Book of the Bee

Historical scan page 61

OF MELCHIZEDEK. 33 Japhet. But Shem and Japhet took a cloak upon their shoulders, and walked backwards with their faces turned away, and threw the cloak over their father and covered him, and then they looked upon him. When Noah awoke and knew what had been done to him by the two sets of his sons, he cursed Canaan the son of Ham and said, c Thou shalt be a servant to thy brethren;’ but he blessed Shem and Japhet. The reason why he cursed Canaan, who was not as yet born nor had sinned, was because Ham had been saved with him in the ark from the waters [.t\] of the flood, and had with his father received the divine blessing ; and also because the arts of sin — I mean music and dancing and all other hateful things — were about to be revived by his posterity, for the art of music proceeded from the seed of Canaan h After the flood a son was born to Noah, and he called his name Jonaton1 2; and he provided him with gifts and sent him to the fire of the sun, to the east. Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years ; the sum of his years was nine hundred and fifty years ; and he saw eighteen generations and families before and after it. He died on the fourth day of the week, on the second of Nisan, at the second hour of the day; his son Shem embalmed him, and his sons buried him, and mourned over him forty days. CHAPTER XXI3. OF MELCHIZEDEK4 *. Neither the father nor mother of this Melchizedek were written down in the genealogies ; not that he had no natural parents 6, but that 1 Jo» O 11/ / .loot *3 wfl )«-./ ^^500 o oA>. )j.a.^oo chA Jooto Av 1 / Casks Ua^.s lAo>? )a.A\a.3. ‘Why, since the whole sin belonged to Ham, was Canaan cursed except that, when the boy grew up and came to years of discretion, Satan entered into him and became a teacher of sin to him ? and he renewed the work of the house of Cain the murderer.’ Bezold, Die Schatzhohle , p. 25; Brit. Mus. Add. 25,875, fol. 19 a, col. 2. 2 See Bezold, Die Schatzhohle , p. 33, and note no. 115, p. 78. 3 Chap, xxii in the Oxford MS. 4 Gen. xiv. 18-24 J Heb. chap. vii. jot .loot yO©tCLi|o .yOoAkO 03 » La loot li.Co-300 [II. 2.] f 6