Ham (son of Noah) son had done unto him. And he said, And he said, —Revised Version Ham was "blessed" in – Noah did not curse him directly, instead cursing his son Canaan. The Talmud deduces two possible explanations, one attributed to Rab and one to Rabbi Samuel, for what Ham did to Noah to warrant the curse. According to Rab, Ham castrated Noah on the basis that, since Noah cursed Ham by his fourth son Canaan, Ham must have injured Noah with respect to a fourth son. Emasculating him thus deprived Noah of the possibility of a fourth son. According to Samuel, Ham
The Gospel According to the Son mixed. Jack Miles, writing for "Commonweal", found the book "a quiet, sweet, almost wan little book, a kindly offering from a New York Jew to his wife's Bible Belt family." He noted that there was "something undeniably impressive about the restraint" of the style that Mailer undertook in composing the novel. He concluded that the novel was neither one of Mailer's best works, nor would it stand out amongst the bibliography of books inspired by the life of Christ, but that it had received unfairly harsh reviews from other critics. Critics such as Reynolds Price, writing for "The New York