Curse of Ham the ark and "was smitten in his skin"; according to another, Noah cursed him because he castrated his father. Although the Talmud refers only to Ham, the version brought in a midrash goes on further to say "Ham, that Cush came from him" in reference to the blackness, that the curse did not apply to all of Ham but only to his eldest son Cush, Cush being a sub-Saharan African. Thus, two distinct traditions existed, one explaining dark skin as the result of a curse on Ham, the other explaining slavery by the separate curse on Canaan. The concepts were
Dating the Bible Dating the Bible The four tables give the most commonly accepted dates or ranges of dates for the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the Deuterocanonical books (included in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox bibles, but not in the Hebrew and Protestant bibles) and the New Testament, including, where possible, hypotheses about their formation-history. Table I is a chronological overview. Table II treats the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible books, grouped according to the divisions of the Hebrew Bible with occasional reference to scholarly divisions. Table III gives the Deuterocanonical books. Table IV gives the books of the New Testament, including the earliest preserved fragments