The Color Purple Contents
- The Color Purple: Social and political context
- The Color Purple: Religious and philosophical context
- The Color Purple: Literary context
- Textual help
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More on the curse of Ham
More on the curse of Ham: The Christian church's main justification of slavery was based on the Old Testament book of Genesis. God sent a worldwide flood to destroy the world’s sinful inhabitants, except for a man called Noah and his family. God told Noah to build an Ark for his family and to take two of each species of animal on the earth so that the earth could be repopulated after the flood. When the flood subsided after forty days and forty nights of rain, Noah, his wife and their six sons and daughters in law were saved and the animals were released.
Later, Noah's son Ham saw his father naked and drunk in his tent, so Noah laid a curse on Ham, which passed to Ham’s son Canaan (Noah’s grandson) and all his descendants. It is not clear why the curse was transferred from a guilty to an innocent person but similar situations do occur elsewhere in other parts of the Bible narrative. Whatever the reason, the incident is usually referred to as ‘The curse of Ham’, rather than ‘the curse of Canaan’ and was certainly used as a significant means of justifying both the trade in African slaves and African-American slavery in the south.
Name originally given to disciples of Jesus by outsiders and gradually adopted by the Early Church.
A 'testament' is a covenant or binding agreement and is a term used in the Bible of God's relationship with his people). The sacred writings of Judaism (the Hebrew Bible). These also form the first part of the Christian Bible.
The Bible describes God as the unique supreme being, creator and ruler of the universe.
The Bible describes how, in the time of Noah, God caused it to rain perpetually for forty days and nights as a punishment for human wickedness. Noah had been told by God to build an ark, and collect one set of each species of living creature.
Disobedience to the known will of God. According to Christian theology human beings have displayed a pre-disposition to sin since the Fall of Humankind.
In the Old Testament book of Genesis a righteous man who obeyed God. On God's instruction, Noah built an ark for himself, his family and two of every kind of living creature. They lived in the ark during a great flood and were saved.
1. Large ship built by Noah at the instruction of God. 2. Portable wooden box overlaid with gold which contained the Tablets of the Law and symbolised the presence of God with the people of Israel.
In the Bible, one of Noah’s sons who accompanied him on the Ark.
In the Old Testament the land promised to Abraham, and later sometimes referred to as 'the Promised Land'.
The Christian Bible consists of the Old Testament scriptures inherited from Judaism, together with the New Testament, drawn from writings produced from c.40-125CE, which describe the life of Jesus and the establishment of the Christian church.
The Creation; Fall of humankind and universal or original sin; Noah and the Flood; the call of Abraham (start of salvation history), followed by the stories of the other patriarchs, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.
Big ideas: Creation; Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel; Noah and the Flood; Patriarchs
Famous stories from the Bible: Adam and Eve / Creation; Noah's Ark; Abraham
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