On Noah and Wine

The biblical Noah planted a vineyard and became drunk.

The Classical Noah was called Deucalion. His name also may be connected with wine.

You can see the name in the beautiful 11th century Neapolitan manuscript of Ovid Metamorphoses 1.349-350.

Deucalion is plausibly derived from Greek deukos ‘sweet wine’ + halieus ‘sailor’. The d of deukos is more commonly gl (compare glucose, a sweet substance). For related terms here are line 625 of Nicander’s Theriaka in BnF Supplément grec 247 & a bit of Liddell & Scott’s lexicon.

But why Noah and wine?

I want to suggest some possible connections.

Genesis 1:28: God blesses humanity (called ‘adam in Hebrew in 1:27).

Ergo ‘adam can never be cursed.

Ergo in 3:17 God curses not ‘adam but the ‘adamah ‘ground’.

In 4:11 Cain (who worked the ground, 4:2) is cursed ‘from the ground’ (or possibly ‘more than the ground’).

5:29: Noah’s father Lamech says: ‘Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.’

9:1, after the flood, God blessed Noah’s 3 sons Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Remember, blessing is irreversible.

9:19 ‘Noah began to be a man of the soil’ (Hebrew: ‘adamah).

If we’ve been reading so far, we don’t expect this to end well.

He plants a vineyard & gets drunk with wine & lay naked & in some way commentators debate his son Ham dishonoured him.

But Ham’s irreversably blessed.

So Noah (with hangover) curses Ham’s SON Canaan.

That’s why Canaanites (with exceptions, eg Rahab) don’t do well in the Bible.

Verdict on wine: it comforts people from their toil, but also bites & brings a curse on some.

This is all rather reversed in the wine cup of the last supper and the curse which Christ drank in suffering.

It is a tribute to people’s inability to read the text that anyone could have imagined that Ham, not Canaan, was cursed.

19th century racist ‘exegesis’ of Gen. 9:25 sought to justify N. American slavery by claiming that enslavers were descended from Japheth & enslaved from Ham.

They rather missed the biblical fulfillment of Gen. 9:25 in the Gibeonites of Joshua 9:27.

I have a 569 page book by pro-slavery Josiah Priest ‘Bible Defence of Slavery’ which is entirely based on this misreading. Many such deluded books were written in the mid-19th century.

Conclusion: threads run through the text.

One can debate particular connections, but we see that a figure like Noah is portrayed as bringing a curse on others.

The damage of his actions is, nevertheless, more restricted than the reach of God’s blessing.