New book by an Old Testament scholar at Louisville Seminary is launched
Supporters gather to laud Dr. Justin Michael Reed’s ‘The Injustice of Noah’s Curse’
LOUISVILLE — Family, friends, students and colleagues were all smiles on Tuesday helping Dr. Justin Michael Reed, Associate Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, launch his new book, “The Injustice of Noah’s Curse.”
Faculty members, including Dr. Anna Bowden and Dr. Tyler Mayfield, told a few stories on their friend and colleague following a celebratory meal at the seminary.
Reed’s book, developed from his 2020 dissertation, is based on Genesis 9:18-28, the curse of Canaan, who was Noah’s grandson and the son of Ham. In the biblical account, Canaan does nothing to earn Noah’s curse, which for centuries was used as biblical support for such atrocities as enslaving Black people.
According to one review, Reed’s book “shines light on a different path,” using critical race theory, speech act theory, intertextuality and irony “to make sense of the injustice of Noah’s curse in its literary context.”
“If you’ve ever heard Justin read a poem or recite a children’s story, you know he’s a gifted storyteller,” Bowden said. “When Justin tells stories, he does more than hold our attention. He slows us down, giving us space to notice details. He invites us to sit with complex storylines and characters.”
Tradition has handed us “a simple script from Genesis 9,” she said. “Noah is wronged, Ham is guilty, and the curse [against Canaan] is justified. The verdict is in, the case is closed, and guilt is presumed.” But Reed “dares to tell a different story. What if Noah is in the wrong? With this single question, this de-centering of a biblical hero, the ground shifts beneath us.”
“What I admire most in Justin’s work is he does not resolve the problem by abandoning the text. Instead, Justin reads it with even greater attention to detail,” Bowden said. “The curse is excessive, overblown, misdirected and off-target. The punishment exceeds the offense.” The curse is “a rhetorical construction, a parody, an invitation to keep reading.”
The new book “has deeply shaped my own thinking to re-explore some of my own work,” she said.
With his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek, Mayfield shared what he called “a remarkable story” while leading a group of seminarians in 2023 on a dig around the caves at Quamran, the site where nearly 900 ancient biblical scrolls have been discovered. “We found a new manuscript. I was finally able to complete a new translation,” he said with the hint of a grin. “Today is its world premiere.”
Coincidentally, the fragment the LPTS students “found’ was taken from exactly the same text Reed’s book deals with. “What are the chances?” Mayfield said.
“I found some marginal writing” alongside the fragments, Mayfield claimed. “Some ancient scribe made several important notes,” including, “This is a confusing story and many people will try all sorts of interpretive moves to make sense of it. But don’t worry — a great scholar will come about” millennia later.
“Finally, this ancient scribe rewrites the curse in the Genesis text” and “transforms it into a blessing, a blessing for this astute biblical scholar who is to come one day: ‘Blessed be Reed, greatest of scholars, shall be among those who study Torah, the wisest of teachers shall he be to this Louisville Seminary community, the worthiest of authors shall he be today,” Mayfield said. “Amen.”
After thanking those who’d turned out to celebrate the book launch, Reed recalled using historical criticism to teach a Sunday school class while working on his master’s degree. “For the most part, they were open to it and they liked it,” he said. When they got to Genesis 9, most read the story “with the most agreed-upon interpretations,” including Reed, at the time. Except for one skeptical student.
“She had the vigilance to say, ‘I am not going to eat everything you feed me,’” he said. “That led me to look back at what I was buying into.”
“The big thing to take away is not just for this text,” he said. “It’s a way of approaching things with vigilance, critical thinking and understanding how we are making meaning and whether there’s a better way to do that.”
Reed answered questions from the crowd, including one on the art selected for the cover of the book.
He said he settled on a painting “I wasn’t super happy with,” then showed it to his wife, Catherine, who told him, “yeah, you shouldn’t be super happy with that.” Reed’s brother, Milan, a Chicago-based photographer, then showed his brother some images from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a photo of “The Freedman,” a sculpture created by John Quincy Adams Ward in 1863, grabbed the author’s attention.
In Ward’s work, an African American man is portrayed “in the style of the idealized bodies going back to Greek civilization,” Reed noted. One wrist is unchained, while the other is still manacled. “Is he resting now that he’s escaped? What is the state of being this freed man?” Reed asked. “I thought it was a very appropriate photo to use for this text that has to do with the curse of slavery” and a reading of the text “that is more emancipatory than previous readings.”
Asked how the book “can help us pastors bring these notions to people trying to live out what’s in the Bible,” Reed said he finds it helpful to use critical race theory and other tools to help unearth “the ways in which our modern understanding in terms of racism influence how we read an ancient text.” Critical race theory can help people understand “racial progress and regression in the United Sates.”
“We have ways in which it is very common in church literature to write off certain people groups,” Reed said. “Churches can be aware and push back on those biases.”
While undertaking his research, Reed found many scholars who also believe the curse was unjust. The difference, he said, is their arguments “were really short — sometimes just a sentence.” Still, “I felt like I had somebody who had my back — someone already respected was saying I’m not crazy to break away from the majority.”
His advisor also supported bringing critical race theory to an ancient text, telling Reed, “It can be good scholarship. Just be open to the critiques that can make it better.”
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