Curse of Ham but that he violated this agreement and instead chose to squat in the land delineated to Shem (and later Abraham), and so rightly deserved the curse of slavery. Philo of Alexandria, a 1st-century BC Jewish philosopher, said that Ham and Canaan were equally guilty, if not of whatever had been done to Noah, then of other crimes, "for the two of them together had acted foolishly and wrongly and committed other sins." Rabbi Eleazar decided that Canaan had in fact been the first to see Noah, and had then gone and told his father, who then told his brothers in
Criticism of Christianity Canaan be the slave of Shem." which was interpreted to mean that Africans were the descendants of Ham, cursed with "the mark of Ham" to be servants to the descendants of Japheth (Europeans) and Shem (Asians). In 1452, Pope Nicholas V instituted the hereditary slavery of captured Muslims and pagans, regarding all non-Christians as "enemies of Christ." The ""Curse of Ham"" along with Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, VI, 5-7 helped American slaveowners to balance their beliefs with slavery. There are plenty other pro-slavery verses in the Old Testament that were often quoted. New Testament was ignored except that reminding