Hollywood’s Noah – The Film Review

By Phil Robinson

Published: 01 May 2014

Bizarre! – That was the one word that kept circulating in the discussion among the group with which I went to the cinema with to review the Hollywood film “Noah”. Many details of the story enacted on the big screen did not match up with the historical narrative found in the early chapters of Genesis. For example:

• Adam and Eve’s bodies are portrayed as consisting of light.
• Fallen angels (called “watchers”) are depicted as actually trying to help mankind, and were encased in bodies of stone as punishment.
• The film portrays a psychotic Noah as believing that he had to murder Ham and Japeth’s wives (who, incidentally, are presented as babies born on the Ark to Shem’s wife).
• There is a magical snakeskin, shed by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Wrapped around the left forearm of its possessor, this snakeskin enables the wearer to bestow blessing.
• In the film, Tubal-Cain boards the Ark and hides with a view to killing Noah.
• A central theme of the film is that animals are innocent and need to be saved from a world that has been destroyed by humankind. Thus the film represents salvation as deliverance from ecological disaster rather than from judgement for sin (disobedience against God).
• When Noah retold the narrative of creation in Genesis 1-2, CGI is used to show evolution taking place.

There are too many other digressions from the biblical narrative to mention in this short review. The Kabbalistic and Gnostic influence on Darren Aronofsky’s retelling of the story of Noah have been discussed by a number of other commentators. The links have been provided at the bottom should you wish to read further about them.[1]^{, [2], [3]}

While I do not recommend viewing “Noah”, should a conversation develop with someone who has viewed it, then the points where it comes closest to the Biblical narrative could be used to draw attention back to the true historical event. Some of the details of the film closer to the Biblical narrative are:

• Noah’s ancestry is accurately traced back to Adam.
• The longevity of men pre-flood, for example Methuselah who lived to be 969.
• Noah and his family were vegetarians (pre-flood).
• The global devastation of the flood.
• The depravity of men with their concern only for themselves.
• The duration of the flood.
• The fairly accurate size of the ark.

In regards to the size of Noah’s Ark it is interesting to note that just before the UK film premiere a paper released by students of Leicester University showed that the concept of Noah’s ark, based on the dimensions given in Genesis 6:14-16, carrying all the kinds of animal on the earth, was perfectly feasible. Student Thomas Morris, age 22, from Chelmsford, said: “You don’t think of the Bible necessarily as a scientifically accurate source of information, so I guess we were quite surprised when we discovered it would work.”[4] Of course this information is no surprise to creationists, as previous research has shown,[5] but it was great to see the news story being picked up by the national media.

Major Misrepresentations

Two of the major misrepresentations of God and the Biblical narrative of the flood were that of how God communicated with Noah and the reason for the flood. God, referred to as ‘the creator’ throughout the film, communicates with Noah through vague revelations about the impending judgement via the flood. However in the Bible God was not vague or ambiguous in any way regarding His reason for judgement or what Noah was to do in response. God’s rationale for judging man is found in Genesis 6:5, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” – judgment was not for ecological reasons as portrayed in the film. The instructions for the building of the ark and what it was to contain are found in Genesis chapters 6-7 and leave us in no doubt as to what God wanted Noah to do.

The same is true for the coming judgment, God through the Bible communicates this very clearly to us, and how salvation from the coming judgement can be obtained in Jesus Christ through faith and repentance. One interesting aspect of the film is Noah’s numerous flash backs of the entrance of sin into the world when Adam ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. This action, called ‘the fall’, a real historical event, brought death and judgement to all people, leading to the necessity for the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and the shedding of his blood, so that our sins could be dealt with by a just and Holy God.

In conclusion

Despite the negative aspects of the film it has been reported that since the release of “Noah” the reading of the Bible online and the use of Bible apps has increased dramatically.[6] Hopefully this indicates that people are making an effort to examine what the Bible actually says about the real historical events of Noah’s life and the flood, and that it will lead them to think about their own future judgement by God and the need to bow before their creator-redeemer, Jesus Christ.

If you would like to consider this further please read this Good News.