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
The Books of the Bible and medieval Church; they became an issue only with later editors and publishers." The order of the biblical books still differs between some ecclesiastical traditions today. Some earlier editions of the Bible also presented the books in non-traditional orders: "The Modern Readers' Bible"; "The Bible Designed to Be Read as Living Literature"; "The Twentieth Century New Testament"; and "The Original New Testament". "The Books of the Bible", again according to its Preface, seeks to "order the books in such a way that their literary types, the historical circumstances in which they were composed and the theological traditions out of which