Noah and his Sons

Abstract

The story of Noah and his sons (Gen. 9: 18-27) has been known as a text with many inconsistencies and discrepancies both in itself and with its surrounding context. These phenomena must be seen as the result of the gradual growth of the material. We will consider this process broadly in three stages.
At first, this story was an independent tradition which originally had nothing to do with the Flood, nor with Noah and his sons. In this stage, there appeared an anonymous father and his two sons. It was a family narrative with the edifying intention of teaching a son's proper attitude and filial duty toward his father. It was told that the elder son who was pious and thoughtful toward his father was blessed, while the younger son, who disrespected his father, was cursed.
On the second stage of the history of this tradition, the two sons of the original story were identified with the forefathers of the Israelites and the Ganaanites respectively. Thus, on this stage, the story for the first time acquired the character of an ethnological etiology which gives an account of the relationship between those two nations, i. e., the superiority of Israel over Canaan. This stage reflects not the situation of the Davidic-Solomonic era, but that of the age before the founding of the monarchy.
Finally, on the third stage (J), this story of the father and his two sons was combined with the scheme of Noah and his three sons of the Flood story. At the same time, by being put in the framework of primeval history, this narrative obtained its universal, human meaning, and thus, became one of those texts which describe sin and its curse in the social existence of human beings and which prepare the necessity for the mediation of blessing which begins in Gen. 12:3.