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'The criteria that people use for race are based entirely on external
features that we are programmed to recognize...'
Dr
Douglas C. Wallace, (professor of molecular genetics at Emory
University School of Medicine in Atlanta), Do races differ? Not
Really, DNA shows, New York Times web, Aug. 22, 2000.
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Are black people the result of a curse on Ham?
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Discussions found in our other articles, such as "How
did different skin colors come about?" show clearly that the blackness
of, for example, black Africans, is merely one particular combination
of inherited factors. This means that these factors themselves, though
not in that combination, were originally present in Adam and Eve. The
belief that the skin color of black people is a result of a curse on Ham
and his descendants is nowhere taught in the Bible.
Furthermore, it was not Ham who was cursed, but
his son, Canaan (Genesis 9:18, 25, 10:6). Canaan's descendants
were probably mid-brown skinned (Genesis 10:15-19), not black.
False teaching about Ham has been used to justify slavery
and other non-biblical racist practices. It is traditionally believed
that the African nations are largely Hamitic, because the Cushites (Cush
was a son of Ham: Genesis 10:6) are thought to have lived where Ethiopia
is today. Genesis suggests that the dispersion was probably along family
lines, and it may be that Ham's descendants were on average darker than,
say, Japheth's. However, it could just as easily have been the other
way around.
Rahab,
mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1, was a Canaanite. A descendant
of Ham, she must have married an Israelite. Since this was a union approved
by God, it shows that the particular "race" she came from was not important.
It mattered only that she trusted in the true God of Israel. Ruth, a Moabitess,
also features in the genealogy of Christ. She expressed faith in the true
God before her marriage to Boaz (Ruth 1:16). The only marriages God warns
against are God's people marrying unbelievers.1
Further
information about racial issues...
Footnotes
- K. Ham, "interracial Marriage: Is It Biblical?" Creation, 1999,
21(3):22-25.
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