoke of God with the result that Sennacherib came and led them into captivity Inasmuch as the Israelites who sin against God can be accursed, the Canaanites who obey God can be blessed; in other words, there is no dogmatic view on the curse of Canaan. Thus the Canaanite Eliezar, the servant of Abraham, succeeded in escaping the curse because of his service to Abraham)? One Canaanite tribe, called the Girgashites, left Canaan of their own accord and went to North Africa; so God blessed them by giving them a land "as beautiful as theirs-3" Likewise, because the Canaanites welcomed the Israelites when they arrived in the country, God let the land be named after them.' Finally, like every person who can turn to God in repentance, the Canaanites too can repent and be accepted into the land of Israel. 18

The curse of Canaan is conceptually a political myth with elements of national chauvinism, not a racial ideology. Moreover, even if one attempted to fabricate racial implications, there is no way in which the Israelite prejudice against the Canaanites can be said to implicate Cush, the traditionally accepted father of the black people.

The descendants of Cush

The ethnographic conceptions of the ancient Israelites divided the nations of the world in accordance with their geographic relationship to the land of Israel.

According to these conceptions, in the north lived sons of Japhet; in the center as well as in the east lived the sons of Shem; and in the west and the south lived the sons of Ham (hot [lands]). Canaan inhabited the lands west and south-west of Israel and adjoining the land of Mizraim (Egypt) which bordered the land of Cush and they were classified together. Nonetheless, it was not thought that the curse of Canaan affected his brother Cush any more than the other members of the family of Noah, including his uncle Shem, the father of the Israelites. According to the same ethnographic conceptions, the family of Ham was subdivided into four branches: Cush, Mizraim (Egypt), Put, and Canaan. Though it was held that the descendants of Cush inhabited both Asia and Africa, the very name Cush itself meant black, and Cush came to represent black Africa.19

Both the biblical and rabbinic Jewish sources concur that Cush was the father of one of the prosperous nations of the earth. There are three categories of references to Cush in biblical and post-biblical Jewish sources. These are:
a) references to individuals such as the wife of Moses (Num. 12:1), the historically well-known general Tirhakah of Cush (II Kings 19:9, Is. 37:9; Songs R. 4:8:3), or Ebed-melech, the servant and confidant of King Zedekiah of Judah and the friend of Jeremiah, the prophet (Jer. 38:7); and Nimrod, the first king known to civilization according to Jewish tradition (Gen. R. 42:4).

b) references to people such as Jeremiah's "the mighty men of Ethiopia" (Jer. 46:9), or Amos's "Are you not like the children of the Cushites, [children] unto me, 0 children of Israel?-;" or Isaiah's "Go, you swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people feared near and far, a nation mighty and conquering...' (Is. 18:2).

c) references to the land of Cush as a political entity comparable to Egypt (Gen. 10:6; I Chron. 1:8; Esther R. 1:4; Meg. 113)21 and Persia (Ez. 38:5), or as a commercial power trading in gold, copper, iron, ivory, ebony, dates, cereals and other merchandise (Is. 45:14; Job 28:19) — the land through which one of the rivers of the garden of Eden passes (Gen. 2:13; Zeph. 3:10)."
In sum, most of the biblical and rabbinic Jewish sources point to the political and military power of the people of Cush, their wealth, their international influence as well as their role in international trade. In these sources, we do not find Cushites denigrated; on the contrary, they are highly esteemed, particularly in contrast to other nations that are rebellious and disobedient to God. Most significantly, these sources leave no room for construing the curse of Canaan as implicating Cush.

“Blackness” in Jewish tradition

What really impressed the rabbis about Cush's blackness was rather its distinctiveness (cf. Bek. 45b; Num. R. 16:23; Songs R. 1:6:3). Canaan's dark complexion, which was not unlike that of the Israelites, was said to be ugly; Cush's blackness, on the other hand, which was deep and distinguished, had no such stigma attached to it. On the contrary, Cush's blackness in its distinctiveness is associated with beauty and purity of heart and good character.23 Thus Moses' wife, who was a Cushite woman, was so called because her actions were as distinctive as her beauty." King Solomon had two Cushite scribes who were very beautiful;1b at their death, Solomon thought that the beauty of these two Cushites affected even the angel of death who felt sorry that he had to take their lives. Ebedmelech, the Cushite, deserved to be one of the nine saints who merited entering the Garden of Eden alive.26

There are two biblical passages which arc of special significance to this discussion. The first one concerns the verse in The Song of Songs 1 am black but beautiful" (Songs 1:5) which we find in the King James English version of the Bible. It should be pointed out that the original Hebrew wording of that clause, though ambiguous, should be 1 am black and beautiful". This is attested to by the earliest Greek version of the Hebrew Bible (LXX) in which the "and' is not as ambiguous as in the Hebrew: ggAritvd elpt xott gag. Some early Church fathers like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa followed this pattern.” As far as I can judge, the first time the contrasting of the beauty with the blackness appears is in Jerome's Vulgate where we find 'Nigra sum red formosa". Some rabbinic exegetes who interpreted the verse allegorically did contrast blackness with beauty unfavorably, in the body of the nation of Israel. However, they did not question this relation of black and beauty in a person, but were more interested in discussing the cause of blackness which they believed to be not genetic but the effect of the sun.28

The second biblical passage which is of significance for our discussion is Psalm 68:32: "Gifts shall come out of Egypt; and Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God." The rabbis interpreted this passage by referring to the meeting of the Messiah by the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, and his acceptance of their gifts. Then the rabbis depicted the sense in which the Ethiopians would pose the question "If the Messiah received gifts from the Egyptians who enslaved [the Israelites], how much more will he not receive from us who have never subjected them to slavery?" In reaction to this, other nations will follow the Ethiopians in bringing gifts and paying homage to the Messiah :29

Conclusions to be drawn

Lastly, there is indeed a disturbing ethnic chauvinism reflected in the biblical and rabbinic myth of the Canaanites: that their forefather has suffered the consequences of the curse of Noah (whether he had to suffer these consequences vicariously on account of his father's sins, or whether some punishments were inflicted upon him mainly on account of his own transgressions); that they were fore-ordained to become slaves; that they were uncomely; and that it is the last will of their father "to love one another, love robbery and fornication, hate your masters and do not speak the truth'. Nevertheless, it is not logical to transfer these prejudices against Canaan to Gush, and to assume that these ideas had a part in western ideologies of race.

There is another reason why these Hebrew myths have in fact little if any relevance in understanding modern western racialistic theories and biases. Many Jewish ideas circulated in Christian circles, and were put to advantageous use by theologians and preachers. On the other hand, what Sanders has described as "the Jewish Babylonian Talmud" or rabbinic writings in general were until recently an anathema to western intellectuals who regarded these Jewish works as subversive or worthless, without having the slightest idea about their contents. Apart from the fact that the Jews themselves were ridiculed and persecuted (often accused of sorcery, ritual murder of children, water-poisoning, and similar mischievous customs, not unlike the slanders directed at black people), their hooks of which Sanders speaks were often condemned to he burned wherever they were known to exist. There is hardly any chance that the little-known and mysterious contents of the disdained rabbinic writings could be shown to have influenced racial theoreticians and propagandists in the western world.30

Even if one were to assume that the contents of these Judaic writings have been well known and influential in western intellectual thought and traditions, one would be hard put to prove that racial prejudice necessarily stems from them any more than from the various legends and myths of many other peoples and religions of the world, of earlier times or now. For instance, the Nuer belief that white skin is the result of incest — a major Nuer religious offence — or the traditional Ethiopian's belief that Ethiopians are the chosen people whereas Europeans are aramane,31 and other similar beliefs among other peoples, play no important role in the social interactions of these peoples with foreigners and have never been made into laws and dogmas, or influenced western racial thinking. Hebrew myths, like these African myths and stereotypes, are not founded in what one may call ideological nationalism or scientific racialism, which are the root cause for centuries of the distortions of many aspects of black culture and history and a complex racial view that has given rise to formal prejudices against black people.

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Professor Ephraim Isaac is president of the Institute of Ethiopian Religious Studies in Jerusalem. He recently organized an international symposium on the Ethiopian pseudepigrapha, co-sponsored by the Ecumenical Institute at Tantur.

1. Bekor. 13a; Kid. 67b, 7a, etc.
2. Pesikta Rabbati 21:22. Some early Christian theologians (cf. also Qur'an XI:44 ff.) implied that Ham had suffered the consequences of Noah's curse, wrong, however, to accuse these theologians in this respect for racialist attitudes because that was not the objective of their exegetical or homiletical exposition. Cf. also Cave of Treasures, fol. 19b [Budge's ed. p. 121].
3. Ber. R. 36:5-7; TanRuma (Huber) 49-50; Tanh. Noah 13-15; Sanh. 70a; Per. 1136; Midrash Haserot; Targum Jonathan; etc.
4. Mid. ha-Gadol Bereshit, Noah 25.
5. There are only a few hints that relatives of the Canaanites inhabited parts of North Africa. One is a reference to the fact that the Canaanites actually welcomed the Israelites when they arrived and therefore God said to them: "You have thrown the place open; let the land be called after your name and I will give you another land as beautiful as yours', which is then said by some to be [North] Africa. Likewise, there is another reference to the Girgashites who left Canaan of their own accord and who came from Egypt in the time of Alexander to reclaim the land from Israel but were turned back (Num. K 17:3; Lev. R. 17:6). See ad locus Waykira Rabbah, ed. Margulies, Jerusalem, 1954, p. 3ff.
6. Gen. 10:15ff.; I Chron. 1:13ff; R.H. 3a, 13a; B.B. 56a, 117a; Male. 9b, 10a.
8. Their very name meant "trader: Is. 23:8; Ez. 17:4; Hos. 12:8; Zeph. 1:11; Lev. R. (Morora) 17:5. On the general history of the Canaanites see W. F. Albright, "New Light on the Early History of Phoenician Colonization', Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research, LXXXIII (1941), pp. 14-22; "The Role of the Canaanites in the History of Civilization, Studies in the History of Culture (1942), pp. 11-50; B. Maisler, "Canaan and the Canaanites", BASOR CH (1946), pp. 7-12; M. Noth, "Die Syrisch-palastinische Bevelkerutig des zweiten Jahrtausends v. Chr. im Lichte neuer Qudlen", Zeitschri/t des deutchen PalastinaVereins, LXV (1942), pp. 9-67.
9. It is not unusual for people who come into continual friction to invent denigrating stories as psychological weapons to fight against their opponents. Many examples can be drawn from Irish-English, FlemishWaloon or even U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations. Europeans who came to invade Ethiopia are often described in traditional poetry and song as aramane ("a godless and uncultured people") and faranj ran alien and uncultured people"; the word is actually a derivative of "Frank"); in Ethiopia as well as elsewhere in Africa white people are sometimes described as "satans or demons". Cf. also closing paragraph.
10. Jub. 10:28.34. It is very interesting to note that here Canaan is cursed not by Noah, but by his own father, Ham, and his own brothers, Cush and Mizraim.
11. Cf. Dem. 32-34; Is. 1, etc.
12. Gem 15:13; Ex. lff; II Kings 17:25; Hos. 1ff.; Amos 1ff.; Is. 1:1ff.; Jer. 17ff.; etc.
13. Lev. R. 17:5; Mid. Tedsbe 17.
14. Ex. R. 30:5.
15. Lev. R. 17:5.
16. Lev. R. 17:6.
17. Lev. R. 17:3.
19. Swab 35b.
19. Cf. Gen. 10:6; I Chron. 1:8; Suk. 34b; B.B. 97b. At the time when the Bible was translated into Greek (LXX) during the third century B.C.E., the translators used equivalent Greek expressions ABLoft, Aleototict to translate Cush (the person) and Cush (the land) in most places. A1.0(olf means "burnt face", according to the most accepted view of classicists, and always represented black people who inhabited Africa, south of Egypt. However, the term "Cush" in the Bible can be ambiguous because it does sometimes refer to the Babylonian Cush. Thus, for instance, some think that the reference to the river of Cush (Gen. 2:13, etc.) is not to the African but to the eastern Cush (cf. Speiser) In rabbinic language the term is less ambiguous.
20. Amos 9:7; the Targum adds: "are you not greatly beloved unto me?"
21. When the Egyptians quarrelled with the Ethiopians about the extent of their borders with Ethiopia, the matter was settled by the discovery of the spread of some of the plagues by which the Egyptians were smitten, which did not cross over onto Ethiopian soil (Ex. K 10:2; 13:4). In several places we find the indication of the size of Ethiopia: Egypt is one-sixtieth of Ethiopia, Ethiopia is one-sixtieth of the world, etc. (Per. 94a; Ta'an. 10a; Songs R. 6:9:3).
22. Cf. Speiser for another interpretation. See also note 19.
23. It is interesting to note that in some Jewish sources both the children of Ham were described as black: the first as "black and beautiful", the latter as "black as the raven" (P.R.E. 24). -Black as a raven" is a description for deep black: "hair... black as a raven": Cf. Songs 5:11. Though the description of Canaan as "ugly and black" is indeed puzzling, it is clear from this passage that "ugly and not "black.' is the pejorative term, for the ancestors of the Israelites are also described as black. On the other hand, Laban's whiteness is elsewhere described as "a refinement in villany" (Num. R. 10:5; Mid. Ruth 4:3; Gen. R. 60:7). It is also significant to note that there is no awareness of any disapproval in white-black miscegenation. A story is told that a black couple had a white child, and the husband being puzzled by it went to the rabbi, who solved the problem: his wife must have looked into a white mirror (Gen. R. 73:10).
24. Yalkut Shimoni 1238; cf. M.K. 16b; Sifrei 12:1 (99); Targum Onkelos: Num. 12:1; Suk. 34b; B.S. 97b.
25. B. Suk. 53a.
26. Derek Eres Zuta; Kalab Rabbati 460ff.
27. Snowden, p. 331, n. 17.
28. C. Yalk. Num. 764; Yalk. Songs 982; Songs R. 1:6; Gen. R. 18:5.
29. Ex. R. and Pesalpim 1186.
30. One element in the rabbinic legends about Ham which was known to some Christian writers was the story that Ham had carnal relations with his wife in the ark and emerged black from it. (However, there is no proof that this played any important role in the history of racial debates. In the case of two references with which I am familiar, in one case it is ridiculed and dismissed as a fable for a more philosophical racialistic theory: 'As for that foolish tale of Cham's knowing his wife in the Arke, whereupon by divine curse his son Chus with all his posterity (which they say are Africans) were all blacke: it is so vaine, that I will not endeavour to retell it" (Rev. Peter Meylyn, Mikrokosmos, 1627, p. 771). In the other case, it was misinterpreted and abused beyond its original intent: "... his wicked sonne Cham disobeyed,... used company with his wife, and craftily went about thereby to disinherit the offspring of his other two brethren ..." so he begot a son "whose name was Chus, who not only it selfe, but all his posteritie after him should bee so blacke and loathsome, that it might remain a spectacle of disobedience to all the worlde. And of this blacke and cursed Chus came all these blacke Moores which are in Africa' (George Best, Principal Navigation, c. 1557? Hakluyt Society, vol. VII, p. 236f.). It should be noted that the rabbis never connected this legend about Ham's blackness with the curse of Noah and we find no reference in Judaic literature to the "cursed Chus"; moreover, I find no evidence that Best's ideas, historically late, ever became popular.
31. See note 9.