ABSTRACT
The Old Testament’s admonition was first spelled out to author by caring Nonconformist teachers at Welsh working-class primary school. Noah, survivor of God’s curse of the Flood and destined to be the sole progenitor of all mankind, pronounced his sinister malediction after a drunken bout that had left him senseless. The unfolding of the history of the Noah family, like the Creation legend itself, is the crucial focus of a larger universal history. And since the Bible was conceived and written by men, it reflects all their contradictions and prejudices as well as their idealism; and as we chasteningly learn from the Noah story, of all prejudices, racial prejudice has the longest of histories. In the Noah story, God has inflicted a terrible reprimand on those who are, impertinently, defying His command: "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth".
