To be really able to understand this dilemma, one must examine the
biblical text that has lingered to demonises the African.
In the book of Genesis 9:20-27 we read: And Noah began to be an
husbandman, and planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and
was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father,
and told his two brethren without.
And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their
shoulders, and went backward and they saw not their father’s
nakedness.
And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had
done to him. And he said Curse be Canaan; a servant of servant shall
he be unto his brethren.
And he said blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be
his servant.
God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem;
and Canaan shall be his servant.
Historical in the Western world which has a Christian culture the
descendants of Canaan are known to be Africans, and as such the
misinterpretation of Noah’s statement and biblical peoples
and cultures has created a situation whereby an entire race of people
are branded as cursed of God.
This inaccuracy has perpetuated a series of racial myths that have
been most damaging to the Africans and to the salvation of the perpetrators
of these myths.
Systematic theology is applied to this passage of scripture, ignoring
the obscurity of the passage in that this sort of curse is not mentioned
again in scripture or is a command of God; and the popular reasoning
is contrary to the theme of the Bible and the character of God.
The result of systematic theologising is the pernicious and poisonous
myth that Blacks are cursed through Ham.
If we examine the text using proper biblical hermeneutics, one would
recognise that Noah’s discourse was more of a family nature
than the will of God. Noah was sobering up from drunkenness, indeed
a difficult time for me to accept that God would use a man to prophesy,
a prophecy that would have lasting implications for an entire race
of people.
A more important point is that the statement by Noah was to Canaan
and not Ham, as those who espouse the theory of a Black curse continue
to proclaim. While the inhabitants of the land where Canaan settled
were called Canaanites as descendants of Canaan, Ham is really the
father of the race, and it is out of the loins of Ham, one can truly
define a race of people after the flood.
This racist propaganda, while now mostly part of secular conjecture,
has its root in theological pinning.
It was a tool used by the slavers during the Middle Passage, the
European pioneers in the Americas, the Dutch and the English colonisers
in early Rhodesia and South Africa.
In order to legitimise their claim as the true descendents of David
and Solomon in the face of a preponderance of contrary evidence,
the rabbis stated that the blackness of the skin was evidence of
the curse of God.
The Babylonian Talmud states, “Our rabbis taught: Three copulated
in the ark and they were all punished the dog, the raven and Ham.
The dog was doomed to be tied, the raven expectorates (his seed
in his mate’s mouth) and Ham was smitten in the skin”.
You must agree that in the rabbis’ explanation for the African
presence, they were intelligent to recognise that the father of
the race was Ham and not Canaan. It should be noted that the Jews
in their murderous escapades in southern Lebanon are backed fully
by evangelicals the world over, both Black and White.
In another story of rabbinical writings, it is said: Moreover because
you twisted your hair around to see my nakedness, your grandchildren’s
hair shall be twisted into kinks, and their eyes red: again because
your lips jested at my misfortune, theirs shall swell; and because
you neglected my nakedness, they shall go naked.
Men of this race are called negroes.
These are attempts to forge a spurious theology using the Bible
so as to accommodate a racist perspective.
The Bible being the only true revelation from God -- not a book
purported to be given by angels on the testimony of one man, or
a book written by different men on varied topics, but a book of
different authors written at different times on the same topic at
varied dispensations and showing complete harmony, carrying as its
theme the equality of man.
The Talmud, the Midrash and various other Jewish books and other
religious writings would contain such skewed ideas about God, for
it is the purpose of the prince of darkness to present the King
of Kings in a certain light.
The Midrash Rabbah on Genesis reads, R Huna said in R. Joseph’s
name (Noah declared), You have prevented me from begetting a fourth
son, therefore I curse your fourth son.
These views on the Africans have always been with us and will continue
if the human race does not see the Bible as the truth of God’s
word but only as another expression of God.
It is a theology of racism that is silently accepted.
Charles B. Copher, writing of the Black presence in the Old Testament,
says, These views can be traced back among Europeans at least to
the 12th Century, and perhaps even to the tale of Beowulf, in which
Cain’s descendants are depicted as Black.
At any rate, Cain as black and Negroid entered European thought
in theology, and became a permanent element with respect to Black
peoples.
These are dangerous concepts that are not to be taken lightly: they
seek to create Blacks as a new and separated race of inferior quality
and in so doing deny substantial facts of the creation story and
the original man. The pronouncements of certain element in our society
today, bear testimony that this thinking has transcended the Jews
and Europeans.
However, the scientific community is finally coming to terms with
the evidence that all human beings come from a single source --
the monogenetic -- and that source has an African location. Mitochondrial
DNA or molecular biology is strongly supportive of the monogenetic,
single source idea.
Thus, to try and argue that Africans are some new creation cursed
of God will cause theological revulsions when proper biblical hermeneutic
is applied to the scriptures.
The Jewish teachings as espoused in the Bible are followed more
closely by the Falasha, a group of Sabbath keeping Ethiopians, than
by those who call themselves Jews and live in Israel today.
In fact, there is massive evidence for God as we know him to today,
with his ten Commandment laws, as a teaching found in Africa with
a history of being there before European colonisation. W.W. Oliphant
an African church leader in the early days of the 20th Century,
says that the “Sabbath in Ethiopia has been kept from the
days of Nimrod, about 2140 B.C., that is 700 years before the birth
of Moses ... Africans or Ethiopians had been Sabbath observers from
the days of Nimrod the son of Cush.”
Africa has been the host continent to believers in the One God since
the time of Abraham.
A battle for its place among the great nations of the world has
been continuous and well engaged.
On every front, Africa has had to present herself as a nation equal
to all other continents in the development of this world.
The attacks have been relentless.
References to Africa come with widespread misinformation and fog,
the thought of Africans having a Jewish past or the true descendants
of Abraham is met with ridicule, skepticism and suspicion even from
among Black biblical scholars.
The book of Zephaniah carries the longest genealogical list of any
of the writing prophets in the Hebrew Bible and Zephaniah was said
to be of African descent, he being the son of Cush as was stated
in Jeremiah 36:14. The name is found elsewhere in the Old Testament
as an ethic label, meaning a person from Cush, the Upper Nile Region
which included a large part of Sudan today and Ethiopia.
Jeremiah’s reference to Zephaniah, father as an African, means
that Zephaniah was Black and part of the Israelites’ genealogy.
Zephaniah, in his short prophecy, twice mentioned the land and the
people of Cush, which is translated Ethiopia in the RSV and Sudan
in the TEV.
We must remember that a Cushite dynasty had ruled Egypt 715-663
B.C. and as such it was quite possible for a Cushite to settle in
Jerusalem at this period.
A Theology based on facts will recognise that Noah’s curse
to his son can be no more than a family rebuke that is contrary
if applied universally with the theme of the Bible.
This curse is similar to the one that is present today in the form
of the leadership of African people.
Opposite a curse is a blessing, the chaos, pain, dysfunction and
apathy that now plague the afro communities can in no way deem a
blessing.
The reason for the malaise for the most part has been the leadership
that has been tied around our neck, who see song, drama and dance
and repeating of historical data as the way to emancipate African
people.
This is the curse that has entered the afro communities, that has
not awaken the drive among this people but have had the effect with
other factors to create delinquency, poverty, high levels of failure
in education, absentee fathers, teenage mothers and many in penal
institutions.
The struggle for the African to take his rightful place is indeed
a most difficult one.
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