Curse of Ham the ark and "was smitten in his skin"; according to another, Noah cursed him because he castrated his father. Although the Talmud refers only to Ham, the version brought in a midrash goes on further to say "Ham, that Cush came from him" in reference to the blackness, that the curse did not apply to all of Ham but only to his eldest son Cush, Cush being a sub-Saharan African. Thus, two distinct traditions existed, one explaining dark skin as the result of a curse on Ham, the other explaining slavery by the separate curse on Canaan. The concepts were
Asimov's Guide to the Bible Asimov's Guide to the Bible Asimov's Guide to the Bible is a work by Isaac Asimov that was first published in two volumes in 1968 and 1969, covering the Old Testament and the New Testament (including the Catholic Old Testament, or deuterocanonical, books (See Catholic Bible) and the Eastern Orthodox Old Testament books, or "anagignoskomena", along with the Fourth Book of Ezra), respectively. He combined them into a single 1296-page volume in 1981. They included maps by the artist Rafael Palacios. Including numerous black-and-white maps, the guide goes through the books of the Bible in the order of the King