How has the story of Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, which contains no explicit reference to black people, become linked to the institution of slavery? David Goldenberg, a scholar of ...

On the very same day Noah and Shem and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark.” (Genesis 7:12-13).

“And the sons of Noah that went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole world overspread.

In that same vein the list of the children of Noah goes like this: Shem, Ham and Japheth (Gen. 9:18 and Gen. 10: 1). This clearly suggests that Japheth was the youngest son of Noah and not Ham.