The press has long been regarded as a powerful force in society, with the ability to shape public opinion and influence political discourse. However, there are times when the press can abuse its power and engage in harmful practices, such as publishing curses or malicious content. This note explores the concept of curse publication and its implications. Curse publication refers to the act of publishing harmful or offensive content with the intention of causing harm or distress to the individuals targeted. It may involve spreading false information, sharing private details, or making derogatory remarks about someone. The press, as a custodian of information, has a responsibility to uphold ethical standards and avoid engaging in curse publication.
Two recent books explore how the Genesis account of Noah cursing his grandson Canaan came to be used as a primary justification for enslaving black Africans. In doing so, the books add to the understanding of how this and other biblical stories were previously viewed within Mormonism as support for race-based classifications. Genesis tells of Ham finding his father Noah drunk and uncovered in his tent. Ham informs his brothers Shem and Japheth. They, walking backward so as not to see their father’s nakedness, cover Noah with a garment. After Noah awakes from his drunkenness, he curses—not Ham, and not himself—but Ham’s son Canaan by pronouncing: “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (see Genesis 9:20–27). There is no reference to dark skin, to any skin color, or to Africa, and Noah does not say the curse applies to Canaan’s descendants. Yet this story, as it was amplified and changed in extrabiblical interpretations, became the ideological cornerstone used to justify the slavery of black Africans thousands of years afterwards.
After Noah awakes from his drunkenness, he curses not Ham, and not himself but Ham s son Canaan by pronouncing Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren see Genesis 9 20 27. Oh, I wanted to snap her neck just to shut her up, eat her and my father, devour their corrupted bodies and leave only the bones for the rare scavenging birds of prey to pick, but I just could not get to them.
The press, as a custodian of information, has a responsibility to uphold ethical standards and avoid engaging in curse publication. One of the main reasons curse publication is problematic is its potential to cause significant harm to individuals. The dissemination of false information or personal attacks can have severe consequences for the targets' reputation, mental health, and overall well-being.
Two books on race and slavery
David M. Goldenberg. The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Stephen R. Haynes. Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Two recent books explore how the Genesis account of Noah cursing his grandson Canaan came to be used as a primary justification for enslaving black Africans. In doing so, the books add to the understanding of how this and other biblical stories were previously viewed within Mormonism as support for race-based classifications. Genesis tells of Ham finding his father Noah drunk and uncovered in his tent. Ham informs his brothers Shem and Japheth. They, walking backward so as not to see their father’s nakedness, cover Noah with a garment. After Noah awakes from his drunkenness, he curses—not Ham, and not himself—but Ham’s son Canaan by pronouncing: “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (see Genesis 9:20–27). There is no reference to dark skin, to any skin color, or to Africa, and Noah does not say the curse applies to Canaan’s descendants. Yet this story, as it was amplified and changed in extrabiblical interpretations, became the ideological cornerstone used to justify the slavery of black Africans thousands of years afterwards.
David Goldenberg is a Jewish studies scholar and has been editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, President of Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, and Associate Director of the Annenberg Research Institute for Judaic and Near Eastern Studies. In The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Goldenberg seeks to answer how and when the Genesis story became a “curse of Ham” condemning black Africans to slavery.
Of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian cultures that viewed the Hebrew Bible as scripture, Goldenberg writes that “biblical exegetical traditions moved freely among the geographically and culturally contiguous civilizations of the Near East. It is precisely the fluidity of the various interpretations and legends that provides a unique opportunity for cross-cultural investigation” (5). His book is the result of thirteen years of steady research and presents what is often highly technical scholarship and linguistic analysis in a readable, cogent manner. His index of hundreds of primary ancient sources include Targum texts, 1 apocryphal and pseudepigraphal works, Greek and Latin authors, Hellenistic-Jewish, rabbinic, early Christian, Islamic, ancient Near East, Qumran, and Samaritan writings; this list does not even include ancient works that he cites infrequently or does not discuss at length (413). 2 He also cites 1,478 writers in his “Index of Modern Scholars.” 3 As these indices imply, Goldenberg’s research has been thorough. Though I find his analyses and typically carefully drawn conclusions compelling, I am unable to competently evaluate his multilingual, cross-cultural scholarship, and so look forward to following scholarly responses to The Curse of Ham.
The book is focused around answering four questions: How did biblical-era Jews view black Africans? What was the attitude of biblical and early post-biblical-era Jews towards dark skin color in general? When did slavery of blacks first become prominent? And, once trade in black slavery became established, was the Bible reinterpreted to reflect the new historical situation?
These questions, and Goldenberg’s voluminous research, might sound dry in the abstract, but in answering them his text often reads like a fast-paced whodunnit mystery novel. For example, many biblical commentators, including some Mormons, believed Ham’s name meant “hot,” “dark,” or “black.” 4 The meaning was assumed to support the conclusion that Ham had black skin. Did the name have that meaning? See chapter 10, “Was Ham Black?” for a thorough answer of “no,” and for how and almost exactly when and where the mistranslation first occurred. Goldenberg reviews the etymology of “Ham” in the languages involved (including Arabic, Aramaic, Coptic, Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, Old South Arabian, Semitic, Syriac, and Ugaritic), and concludes that the word used in Genesis did not mean “black,” “dark,” or “heat,” and that as of now the word is of unknown origin. He believes mistaken interpretations may have developed in large part because in reducing spoken Hebrew to written form two different phonemes were represented with one graphical symbol, thus leading to confusion between words that in oral Hebrew were distinguished (141–56). 5
The book of Numbers reports that Moses married an Ethiopian woman. The text makes it clear that the Lord does not disapprove, but the question arises, would the marriage have resulted in stigma for Moses, his wife, or any of their children? (Num. 12: 1–8). And in the biblical era, was there generally a proscription against miscegenation? In chapter 4, “Postbiblical Israel: Black Africans,” Goldenberg reviews commentary on Moses’ wife, again using biblical, Targum, Hellenistic-Jewish, and early rabbinic texts. He concludes there is no evidence that biblical and post-biblical Judaism saw “anything denigrating in African origin or in miscegenation” (56; see also 26–40, 52–59, 163). 6 Goldenberg also discusses alternative interpretations of this story, one of which suggests that here “Kushite” should have been used to describe the woman instead of “Ethiopian,” and that the verse refers to Moses’ wife Zipporah who may or may not have had black skin (28–29, 52–59). His analysis of the broader question of whether there was a cultural reproach with regards to black Africans yields a similar conclusion: he finds no evidence of such a stigma and concludes, “Apparently Kushite ancestry did not matter one way or the other” (75). 7 This conclusion may remind Mormon readers of Hugh Nibley’s similar findings in Abraham in Egypt. 8
The Genesis 4 account of Cain killing Abel reports that Cain was cursed so that “when thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength,” and “the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.” Though this account makes no reference to skin color, why did many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Americans believe Cain was cursed with black skin, and when did that belief originate? In chapter 13, “The Curse of Cain,” Goldenberg reports that the evidence suggests an Armenian author of an apocryphal “Adam-book” from between the fifth and eleventh centuries made the initial mistake: he mistranslated the Genesis 4:5 statement that Cain’s “countenance fell” as meaning Cain’s face and skin turned dark. This interpretation was repeated infrequently until it gained momentum in seventeenth-century Europe and eighteenth-century America. Goldenberg comments briefly that both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young shared an assumption that Cain was cursed with dark skin and was the ancestor of black Africans (178). Without reading the early Mormon record closely, Goldenberg would not be aware that though many of Joseph Smith’s followers adopted Protestant folklore that tied black Africans to Cain, there is little to show that the radical, reformation-minded Joseph Smith held the same view. 9
Most importantly (especially to a book entitled The Curse of Ham), when and how did the story of Noah’s curse become associated with black slavery? While the Genesis text explicitly states it was Ham’s son Canaan that was cursed by Noah, many commentators, including Mormons, applied the curse to Ham, and through him to all of Ham’s children. 10 How, why, and when did readers redirect the curse at Ham? See chapter 11, “Ham Sinned and Canaan was Cursed!” for the history of that interpretative leap. In that chapter and in chapter 12, “The Curse of Ham,” Goldenberg reports that he found no link between skin color and slavery in Jewish sources from antiquity and late antiquity or in early Christian sources. Instead, a commentary thread referring to Canaan as having black skin first appeared among Muslims in the second century before Christ. An explicit link between blacks, slavery, and the curse is made later, in the seventh century after Christ, also in Arabia. This link occurred precisely “when the Black became strongly identified with the slave class in the Near East, after the Islamic conquest of Africa” (170). Goldenberg summarizes this time period:
In sum, in regard to Noah’s curse, four factors were at play during the first six or seven centuries of the Common Era: explanation—an attempt to make sense of the Bible; error—a mistaken recollection of the biblical text [that Ham was cursed]; environment—a social structure in which the Black had become identified as slave; and etymology—a mistaken assumption that Ham meant “black, dark.” The combination of these factors was lethal: Ham, the [assumed] father of the black African, was cursed with eternal slavery. The Curse of Ham was born. (167)
The curse was born but still had not gained currency among Christians. It first appeared in the Christian West in the fifteenth century as Europe discovered Africa and started to trade slaves. Then, “as the Black slave trade moved to England and then America, the Curse of Ham moved with it” (175). This book’s focus is not on modern sources, but another work by historian Benjamin Braude corroborates the conclusion that among Christians the curse of Ham was not commonly applied to blacks until after the sixteenth century (Braude demonstrates that, up to that point, Christians more commonly used the curse to express animus towards Jews), and not prominently applied until the eighteenth century. 11
In his introduction, Goldenberg reports that in the context of racialized readings of the Bible both biblical and extrabiblical sources have been misinterpreted “ultimately due to an assumption that the way things are now is the way things were in the past,” failing to realize that “our perceptions of the Black have been conditioned by the intervening history of centuries of Black slavery and its manifold ramifications” (7). The Curse of Ham represents an important step towards increasing the ability of those who view the Bible as scripture to avoid continuing this error.
In some cases, curse publication has led to the loss of careers, relationships, and even lives. In addition to the harm caused to individuals, curse publication also undermines the credibility of the press as an institution. Journalism is built on principles of objectivity, accuracy, and fairness, and curse publication goes against these values. When the press engages in curse publication, it erodes public trust and creates an environment of fear and mistrust. However, it is important to note that curse publication is not always easy to define or regulate. There is a fine line between freedom of speech and responsible journalism, and navigating this line can be challenging. While some curses may be obvious and universally condemned, others may be more subjective or context-dependent. To address curse publication, it is essential for the press to adhere to ethical guidelines and standards. Journalists should prioritize the truth, verify facts, and ensure fairness and balance in their reporting. They should also consider the potential impact of their stories on individuals and society as a whole. In cases where curse publication does occur, it is crucial for journalists and media organizations to be held accountable for their actions. In conclusion, curse publication by the press is a harmful practice that can have severe consequences for individuals and society. The press has a responsibility to uphold ethical standards and avoid engaging in curse publication. By adhering to principles of accuracy, fairness, and responsibility, journalists can help maintain the credibility and integrity of the press as a vital democratic institution..
Reviews for "The Power of Redemption: How Public Figures Can Recover from Press Curses"
1. John - 1 star - I was really disappointed with "Press Lips Curse Publication". The writing felt sloppy and amateurish, with numerous grammatical errors and awkward sentence structures. The plot was also underdeveloped, leaving me confused and uninterested in the story. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone looking for a well-written and engaging read.
2. Sarah - 2 stars - I found "Press Lips Curse Publication" to be quite dull and unengaging. The characters lacked depth and I struggled to connect with any of them. The pacing was slow, making it difficult to stay interested and motivated to continue reading. Additionally, the dialogue felt forced and unnatural, further detracting from my overall enjoyment of the book. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I would recommend this publication to others.
3. Michael - 2 stars - I had high hopes for "Press Lips Curse Publication" based on the intriguing synopsis, but ultimately felt let down. The story lacked originality and felt cliché, with predictable plot twists and superficial character development. The writing style was also disjointed and difficult to follow at times, making it a struggle to fully immerse myself in the story. While it had potential, this book fell short of my expectations and I cannot say that I enjoyed it.
4. Emily - 1 star - "Press Lips Curse Publication" was a complete waste of my time. The narrative was confusing and poorly executed, leaving me with more questions than answers. The main protagonist was unlikeable and lacked any redeeming qualities, making it difficult to root for her in any way. The dialogue was also stilted and unnatural, taking away from any potential enjoyment. Overall, this book was a disappointment and I wouldn't recommend it to others.