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Interpretations makes whole lot of difference. Also, it depends who it is and what is the purpose. In particular, Black slavery was a Mid-East scenerio with the muslims-all justified with the holy texts of the region.

Empowered Africans on the Continent felt justified in taking their own race of people as captives. Later, realizing that Europeans will actually trade for their captives. Thereby making people as chattel.

All of this took place before the world really knew of Ham-christians were mainly whites at the time and Africans were muslims and ju ju spirit worshippers. 

If the muslims believe in the Ham story, then they started it all. 

Once a black fella told me that Islam is the Blackman religions-he is a Bajan. 

S
seignet posted:

Interpretations makes whole lot of difference. Also, it depends who it is and what is the purpose. In particular, Black slavery was a Mid-East scenerio with the muslims-all justified with the holy texts of the region.

Empowered Africans on the Continent felt justified in taking their own race of people as captives. Later, realizing that Europeans will actually trade for their captives. Thereby making people as chattel.

All of this took place before the world really knew of Ham-christians were mainly whites at the time and Africans were muslims and ju ju spirit worshippers. 

If the muslims believe in the Ham story, then they started it all. 

Once a black fella told me that Islam is the Blackman religions-he is a Bajan. 

My post relates to the interpretation that blacks are the children of Ham which justifies treating them as subhumans. Slavery was a mid-east scenario, not black slavery. Black slavery, and only black slavery, is unique to the Atlantic Slave Trade. Please do not belittle yourself by trying to blame the inhuman treatment meted out by whites to blacks in the Atlantic Slave Trade on blacks. It is well established that whites used Christian doctrine as justification to promote their superiority and for subjugating blacks.  My question is what manner of self-deprecating black person would still pay homage to such a religion in this age of enlightenment?

A

Ham is connected to a mid-eastern myth. How you come up with the idea it means black ppl.

Do you believe in the ppl  who made slaves out of Africans.

You know the African nations doan pay heed over Black Slavery. Only Guyanese Blacks seemed to be pre-occupied with it. The rest of Caribbean think of it as a study.

Maybe the Indians may have something to do with this consciousness.

The ppl who pays homage knows the difference. You should study those Black ppl who had hope in Christianity-yuh will go nuts trying to understand dem. Comfort and peace of mind they have. 

S
seignet posted:

Ham is connected to a mid-eastern myth. How you come up with the idea it means black ppl.

Do you believe in the ppl  who made slaves out of Africans.

You know the African nations doan pay heed over Black Slavery. Only Guyanese Blacks seemed to be pre-occupied with it. The rest of Caribbean think of it as a study.

Maybe the Indians may have something to do with this consciousness.

The ppl who pays homage knows the difference. You should study those Black ppl who had hope in Christianity-yuh will go nuts trying to understand dem. Comfort and peace of mind they have. 

I did not come up with the idea that the curse of Ham refers to black people. It looks like you completely missed the entire content of my post and chose to focus on mitigating the responsibility of white Christianity for its part in the travesty. Here's my post for you to read again: "Are Christians comfortable with the application of this narrative to justify the subjection of black people to slavery? How can non-white people willingly support such a fantastic lie that serves to make them inferior?"

Please try to read the works of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, or any Black American authors who write about the black experience in America. I recommend you start with Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. You might learn about the impact of the Atlantic Slave trade on the USA and not make such embarrassing comments like only Guyanese blacks are pre-occupied with black slavery.

A

''In 18th- and 19th-century Euro-America, Genesis 9:18-27 became the curse of Ham, a foundation myth for collective degradation, conventionally trotted out as God's reason for condemning generations of dark-skinned peoples from Africa to slavery,'' says Mr. Braude's paper for the Yale conference. ''In prior centuries, Jews, Christians and Muslims had exploited this story for other purposes, often tangential to the later peculiar preoccupation.''

Like other scholars, Mr. Braude concludes that later social and economic forces turned Ham into a justification for slavery. ''Before the 16th or 17th century, the racial interpretation of Ham is absent or contradictory,'' he said in an interview. ''The clearest element is in Islamic culture, but even there it is contested and not universally accepted.''

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...ery-s-rationale.html

A
Last edited by antabanta

Is it the so called curse of Ham that prevents American Blacks from moving out of the poverty line? 

Is it White discrimination?

Eric Williams in his book, slavery was not based on ethnicity. It was sound economics to choose Africans-cheap labour. If that labour was on the moon, the slave traders would have gone there instead.

Before Columbus coming to the New World, Africans were enslaved on the Sugar Plantations of Maderia and the Islands off the African Coast. Long before America was founded. 

 

S
seignet posted:

Is it the so called curse of Ham that prevents American Blacks from moving out of the poverty line? 

Is it White discrimination?

Eric Williams in his book, slavery was not based on ethnicity. It was sound economics to choose Africans-cheap labour. If that labour was on the moon, the slave traders would have gone there instead.

Before Columbus coming to the New World, Africans were enslaved on the Sugar Plantations of Maderia and the Islands off the African Coast. Long before America was founded. 

 

What do you think keeps American blacks in poverty? Africa's cheap labor was not there for the choosing. An entire industry was created, dedicated to enslave an entire race of people, brutalizing them, and dehumanizing them to justify their enslavement. The Curse of Ham was applied to blacks to convince people like you that the bible supports the enslavement of blacks. Are you arguing that the Curse of Ham was not used as justification for the slave trade?

A
seignet posted:

The Bible DOES not say that Blacks were to be enslaved because of color. Slavery is not new to this planet. Pre-Columbus, the natives did exactly what Africans did. And in the rest of the old world, slavery existed.

Black slavery looks like racism. The white races would treat any other race inhumanely, given the opportunity.

 

What the bible says or not says is irrelevant. The issue is that the Curse of Ham has been applied to blacks to justify their enslavement and persecution. Although slavery is not new, no slavery prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade was as brutal and dehumanizing.

A
antabanta posted:
seignet posted:

Is it the so called curse of Ham that prevents American Blacks from moving out of the poverty line? 

Is it White discrimination?

Eric Williams in his book, slavery was not based on ethnicity. It was sound economics to choose Africans-cheap labour. If that labour was on the moon, the slave traders would have gone there instead.

Before Columbus coming to the New World, Africans were enslaved on the Sugar Plantations of Maderia and the Islands off the African Coast. Long before America was founded. 

 

What do you think keeps American blacks in poverty? Africa's cheap labor was not there for the choosing. An entire industry was created, dedicated to enslave an entire race of people, brutalizing them, and dehumanizing them to justify their enslavement. The Curse of Ham was applied to blacks to convince people like you that the bible supports the enslavement of blacks. Are you arguing that the Curse of Ham was not used as justification for the slave trade?

Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world. In many African societies where slavery was prevalent, the enslaved people were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. When the Arab slave trade and Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa.

For over 200 years, powerful kings in what is now the country of Benin captured and sold slaves to Portuguese, French and British merchants. The slaves were usually men, women and children from rival tribes, gagged and jammed into boats bound for Brazil, Haiti and the US.

Keith
antabanta posted:
seignet posted:

The Bible DOES not say that Blacks were to be enslaved because of color. Slavery is not new to this planet. Pre-Columbus, the natives did exactly what Africans did. And in the rest of the old world, slavery existed.

Black slavery looks like racism. The white races would treat any other race inhumanely, given the opportunity.

 

The issue is that the Curse of Ham

The explanation that black Africans, as the "sons of Ham", were cursed, possibly "blackened" by their sins, was advanced only sporadically during the Middle Ages, but it became increasingly common during the slave trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The justification of slavery itself through the sins of Ham was well suited to the ideological interests of the elite; with the emergence of the slave trade, its racialized version justified the exploitation of African labour.

In the parts of Africa where Christianity flourished in the early days, while it was still illegal in Rome, this idea never took hold, and its interpretation of scripture was never adopted by the African Coptic Churches. A modern Amharic commentary on Genesis notes the nineteenth century and earlier European theory that blacks were subject to whites as a result of the "curse of Ham", but calls this a false teaching unsupported by the text of the Bible, emphatically pointing out that Noah's curse fell not upon all descendants of Ham, but only on the descendants of Canaan, and asserting that it was fulfilled when Canaan was occupied by both Semites (Israel) and Japhetites. The commentary further notes that Canaanites ceased to exist politically after the Third Punic War (149 BC), and that their current descendants are thus unknown and scattered among all peoples.
Robert Boyle, a seventeenth-century scientist who also was a theologian and a devout Christian refuted the idea that blackness was a Curse of Ham, in his book Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664). There, Boyle explains that the Curse of Ham used as an explanation of the complexion of coloured people was but a misinterpretation embraced by "vulgar writers", travelers, critics, and also "men of note" of his time. In his work, he challenges that vision, explaining:
    "And not only we do not find expressed in the Scripture, that the Curse meant by Noah to Cham, was the Blackness of his Posterity, but we do find plainly enough there that the Curse was quite another thing, namely that he should be a Servant of Servants, that is by an Ebraism, a very Abject Servant to his Brethren, which accordingly did in part come to pass, when the Israelites of the posterity of Sem, subdued the Canaanites, that descended from Cham, and kept them in great Subjection. Nor is it evident that Blackness is a Curse, for Navigators tell us of Black Nations, who think so much otherwise of their own condition, that they paint the Devil White. Nor is Blackness inconsistent with Beauty, which even to our European Eyes consists not so much in Colour, as an Advantageous Stature, a Comely Symmetry of the parts of the Body, and Good Features in the Face. So that I see not why Blackness should be thought such a Curse to the Negroes", Bob Boyle

A number of other scholars also support the claim that the racialized version of the Curse of Ham was devised at that time because it suited ideological and economical interests of the European elite and slave traders who wanted to justify exploitation of African labour. While Tim Robinson, no not the actor the writer, claims that such version was non-existent before, historian David Brion Davis argues, as well, that contrary to the claims of many reputable historians, neither the Talmud nor any early post-biblical Jewish writing relates blackness of the skin to a curse whatsoever.

Credit:
  • Tim Robinson (2007), "Racism: a History", (BBC Documentary)
  • David Brion Davis Sterling Professor of History Yale University
  • Robert Boyle (1664), "Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours
Keith
antabanta posted:
seignet posted:

The Bible DOES not say that Blacks were to be enslaved because of color. Slavery is not new to this planet. Pre-Columbus, the natives did exactly what Africans did. And in the rest of the old world, slavery existed.

Black slavery looks like racism. The white races would treat any other race inhumanely, given the opportunity.

 

What the bible says or not says is irrelevant. The issue is that the Curse of Ham has been applied to blacks to justify their enslavement and persecution. Although slavery is not new, no slavery prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade was as brutal and dehumanizing.

The Isrealites in Eygpt.

S
seignet posted:
antabanta posted:
seignet posted:

The Bible DOES not say that Blacks were to be enslaved because of color. Slavery is not new to this planet. Pre-Columbus, the natives did exactly what Africans did. And in the rest of the old world, slavery existed.

Black slavery looks like racism. The white races would treat any other race inhumanely, given the opportunity.

 

What the bible says or not says is irrelevant. The issue is that the Curse of Ham has been applied to blacks to justify their enslavement and persecution. Although slavery is not new, no slavery prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade was as brutal and dehumanizing.

The Isrealites in Eygpt.

Not even close.

A
The charge is sometimes leveled that Christianity is a "white man’s religion," due to the historical connections that Christianity had with the rise of European nations and the founding of the United States. This is complicated by the fact that, during the era of the African slave trade, many white slave owners claimed to be Christians and tried to use the Bible to justify their actions. Acceptance of the idea that Christianity is a white man’s religion causes some people of color to embrace non-Christian religions such as Islam, animism, and Rastafarianism.

Regardless of world history since the reign of Charlemagne, Christianity was never intended for white people only. The Bible teaches that all people are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). The first Christians were all Semitic in ethnicity and likely had light- to dark-brown skin. Christianity having been predominantly a white religion in recent centuries has nothing to do with the message of Christianity. Rather, it is due to the failure of Christians to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the world (Matthew 28:19–20; Acts 1:8). Jesus Christ is the propitiation for the sins of the entire world—all races and nationalities (see 1 John 2:2). Spiritually, men of all races are in need of the Savior because of their shared sinful condition (Romans 5:12).

The idea that Christianity is a white man’s religion is countered in the book of Acts. When the church began, there were Africans who responded to the gospel (Acts 2:10). Philip the evangelist was called specifically to share the message of Christ with an Ethiopian official in Acts 8:26–38. This Ethiopian was saved and baptized, and the last we read of him, he "went on his way rejoicing" (verse 39). The Ethiopian Coptic Church traces its origin to the evangelistic work of the Ethiopian official in Acts 8.

The spread of the gospel in Syrian Antioch a metropolitan city located in Asia highlights the varied roots of the church. In fact, Antioch was the first dominant hub of Christianity once it spread beyond Jerusalem. More evidence of the strength of the Asian church is found in the number of Paul’s letters (Galatians, Ephesians, and Colossians) that were written to Asian churches, and the letters to the churches in Revelation 2–4, also written to residents of Asia.

Church leaders such as Augustine, Athanasius, and Tertullian all from Northern Africa demonstrate the vibrancy of Christianity in Africa. Irenaeus, Ignatius, and others demonstrate the vitality of Christianity in Asia in the first three centuries. Ethiopia, present-day Libya, Egypt, and western Asia remained firmly Christian territory until Muslim invasions in the Middle East and Africa turned it over to Islamic control. Before the arrival of Islam, many African and Asian regions were hubs of Christianity as much as Europe ever was.

Forgiveness of sin through the sacrifice of Christ, the essence of Christianity, is offered to all races, colors, creeds, and genders, to all "those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness" through Him (Romans 5:18). In giving His life as a substitute for sin, Jesus Christ purchased for God with His blood "men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9).

No, Christianity is not a white man’s religion. Christianity is not a black, brown, red, or yellow religion, either. The truth of the Christian faith is universally applicable to all people. "How true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right" (Acts 10:34–35).
Keith
Last edited by Keith
antabanta posted:
seignet posted:

The Bible DOES not say that Blacks were to be enslaved because of color. Slavery is not new to this planet. Pre-Columbus, the natives did exactly what Africans did. And in the rest of the old world, slavery existed.

Black slavery looks like racism. The white races would treat any other race inhumanely, given the opportunity.

 

What the bible says or not says is irrelevant. The issue is that the Curse of Ham has been applied to blacks to justify their enslavement and persecution. Although slavery is not new, no slavery prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade was as brutal and dehumanizing.

The motivation behind this industry was pure, unadulterated greed. Free labor not only for the lifetime of the slave but also of the slave's descendants. Inhuman chattel to be disposed of at the whim of the owner or boiled in oil, hung, whipped, raped, beaten to death, or anything atrocity that crossed the owner's fancy. Such treatment was never before meted out en masse upon any single group of people. And the Curse of Ham, the bible, white christianity were all used to justify it. How can any non-white person pay homage to such a religion?

A
antabanta posted:
seignet posted:
antabanta posted:
seignet posted:

The Bible DOES not say that Blacks were to be enslaved because of color. Slavery is not new to this planet. Pre-Columbus, the natives did exactly what Africans did. And in the rest of the old world, slavery existed.

Black slavery looks like racism. The white races would treat any other race inhumanely, given the opportunity.

 

What the bible says or not says is irrelevant. The issue is that the Curse of Ham has been applied to blacks to justify their enslavement and persecution. Although slavery is not new, no slavery prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade was as brutal and dehumanizing.

The Isrealites in Eygpt.

Not even close.

The Jews think it was horrible.

You think that African slavery was horrible.

For the thousands of years for the Jews and hundreds of years for the New World Africans, it is a Generational Pre-occupation. Keeping it alive. It is a Generational Curse and should be in the History Books.

Christ sets such things free-a new mind.

S

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