Curse of Ham Curse of Ham The Curse of Ham is the curse upon Canaan, Ham's son, that was imposed by the biblical patriarch Noah. The curse occurs in the Book of Genesis and concerns Noah's drunkenness and the accompanying shameful act perpetrated by his son Ham, the father of Canaan (). The controversies raised by this story regarding the nature of Ham's transgression, and the question of why Noah cursed Canaan when Ham had sinned, have been debated for over 2,000 years. The story's original purpose may have been to justify the subjection of the Canaanite people to the Israelites, but in
The Books of the Bible and medieval Church; they became an issue only with later editors and publishers." The order of the biblical books still differs between some ecclesiastical traditions today. Some earlier editions of the Bible also presented the books in non-traditional orders: "The Modern Readers' Bible"; "The Bible Designed to Be Read as Living Literature"; "The Twentieth Century New Testament"; and "The Original New Testament". "The Books of the Bible", again according to its Preface, seeks to "order the books in such a way that their literary types, the historical circumstances in which they were composed and the theological traditions out of which