Curse of Ham the street; this, said Eleazar, "did not take to mind the commandment to honour one's father." Another interpretation was that Noah's "youngest son" could not be Ham, who was the middle son: "for this reason they say that this youngest son was in fact Canaan." In the past, some people have claimed the "curse of Ham" as a biblical justification for imposing slavery or racism on black people, although this concept is essentially an ideologically driven misconception. Regarding this matter, the Christian leader Martin Luther King Jr. called such attempt "a blasphemy" that "is against everything that the Christian religion
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