Curse of Ham unsupported by the text of the Bible, emphatically pointing out that Noah's curse fell not upon all descendants of Ham, but only on the descendants of Canaan, and asserting that it was fulfilled when Canaan was occupied by both Semites (Israel) and Japhetites. The commentary further notes that Canaanites ceased to exist politically after the Third Punic War (149 BC), and that their current descendants are thus unknown and scattered among all peoples. Robert Boyle—a seventeenth-century scientist who also was a theologian and a devout Christian—refuted the idea that blackness was a Curse of Ham, in his book "Experiments and
Canaan (son of Ham) Semitic name for this region. The etymology is uncertain. One explanation is that it has an original meaning of "lowlands", from a Semitic root "to be low, humble, depressed", in contrast with Aram, "highlands". An alternative suggestion derives the term from Hurrian "Kinahhu", purportedly referring to the colour purple, so that "Canaan" and "Phoenicia" would be synonyms ("Land of Purple"), but it is just as common to assume that "Kinahhu" was simply the Hurrian rendition of the Semitic . Canaan (son of Ham) Canaan ( "Kena‘an"), according to the "Book of Genesis" in the Hebrew Bible, was a son of