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
Historicity of the Bible Historicity of the Bible The historicity of the Bible is the question of the Bible's "acceptability as a history", in the words of Thomas L. Thompson, a scholar who has written widely on this topic as it relates to the Old Testament. This can be extended to the question of the Christian New Testament as an accurate record of the historical Jesus and the Apostolic Age. Many fields of study span the Bible and history; such fields range from archeology and astronomy to linguistics and comparative literature. Scholars also examine the historical context of Bible passages, the importance ascribed to