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b. Sanhedrin 70a: “And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him” (Genesis 9:24). Rav and Samuel— One says: He castrated him. And one says: He sodomized him. The one who says He castrated him1—Since he did his wrongdoing with respect to the fourth,2 therefore did he curse him with respect to the fourth. And the one who says He sodomized him—He derives it from an analogy between “saw” and “saw.” It is written here (verse 22) “And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father”; and it is written there (Genesis 34:2) “Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, etc.” It is well for the one who says He castrated him, for this reason he cursed him3 regarding the fourth. However, for the one who says He sodomized him, what is special about the fourth? Let him curse him explicitly! —Both this and this occurred. In Genesis Rabbah 36:7,4 we encounter only the opinion that Ham had castrated his father:5 “And he said, Cursed be Canaan, etc.” (Genesis 9:25). Ham sinned and Canaan is cursed! … —Says R’Berakhiah: Noah was greatly grieved in the ark because he did not have a young son to serve him. He said: When I go out, I shall sire a young son who will serve me. When Ham did that deed to him, he said: You have prevented me from siring a young son who will serve me; therefore that man shall be a slave to his brothers. R’Huna in the name of R’Joseph: You prevented me from performing an act that is done in darkness;6 therefore his descendents will be ugly and charred. 113 27 : Ham and Noah Both R’Berakhiah’s and R’Huna’s interpretations posit a measure-for-measure correspondence between the punishment and the crime: servitude for depriving Noah of a potential servant; darkness for preventing an act done in darkness. Both accept the logic that punishment was exacted from the offspring, because the crime consisted of preventing the birth of offspring. This latter assumption is similar to the premise of the talmudic passage that Ham’s fourth son should be punished because Ham prevented the birth of Noah’s fourth son. This explanation, we must recall, is supplied by the anonymous talmudic discussion , and we do not know what the original reason of Rav or Samuel was. While the Genesis Rabbah passage is presented as a directly exegetical interpretation of the relevant biblical verses, the talmudic dispute is embedded in a collection of sources on the perils of drunkenness, built around Proverbs 23:29–35. The passage has strong affinities with Leviticus Rabbah 12:1.7 Although the story of Noah’s drunkenness is cited there as an example,8 the episode is related without notable midrashic embellishments. The question of why Canaan was punished for Ham’s sin is not posed, nor is Ham’s wrongdoing described except as a matter of immodesty—as in the biblical narrative.9 Unlike the castration tradition, which is attested in rabbinic and Christian traditions , b. Sanhedrin appears to be the sole source for the tradition about Ham sodomizing his father.10 Notes 1 In Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 23 (Friedlander, 170): “Canaan entered and saw the nakedness of Noah, and he bound a thread (where the mark of) the covenant was and emasculated him.” 2 D. Noy (= Dov Neuman) has observed that Syrian-Byzantine traditions mention a fourth son of Noah, Jonithos, who was sent to pursue studies in the Orient; he became the learned inventor of geometry. Noy speculates that this legend originated in attempts to Judaize (and thereby de-paganize) the origins of this important science. The Yemenite MS Maimon reads “fourth son” (Neuman, 106–107). 3 Instead of “for this reason … him,” ms London, 406 reads: “This is what we say: ‘he cursed him.’” 4 Pp. 340–41. Similar material appears in Tanh· uma, Noah· 15; ed. Buber,21 (48–49); Townsend , 52–53. Printed editions insert a comment: “This is in accordance with the one who says Ham arose and castrated his father.” This is clearly a late interpolation based on b. Sanhedrin, as observed by Buber, n. 230. The tradition that Ham had prevented the birth of a fourth son to Noah is also incorporated into Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 9:24 (trans. Maher...

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