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
Books of the Bible called the "Tanakh" or Hebrew Bible, as authoritative. There is no scholarly consensus as to when the Hebrew Bible canon was fixed: some scholars argue that it was fixed by the Hasmonean dynasty (140-40 BCE), while others argue it was not fixed until the second century CE or even later. Most conservative scholars believe that the Torah was canonized c. 400 BCE, the Prophets c. 200 BCE, and the Writings c. 100 CE, perhaps at a Council of Jamnia as concluded by Heinrich Graetz in 1871. The Council of Jamnia theory is increasingly rejected by most liberal scholars. Protestants and