Noah- Movie vs Text

As it is well known, many different interpretations of biblical stories have been taken throughout history; some with more artistic interpretation that others. The modern film interpretation Noah is one of those more loosely, yet realistic interpretations of the popularized biblical story of Noah and the Ark. Although there are many aspects of the film accurate to modern biblical interpretations of the Creation story and also the Great Flood. For example, as well as having the main plotlines of Genesis 6-9 such as the flood and the animals gathering, the movie also keeps details like the rainbow after the flood and covering the ark with pitch. As for the realistic approach the movie takes on the story, it makes the audience differentiate between the preschool ideology of Noah’s Ark that one is taught in bible school and what the actual, terrifying, gory act of flooding the earth may look like. Sadly, I found the humanistic aspects of the movie believable; the main theme of man in inevitable internal conflict between right and wrong holds an abundance of truth.

                On the other hand, there were certain parts of the plot that stretched the concept of artistic interpretation very, very thin.  For example, I have trouble placing the roaming fallen-angel rock figures in the biblical narrative. The family dynamic is a stretch as well, although I can see how they fit into the text. In Genesis 6: 18, God tells Noah, “I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.” In the movie, that technically happens when Ila births two daughters to become Ham and Japheth’s wives. However, probably for dramatic movie purposes, the plot ended up that way, as well as adding Tubal-Cain as a stowaway on the ship as well as Noah and his family. Another interesting aspect was the depiction of the creation story. As Noah was telling the story of God building the earth in 6 days, the viewer could see millions of years of earth’s formation and the evolution of species go by, including the evolution of man. Usually, theories of evolution are usually avoided in religiously affiliated productions. The scene of Adam and Eve in the garden are very representative of the idea of free will, as Adam stops to pick up the snake skin (symbolizing humanity’s goodness) and Eve continues on to pick fruit the forbidden tree (symbolizing humanity’s temptation for evil). The fate of Ham changes dramatically from the text to the movie. Biblical accounts show Ham fated to be slave to his two brothers and shamed from the family. In the movie, he is somewhat lost and disoriented form the rest of his family, which plays a big factor in his deciding to peacefully leave them at the end of the movie.

                Although one may think they know the story of Noah well, a quick read through Genesis 6-9 may change that understanding. The biblical narrative of the Great Flood is contradictory towards itself several times. Most of this is mathematical. At one point, there claims to be pairs of animals aboard the Ark (two of each, one male and one female), while at another point it is stated that there should be seven pairs of clean animals and birds. Does this mean of the same species, or seven random pairs of birds? (Seeing that the concept of species was not around in biblical times, this is hard to tell). Another number mix-up is the lifespan of people of that time period. In the beginning of Genesis 6, God proclaims that people should live no longer than one hundred and twenty years. However, we see Noah in his six-hundredth year of living, and later dies at the ripe old age of nine-hundred and fifty. Does that mean this new rule only applies to newborns? The text is organized in an interesting fashion as well, with some of the same plot points repeating themselves with slight differentiations right next to each other (as we also see in other stories of Genesis). One of the main claims as to why this pattern appears is that different accounts of the same story are interwoven together, making it impossible to truly distinguish which is the ‘original’ or ‘true’ version. Overall, the movie, as dramatic and influenced by popular media themes as it may be, was for the most part true to the text of the biblical accounts of the story of Noah.