Noah: setting the apologetic agenda?

Final Sat, with some misgivings, I gave in and went to run across Noah with my 13-year-old daughter. Some commentators take noted that it is a dark film, but perhaps I was full-bodied too much on analysing information technology to take that in. In fact, overall I found information technology an enjoyable film, with some stunning interim, and the 2 hours 20 minutes passed speedily—though I am not sure I volition be rushing to purchase the DVD.

Despite its billing, and the positive reception from some Christians, this is not really a biblical story, but a postal service-apocalyptic ecothriller plundering the biblical narrative. And plunder it does very well—I retrieve in that location are many more biblical resonances and allusions than people realise. Of class, the main plot line is drawn from Gen 6–9, with a number of other things mixed in. A number of commentators have noted that some fundamental elements of the Noah story have been missed—the main one being that Shem, Ham and Japheth bring their wives in the biblical story, whereas in the film only Shem has a woman, and she is barren. Merely this is the beginning interesting inclusion of a prominent biblical theme from elsewhere—the barren woman who (spoiler alert!) is healed and is delivered of longed-for offspring.

There are several other nice biblical touches.

• Although Noah shuts and reopens the door to the ark several times, the final time information technology is closed by The Creator rather than by Noah himself.
• The scene where Noah looks to heaven and contemplates the sacrifice he believes The Creator is calling him to make is highly suggestive of the 'Akedah' in Genesis 22, Abraham's about-sacrifice of Isaac.
• The motion-picture show includes the mail service-alluvion episode where Noah plants the first vineyard, gets drunkard, and is institute by his children. This episode follows some of the biblical item closely, including Ham finding Noah first and failing to 'cover his nakedness'—and I remember I even spotted an allusion to the idea that this was a veiled reference to an illicit sexual encounter betwixt Ham and Noah.
• At that place is quite a powerful, and relatively faithful, re-telling of the creation narrative from Genesis ane–iii, told by Noah to his family once sealed in the ark and waiting for the waters to subside. This was done in nigh exactly the same way as it was presented in the excellent (and underused) Testament series of videos, in this instance in the episode on Creation and Flood. (I am non aware of a scholarly theory that supports this linking—do comment, beloved reader, if yous know of one.)

But I highly doubt that most viewers would have noticed these. What was more than obvious was the addition to the biblical framework of the myth of the Watchers, the fallen angels who came to earth to have sex with beautiful women (see Gen 6.four), from the book known as 1 Enoch. This is function of the 'Old Testament Pseudepigrapha', books that were not part of the Hebrew canon of Scripture, only were circulated quite widely in the New Attestation menstruum. Many of them, like 1 Enoch, purport to have been written past famous OT characters, in this example, Noah's granddaddy, but in fact are thought to have been written in the period of Greek and Roman occupation of Palestine. 1 Enoch consists of five singled-out parts, and only the get-go part (chapters 1 to 36) relates to the Watchers. The movie suggests they came to assistance fallen humankind, though the book depicts them non simply as skilled craftsmen just also equally corrupting magicians—you lot can read it for yourself at the online library of Early Jewish Writings. (My favourite part is the list of their names in chapter six v 8; Jomjael sounds like he might have been fun!) The book was clearly known amidst the starting time Christians, and is cited in Jude i:14–15 (quoting 1 En 1.ix and threescore.8).

The picture besides weaves in a skilful number of hints at Jewish mysticism; the mineral that produces burn, which the men are hunting for at the beginning of the film, is chosen 'zohar', which means 'shining'—and is the proper noun of the fundamental text in Kabbalah mysticism, a kind of Jewish gnosticism which emerged in 13th-century Spain, merely claims to record oral traditions from the second temple period and earlier. This influence explains why the snakeskin brings enlightenment (a hint that 'the autumn' was not a bad thing, only a coming of age for Adam and Eve), why Adam and Eve are portrayed equally figures of light, rather than having normal bodies, and why the final rainbow is circular, rather than the biblical bow. These influence are explored at length by Brian Mattson.

Despite all these issue, I came away feeling that the Noah film had got one large affair admittedly correct. The story of Noah (like others in this office of Genesis) is not a historical account that can translate, with no demand for adaptation, into a film script. Information technology is a 'mythical' text, in that it makes employ of a story to configure the globe in narrative terms. Information technology is seeking to tell us something about how the world is, what humanity is similar, and the nature of God. That is why I cannot assist feeling that explorations of the historical events behind it, or how manyanimals the ark could hold, are slightly abreast the point. The truth of these stories, like Jesus' parables, lies not in the correlation withhistorical facts, but in their resonance with the way the earth information technology. As the manager himself comments:

To argue about information technology as if information technology was a historical upshot is ridiculous. Which, by the way, goes for atheists, likewise – the people who do the math and say, 'Well, all of the beast kingdom couldn't fit into ane boat.' The whole conversation is ridiculous.

And this is where we get to the real consequence with Noah. Although some Christians have suggested that the picture show will prompt discussion nearly what God is like, I personally doubt it,since I recallthe film actually closes the conversation down. It offers a very clear depiction of The Creator, and a r epeated theme is that he is silent. He won't speak to Tubal-Cain—neither does he speak to Noah. He is silent, distant and draconian. (Mattson is right that this derives from theinfluence of Kabbalah mysticism.) This theme is present throughout the film, but information technology reaches is climax towards the finish, when Noah decides what to do with his grandchildren that have been built-in on the ark. Since The Creator continues to be silent, Noah must simply follow his dogmatic, religious commitment and kill the children. And it is only the c ommon-sense humanity of other members of the family that changes his heed. Humanity without religion is more than moral than The Creator—and his followers. Russell Crowe's inexpressive, deadpan portrayal captures this religious fanaticism rather well. In the terminate, Noah triumphs considering he mind to his ain instinct, and the pleading of his wife and children, and this turns him from the volition of The Creator—which is callous, vindictive and inhuman.

This nowadays us with the apologetic agenda. The director Darren Aronofsky, a humanist, has reworked a biblical story using Jewish mysticism to present an atheist atoning: humanity is meliorate off without the dogma of religion.

Rather surprisingly, a bit of me doesn't disagree with this as much as I might—in one important sense. I have argued elsewhere that the Christian faith does not fit the category of 'religion' very well in some key respects. Contrary to Noah in the film, the Judeo-Christian tradition is somewhat doubtable of people challenge to have heard from God and demanding allegiance on the basis of this. Its theology of the prophetic isboth that God does speak, but also that any claim that God has spoken must be tested critically by the community of faith. (See Deut eighteen and ane Cor 12 and 14.)

Just information technology seems to me that this agenda—reasonable humanity is more compassionate than religion—is working itself out in a good number of current debates, not to the lowest degree in relation to sexuality. God is unreasonable, and lacking in compassion—and the Bible shows this, which is why Richard Dawkins offered to fund the distribution of Bibles in schools. Nevertheless, Aranofsky only manages to make this point by removing key elements of the story—that Noah was in a different moral category from the rest of humanity, that God'south plan was restoration of Eden, not obliteration of humanity, and that the terminate of the story is God's grief over what has happened. This underlies the other hidden dynamic at work here: atheistic understandings of morality are in fact dependent on the religious tradition that they argue confronting, equally Theo Hobson points out:

The new atheists are now hitting the intellectual buffers. The problem that confronts them is as stark as it is unproblematic: our morality has religious roots. Put another style: when God is rejected, the stakes are gulpingly high; the entire moral tradition of the Westward is put in question.

Christians need to offer a robust account of faith that is moral and compassionate. And that needs to be matched by do: Christian religion needs not merely to be moral, but to be seen to exist moral. That is the real challenge the flick Noah sets out before us.

(And what did my daughter recall? 'I enjoyed it—they were correct about how evil people are. That is why Jesus had to dice for us. But I didn't like the characterisation of Noah. I wish they'd got a Christian to check it out beginning and so that they could get him right.')

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