Uncovering the Nakedness of Noah
Euhemerus Revisited - Part VI
In the video below, the late Michael Heiser discusses a 2005 paper by John Bergsma and Scott Hahn, in which they analyzed the Biblical evidence for what exactly transpired between Ham and Noah in the incident described in Genesis 9.
The narrator describes three possibilities:
Ham saw Noah unclothed.
Ham castrated Noah as stated by some rabbinical sources.
Ham committed incest with Noah’s wife, and Canaan was the child of that incest.
They conclude from the biblical clues that the correct answer is #3, Ham committed maternal incest with Noah’s wife, and Canaan was the child of that incest, thus incurring Noah’s curse.
My perspective is that yes, that is correct. However, there was more to the story than just that. The extra-biblical data inform us that #2 was also part of the incident. There are several pagan witnesses in addition to the Jewish ones that Ham castrated Noah at the behest of his mother, Naamah. That is the incident that caused Noah to realize his son Ham had committed adultery with his wife, Naamah, and was the father of Canaan, whom Noah had been told was his own child.
So while the narrator of this podcast concludes that Noah cursed Canaan some years after the incident in the tent, I suggest that Canaan had already been born while Noah was out exploring the world. Perhaps he thought it odd to return from a long journey and find his wife with an infant boy in her arms, but Ham’s assault on Noah confirmed his suspicions. This led him to place the curse on Canaan, the child of adultery.
Furthermore, after Naamah absconded with Ham to live separately on the mountain, as described in the Book of Jubilees, she and Ham justified their actions as good and right. However, this led to the later rebellion of Ham’s sons against him. According to the Greek myth, Cush forced himself upon his Rhea (Naamah), causing her to give birth to Nimrod. And a generation later, Nimrod boasted in the epic, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, of having taken his grandfather Ham’s wife, Inanna/Ishatar/Naamah. By taking his father’s wife, Ham opened up a Pandora’s Box and later reaped what he had sown.
My view is only a slight modification of the view presented in the video below.
In the previous articles of the Euhemerism series did you speak about Noah leaving for a while? Having Canaan already born does seem like a strong position to take from the text. Since you cited it in this article, does Jubilees speak to this?
Also, I wanted to ask if there could be the possibility of the Jews taking on a novel view of the castration through outside influence, rather than an original view that points to the same original source for Noah and Ham, and Ouranos and Kronos.
Maybe you did speak more about this in previous posts in the series, which aren't available for me to revisit (this isn't a complaint about a pay wall but rather a comment on the fact I can't double check).