Let's Ramble About: The Ethical Quandary of Biblical Authorial Intent

So ... biblical authorial intent ... this is certain to be uncontroversial! And I guess I'm giving myself away even with the title. Yes, I tend to interpret the Bible with a "do-no-harm"/"SJW" kind of lens.

And yes, before someone else brings this up, I am aware of the idea that some readers have raised that Canaan or Ham may have actually raped Noah while he was drunk. But that's a really big reach: neither the text of the Genesis story nor the following commentary in other biblical passages suggests anything of the kind. And even if it did happen diagetically, it still doesn't make the Joshua Conquest narrative, the enslavement of Africans, or the colonization and genocidal murder of indigenous Americans any more okay.

Let me emphasize that, in the logic of the Joshua Conquest narrative, the main crime of the Canaanites is not necessarily any wicked quality particular to them, or some evil thing that a distant ancestor of theirs may or may not have done, but simply that they happened to exist in the land that God had promised to Israel: the Noahide curse simply complements the assumed superiority of Israel.

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Intent