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 Gospel According to the Son Times", pointed to a "lack of inventiveness", based upon the fact that Mailer took so few liberties with the biblical text. David Gelernter, writing for the "National Review", cited the "sheer arrogance" of the very premise of Mailer's book. Yet he went on to agree with Miles that much of the criticism of the book had been "unfair." Gelernter called the book "strikingly orthodox" in its basic view of the character of Christ. Mailer had largely anticipated some of the savage reviews he would receive for the book. He noted in an interview with Bruce Weber of "The New York