General Notes

Noah's youngest son, Ham was the founder of one branch of the humanfamily according to the an cient Hebrews.  This branch was thought to havesettled in Egypt.  The earliest Egyptian nam e for Egypt was "Ham."(Everyone in the Bible, by William P. Barker, 1966)  He is the ancestor of the Africans.  Ham's descendants are located in the southern nations: Canaan, easternAfricia, southern Arabi a, Egypt, Libya, ...... They are people with a dark skin (Gen. 8:18-25), his wife and a daugh ter was named Egyptus. Hewas given Syria, Arabia, and Africa by his father.  'It is observed that Cham and his famely, were the only far Travellers and Straglers into div ers unknowne countries searching, exploring andsitting downe in the same: as also yt is sai d of his famely that what country soever the Children of Cham happened to possesse there bega nne both the Ignoraunce of true godliness..and that no inhabited countryes cast forth greate r multytudes, to raunge and stray into divers remote Regions'.  Thus the findings of one William Strachey, who added to these words in1612 the following damn ing indictment, accusing Ham's posterity ofinstigating: 'the Ignoraunce of the true worship of God.the inventions of Heathenisme and adoration of fa lce godes, and the Devill..' (Hodgen, p.262). It must be said that Strachey, in writing such words, was hardly departing from the norm o f opinion that historians had been voicing forhundreds of years before him.  Indeed, wheneve r the origin of heathenism or paganism was treated, it was invariably to Ham and his immediat e descendants that the accusing finger would be pointed, and not, it seems,without reason. Even if we discount the testimony of earlier historians, who it could besaid, were unduly bi ased in their opinions either on a cultural orreligious basis, we are nevertheless presente d with overwhelming andindisputable archaeological evidence that ALL of the early Hamiticpeop les were given over to the most debased and degraded systems ofthought and worship.  Indeed , to say that they were merely deprived ofthe knowledge of God would be an understatement, fo r the immediatedescendants of Ham were so quick to divest themselves of that knowledge,and s o thorough were they in its complete extirpation among themselves,that we can only conclude t hat they consented to and were partakers insome grand and willful conspiracy to destroy tha t knowledge altogether.In fact, it is within only a few generations of their migration fromBa bel, that we read of the Canaanites, the Sodomites and others as havingfilled their cups of i niquity.  And this conclusion is more thanadequately confirmed by all the documentary and arc haeological evidencethat has come down to us.  Indeed, even if the Bible had itself remaine d silent on the matter, then the EXTRA-biblical evidence would have been more than sufficien t to force us to the sad conclusion that the earlyHamitic nations deliberately rendered thems elves devoid of all saving knowledge of the One True God. Regarding Ham himself, secular history is almost completely silent savefor the fact that Afr ica was once known as the Land of Ham. The Egyptians likewise called their own land Kam. The peoples of Ham's line populated parts of Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula, and eventual ly the entire continent of Africa - once known asthe Land of Ham. (Internet: www.biblebelieve rs.org.au/nation01.htm)