Speaker 1: It was so easy to keep the enslaved minds accepting
Speaker 1: of their status under the guise of religion. When they're
Speaker 1: direct instructions from God himself. That tells you you're supposed
Speaker 1: to be a slave. If it's taught that way, I'll explain.
Speaker 2: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't know, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I often wonder what religion black folks practiced before Christianity
Speaker 1: was literally beaten into us. It's no secret that the
Speaker 1: Bible was read to us, seeing us how we weren't
Speaker 1: equipped with that skill set. And even when blacks were
Speaker 1: educated enough to read the version of the Bible they
Speaker 1: would get to read and teach would be the scriptures
Speaker 1: to keep them submissive. The Bible has tons of references
Speaker 1: to slavery. It speaks on the treatment of slaves, especially
Speaker 1: the Old Testament, like Ephesians six ' one. Slaves, obey
Speaker 1: your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity
Speaker 1: of heart, just as you would obey Christ. That's right,
Speaker 1: dann Ephesian six's one. The New Testament got some doozies too,
Speaker 1: Colossians three twenty two.
Speaker 2: Servants obey your masters and everything. Obey all the time,
Speaker 2: even when they can't see you. Don't just pretend to
Speaker 2: work hard so that they will treat you well. No,
Speaker 2: you must serve your masters honestly because you respect the Lord.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't they're let them enslaved individual See scriptures like Galatians
Speaker 2: three twenty eight, where it says, ain't no slave or
Speaker 2: free we all want in Christ? Oh, No, couldn't let
Speaker 2: them see those But the curse of Ham in Genesis.
Speaker 2: That story was used for hundreds of years as justification
Speaker 2: for slavery and human bondage. Again, I grew up in
Speaker 2: the church.
Speaker 1: I thought I knew all the good Biblical stories, but
Speaker 1: I was not familiar with the story of Ham. Story
Speaker 1: goes Noah got drunk and passed out. Ham saw him naked,
Speaker 1: and when he told his brothers, his two brothers came
Speaker 1: home and they clothed Noah. And Noah was so angry
Speaker 1: with Ham that he cursed Ham's son, Canaan. Not from power. Now,
Speaker 1: you're not even my mother, you just rock, Not that Canaan.
Speaker 1: This was Ham's son, Kanaan. And Noah was so angry
Speaker 1: that he cursed Canaan to be the slave to his
Speaker 1: uncle's forever. Story goes, when Noah cursed him, he turned black,
Speaker 1: and it was taught to some as the beginning of
Speaker 1: different races. Some said Ham represented all black folks and
Speaker 1: was cursed got them good slave holding Southern Christians. Their
Speaker 1: interpretation was that Genesis account of establishes that God wills
Speaker 1: black people to be enslaved perpetually. But it don't even
Speaker 1: make sense because Noah didn't curse Ham, but he shifted
Speaker 1: at a generation and cursed Kanaan Genesis teaches every human
Speaker 1: being comes from Noah and one of his three sons,
Speaker 1: one of the two that clothed him in his drunkenness,
Speaker 1: Shim the ancestor of the Semites, Jeff Path the ancestor
Speaker 1: of the Europeans, and Ham the ancestor of the Africans. Look,
Speaker 1: you can do your own deep dive on that. The
Speaker 1: point of today's episode of I didn't know, Maybe you
Speaker 1: didn't either, is that bad biblical interpretation hurts people. They
Speaker 1: justify unjust institutions, they motivated moral behavior, and they encourage
Speaker 1: harmful latitudes. And I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.