Noah (2014)

In comparison to the majority of Bible movies, films about Noah have tended to take a more creative approach to telling the story. Michael Curtiz's 1929 Noah's Ark wraps the main story up in a "modern" day train crash story; thimbles and pipe cleaners lend a distinct charm to Disney's 1959 stop motion short of the same name; and the 1999 TV film, also of the same name, bizarrely combines the story of Noah with that of Lot.

Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014), then, is hardly the first film about Noah to take a more creative approach. His is a mythic take, on a story which permeated so many different ancient cultures. Whilst this version is clearly an adaptation of the Jewish version of the story - and whilst Aronofsky himself is an atheist, his Jewish background has clearly been influential - the fantastical approach he has taken with his subject matter works to evoke a story that was known to far more people groups than simply the descendants of Jacob.

Aronofsky particularly seems to revel in the fact that the Bible is often a strange book, and that few parts of it embody that 'oddness' more than Genesis. Indeed, I don't think you've really taken the Bible seriously until you acknowledge this inherent oddness. Take for example these words from the prologue to the Noah story:

"When people began to multiply...and daughters were born to them, the 'sons of God' saw that they were fair and took wives for themselves... the 'sons of God' went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them..." (Gen 6:1-4)

And that's one of the passages that Aronofsky leaves out. Add in those making covenants by dismembering animal carcasses and perambulating between them; Lot sleeping with both his daughters on consecutive nights, and Abraham being just moments away from sacrificially chopping up his only son and you have one weird book. Of course, Genesis is not necessarily endorsing all the  actions it describes. However, all too often people behave as if that the world of Genesis was broadly similar to out own, where people thought, felt and generally acted in a similar manner to the way in which we do today, despite the substantial evidence to the contrary, not least in our main source for these very stories.

What I most appreciate about Aronofsky's Noah, therefore, is that he grasps, and indeed seems to relish, this strange 'otherness'. The film was over twenty years in the making after a project at school on the subject first caught his attention. The result is probably the first Bible film to feel like a cross between Lord of the Rings, Waterworld and Mad Max. As John Wilson put it, Noah isn't so much an adaptation, as a film that uses Genesis as a "mood board" (Front Row, 2014). The resulting film posses a strangely uneven style which many have disliked, but again this is what makes the film so bizarre and so interesting.

On the surface of course, it's a biblical epic and some of the scenes that Aronofsky has created here are amongst the very best in the genre. Chief among them are the minutes leading up to the launch of the ark which, on the big screen at least, are spectacular. Noah rescues his son Ham from the descendants of Cain, escapes to the ark whilst the 'watchers' protect the ark from the on-rushing hordes, which culminates in their angelic souls spectacularly beaming back up to heaven just as the waters of the deep break forth lifting the ark up and away.  Clint Mansell's score, quite different from the kind of music he has typically produced for Aronofsky, ratchets up the tension magnificently. It maybe the 21st century, but it nevertheless feels very like the moment the Red Sea parts in the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments.

But this sequence also contains exactly those elements which feel so very far away from the kind of movie that DeMille and his ilk would ever have produced. The 'watchers' are angels (the Nephilim of Gen 4) who have quite literally fallen to earth, and found as they crashed to earth that the earth, or rather its rock, has clung to their bodies. The resulting 'rock monsters' look like the kind of special effect Ray Harryhausen might have created for Jason and the Argonauts (1963). When they die defending the ark their souls are sucked back up to heaven in great beams of light that feels like something from Independence Day.

The movie's other breathtaking sequence also illustrates the diverse mix of styles that Aronofsky brings together. Shortly after the launch of the ark, Noah retells his family the story of creation accompanied by a time-lapse-styled montage portraying an evolutionary act of creation with a hint of stop-motion. The sequence ends at the Tree of Life (with all the echoes of Aronofsky's earlier The Fountain) with a glowing snakeskin wrapped around Noah's arm like tefillin straps. Throw in the lunar-esque Icelandic landscape; a cameo from Anthony Hopkins that veers a little too closely to Billy Crystal's turn in The Princess Bride; and Noah's nightmares alternating between blood underfoot and water overhead, and it's not hard to see why many dislike the film's unevenness.

The unevenness both unsettles viewers and hints at the divergent sources that lay behind the version that is cherished today. It's not that Aronofsky has pinpointed the exact cultural context of the original stories. He hasn't and clearly didn't intended to. But he has created a context where some of the questions that the text raises, and that the story's characters would have had to face, can be explored. In particular the time spent on the ark during the flood, so often skipped over in other versions of the story, turns into a dark psychological drama, as Noah feels inescapably drawn to take The Creator's work to its grimly 'logical' conclusion by ending even his own family line.

It's a film, then, that takes seriously the nature of the destruction that "The Creator" (as God is called in this version) unleashes during this story - a point that few critics seemed to appreciated. Ironically, many Christians railed against the film's portrayal of Noah as a homicidal maniac, overlooking the fact that of course the number of deaths at Noah's hands are only a fraction of those who drown in the flood sent by God. To assess this film's Noah as a psychopath is something of a miscalculation. Noah doesn't want to kill his granddaughter - and in fact ultimately he cannot - he just believes that this is what his creator is calling him to do. Noah's readiness to follow even the most horrific of his creator's commands brings him into similar territory as Abraham, sacrificing his offspring because he is convinced God wills it.

As Peter Chattaway has observed, Aronofsky's other films "often dwell on the idea that purity or perfection is impossible, and that the pursuit of these things is self-destructive." (Chattaway 2014). It's not hard to see how the filmmakers unpack similar themes in Noah. Noah's environmentalist perfectionism is such that he rebukes his child for picking a flower; his destructive obsession drives him to almost kill his grandchild. On a physical level the floodwaters have destroyed the world, but there is also huge destruction on an emotional level. Little wonder that the film's epilogue opens with Noah, alone, getting drunk on the beach. Years before this film was released Aronofsky described this as an indication of Noah's "survivor's guilt" (Aronofsky, 2007), but Noah is also continuing to agonise over the questions which dominated the film's third act. Was he was right or wrong to spare Ila's child? Has his 'compassion' ultimately doomed the world to be destroyed by humans all over again? How can he face his family given how close he came to committing such an horrific act? It's no coincidence that Aronofsky framing of Crowe's Noah repeatedly echoes the famous final shot of The Searchers (1956).

It's here that his daughter-in-law Ila's words help rehabilitate Noah, in the eyes of his family, to himself, and also, to some extent, to the viewer:

He chose you for a reason, Noah. He showed you the wickedness of man and knew you would not look away. And you saw goodness too. The choice was put in your hands because he put it there. He asked you to decide if we were worth saving. And you chose mercy. You chose love. He has given us a second chance. Be a father, be a grandfather. Help us to do better this time. Help us start again."

On all three fronts the rehabilitation is only partly successful, such trauma is not easily overcome, but it does manage to leave the film on a positive note, whilst also challenging its audience to re-examine its own environmental credentials. This, then, is a more hopeful ending than Aronofsky's later mother! which suggests that this film's second chance, if it even is only a second chance, is doomed to fail and will ultimately lead The Creator to endlessly destroy and misguidedly restart the world again. Here though, the despair is not yet so overwhelming. Noah may have begun amidst environmental apocalypse (with an implied modern parallel), but it ends still offering us a fig leaf of hope, urging us to act before its too late.

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Aronofsky, Darren (2007). "Just Say Noah" Interviewed by Ryan Gibley for The Guardian, 27 April. Available online - https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/apr/27/1

Chattaway, Peter T., (2014) "Flood Theology" in Books and Culture Vol 20 No.3 (May/June 2014)
Available online - http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2014/mayjun/flood-theology.html?paging=off

Front Row (2014) BBC Radio 4, 4 April. Available online - https://soundcloud.com/front-row-weekly/fr-kate-winslet-richard-ayoade

More on Darren Aronofsky's Noah

/film posted their interview Darren Aronofsky yesterday, and towards the end of their time together they asked him about his Noah project that I discussed back in May last year. Whilst his answer isn't quite as interesting as it was in his previous interview in The Guardian it's nice to heard he's still passionate about the project. Here's what he had to say:

Peter Sciretta: Who wrote it?
Darren Aronofsky: I wrote it. Me and Ari Handel, the guy who worked on the Fountain. It’s a great script and it’s HUGE. And we’re starting to feel out talent. And then we’ll probably try and set it up…
Peter Sciretta: So this isn’t something you can make for six million dollars?
Darren Aronofsky: No, this is big. I mean, Look… It’s the end of the world and it’s the second most famous ship after the Titanic. So I’m not sure why any studio won’t want to make it.
Peter Sciretta: You would hope so.?
Darren Aronofsky: Yeah, I would hope so. It’s a really cool project and I think it’s really timely because it’s about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what’s going on on this planet. So I think it’s got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist. He’s a really interesting character. Hopefully they’ll let me make it.

That part of the interview has apparently gained such a lot of interest that Sciretta posted a follow-up piece just on Aronofsky's Noah in which he adds this to what we already know:

The idea originated ten years ago, even before Pi, when Aronofsky saw a museum exhibit. But the director’s fascination with Noah’s Ark began when he was only 13-years-old. Aronofsky won a United Nations poetry competition at his Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn school. The poem was about the end of the world as seen through the eyes of Noah. When Brad Pitt abruptly left The Fountain just weeks before principal photography, Aronofsky took some time off and began to develop a variety of different projects, one of them being the Noah screenplay.

Obviously I'll be reporting on this one as it (hopefully) progresses. Meanwhile, you can read all of the posts I've made on films about Noah here. Incidentally the image above is from Jacopo Bassano's 1574 painting "Noah's Sacrifice" which seems kind of fitting given Aronofsky's earlier comments about Noah's "survivor's guilt".

Protozoa (Aronofsky, 1993) and Noah

This post is part two of a series looking at Darren Aronofsky's other work and how they relate to his 2014 Noah.

Aronofsky's second student film reappeared in 2021, but there's been remarkably little discussion about it since then, given it's the work of a major future Hollywood director. It's shot in a way that's remarkably reminiscent of it's time: early digital video; a grungy, lo-fi look and feel; disaffected young adult protagonists who feel closely connected to how the maturing Generation X was expressing itself at the time. There's a similar vibe running through out cultural output at the time from Richard Linklater's Slacker (1990) and Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel "Generation X" through to Kevin Smith's Clerks (1994) and 1996's Trainspotting.*

In it the film's three protagonists, Pete, Dave and Ari, in a very early appearance from Lucy Liu, discuss the meaning of life, drawing on what is essentially a modern day parable with a decidedly biblical flavour. It's not hard, then, to draw the lines from this to Aronofsky's Noah (2014). Like that film it also spends much of its time around black deserted landscapes, searches for meaning amid destruction, and centres on characters who are not easy to like. It's not much in terms of plot and character development, at least by his later standards, but in terms of mood and themes it certainly captures some of the feel of what Aronofsky would realise more fully twenty plus years later.

Even so, it's nevertheless surprising when the first real piece of dialogue (aside from cursory greetings and some opening chat) dives straight into conversation featuring biblical epics. Pete starts telling Dave about a guy they used to know called Blue whose Dad was a TV repairman and who had got stuck in an unfortunate cycle of watching television endlessly. One night "some network shows one of those 1950s biblical epics. You know the type with Liz Taylor and Yul Brynner?" He starts watching it only to discover "it's a film on the story of Abraham" specifically the scene of him "smashing up the idol shop". This speaks to him so powerfully that he does the same with his TVs.

The details given about the film do not correspond to any given biblical epic, indeed the story is rabbinical not biblical. This is doubtless intentional as it allows Aronofsky to suggest the mythic mature of the story as a whole. The (plainly incorrect) details are in the right ball park and certainly leave the viewer knowing exactly the type of film being referenced, but the lack of a concrete referent also detach the story from reliable history. The point of the story is the meaning which can be derived from it. In other words this is a modern-day parable. 

Pete continues to describe this scene of destruction which Blue is not enveloped in:

Pete: Sparks, glass, TVs burning in flames... except for one. It's in flames, but it's not burning.

Dave: The burning bush!

Pete: Right. But it's a TV. And then it talks to him.

Dave: The TV?

Pete: The fucking TV. "Do not come near. Put off the shoes from your feet. For the place where you are standing is holy ground". And then Blue takes off his hi-tops and the voice says "I have come down to deliver you unto the wilderness. There you will discover the truth."

Dave: The truth?

Pete: Yeah. The meaning of life.

So now we have a modernisation of the Moses story breaking into one that starts by inspiration from (of all things) a biblical epic. So the biblical allusions work on two levels. There is the biblical story of Abraham which (apparently) was on screen at the moment of revelation, and inspired the story's anti-hero to smash up his TVs. This is obviously quite far removed from real life. But there is also the ending to the story where purportedly real events are impacted by the supernatural, validated by their similarity to a biblical story (Moses and the burning bush) and which end with "the meaning of life".

If the young Aronofsky wasn't quite able to satisfactorily unpack what exactly the meaning of life was/is in the remaining 10 minutes of the film, then we should perhaps forgive him. He was only 24 after all. But Dave is inspired to board a bus carrying some people less fortunate than himself (who he's previously been mocking) in a bid to help them. And while Pete and Ari are less driven to change than their friend, they do decide to return to the source of all this life-changing wisdom. Or at least they decide to go and watch the TV.

Perhaps they too will be inspired. Or perhaps they too will get caught watching it, unable to tear themselves away. Or perhaps TV is still just TV and Dave's transformation is built on nothing but a story.

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Two other things caught my attention. The first is one character describing LA as "the city of the snake". I've not heard that before, so it's interesting given the prominence of both a snake and a snake skin in Noah.

Secondly, in the midst of Pete's story, which is told partly by a brick-o-brack of different techniques, we're shown all the drugs that he tried and while they may not be actual drugs, the depiction of them in such a matter of fact manner was quite striking – perhaps not the kind of thing that a studio (either then or now) would permit. It's noticeable too that while the list includes hard and soft, legal and illegal drugs (heroin and opium through to tobacco and caffeine) it doesn't include alcohol. This feels like a deliberate omission and I guess it catches my attention because of the scene at the end of Noah where he tries to drown out his survivor's guilt with alcohol.

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* The connection to Clerks, which I've seen but don't recall that well, is from one of the few reviews I did manage to find by Swapnil Dhruv Bose at Far Out Magazine "Protozoa: Darren Aronofsky’s bizarre student film". Available online: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/protozoa-darren-aronofsky-bizarre-student-film/

Aronofsky to Make Film About Noah

In case you've not yet read this story at FilmChat, Looking Closer, or even in The Guardian itself, Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain) is planning on making a film about Noah. I have a feeling that I already knew that before reading it at the above yesterday, but I have no idea where I heard it. Back in January I mentioned that Aronofsky was making a bible film, but then there was no news on a title.

The interview is mainly about The Fountain - which is released on DVD later this month. After that though, the only one of Aronofsky's other projects that he talks about in this interview is the Noah one. I found this quote particularly interesting:

The script, Aronofsky tells me, is no conventional biblical epic. "Noah was the first person to plant vineyards and drink wine and get drunk," he says admiringly. "It's there in the Bible - it was one of the first things he did when he reached land. There was some real survivor's guilt going on there. He's a dark, complicated character."

What I love best about Bible films is when they give you a new angle on a familiar story, so this has got me really excited about this project. The Fountain had a long, complicated a torturous path to production. Hopefully this project will happen a little more quickly.

Jeffrey Overstreet also has an interesting interview with Aronofsky at Christianity Today.

Fortune Cookie (Aronofsky, 1991) and Noah (2014)

This post is part two of a series looking at Darren Aronofsky's other work and how they relate to his 2014 Noah.

Darren Aronofsky's first movie -- at least according to IMDb -- is Fortune Cookie (1991) about a down on his luck salesman whose sales record shows a remarkable improvement after a visit to a Chinese restaurant. In the opening scenes he (Harold Broadneck) is being abused by a fellow salesman for his failure to have completed a sale recently and there's a series of static exterior shots of houses as he approaches their front doors.

In despair (perhaps) he goes to a Chineese restaurant and when it comes to the end of the meal he reads the message in his fortune cookie "Today is your day for success". For him it's transformative. He realises all the things that have been holding him back  need not any longer. Filled with new confidence he returns to the houses he was failing at before and suddenly his sales rocket.. Seeking to maintain his success he returns to the same restaurant (and the same wonderfully grumpy waiter) to absorb more words of wafery wisdom.

For me what's most interesting about the film is the way it leaves the reason for Broadneck's transformation open to interpretation. Moments before he enters the restaurant, his manager tells him to have confidence and perhaps the two messages merely reinforce each other in his mind. Conversely, once inside the restaurant we see a God shot of him at his table at the precise moment the cookie is brought along. Does the cookie have magical powers, or is it just Broadneck convincing himself that they do? Even then, Broadneck seems initially just to realise that these particularly words could be true for him, it's only later when he seems to retrospectively attribute his success to some kind of cookie-related magical powers. Contrariwise, once one cookie's message signals his doom, his head drops, his confidence vanishes and his fate seems sealed.

And then there is the presence of an off car driver, simply called "the pervert" in the credits, who serenades Broadneck just before the initial call to his boos, and appears once again moments after the final fortune cookie has seemingly sealed his fate. This is probably just in my head but the pervert's delivery reminds me of a character in a Straub-Huillet film, but that's probably just me. He offers Broadneck the chance to get into his car and drives him slowly away once Broadneck reluctantly accepts.

It's interesting seeing some of the initial threads of Aronofsky's later work here. In terms of Noah the idea of some kind of divine providence, a message even that radically changes the protagonist's life is the obvious parallel, as is his failure to really connect with the other humans around him. But also there's something about this short that makes me think of Pi (1998). Perhaps it's the possibility that all the human activity and the scenes we witness might all be irrelevant to what is happening, it's just a statistical blip. The cookie had no significance, real or imagined, it's just a metaphor for humanity's tendency to ascribe meaning to coincidences.

So while this is not a great film, by anyone's standards, it's certainly got its points of interest for tracking Aronofsky's themes, ideas and motives.

More on Aronofsky's Noah

Darren Aronofsky has been taking advantage of the publicity he's been getting from Black Swan, so there have been a couple of articles recently about his plans to make a new version of the story of Noah (see my previous posts). Last week SlashFilm confirmed that not only has Aronofsky decided to make a comic book as a step to filming Noah, but also that there is also some footage on YouTube (though it says it is "private").

Movieweb are carrying a piece called "Noah Is Dirty and Not PG Says Darren Aronofsky". I couldn't get the actual page to work, but Google has it in its cache. Their article says that the project will actually be a mini-series and that it will be sci-fi adaptation of the graphic novel. Interestingly it also cites the 1976 Sunn Pictures documentary In Search of Noah's Ark as a source of inspiration, one that I've never seen, but that I know Peter Chattaway has fond memories of.

mother! (2017)

Hard quite to know what should be classified as a spoiler for this film. I've tried not to give too much away, but it's hard to discuss it without giving something away somewhere.

A phrase that's been repeated again and again as critics seek to make sense of Darren Aronofsky's mother! (2017) is for the need for more time to process things. It's a deeply unsettling film where the intense imagery is unceasing. Those are words that describe the emotional experience of watching it as opposed to a philosophical assessment based on it's use of biblical, and indeed numerous other, archetypes, because it's a film that perhaps above all else is designed to make its audience feel. Almost every shot is taken with in the confines of the tumbledown house that Jennifer Lawrence's titular 'mother' and her partner are seeking to repair. Of it's two hour running time, 66 minutes of it are on on Lawrence's face (Kermode and Mayo, 2017) and almost all of the remaining shots in the film are taken from her point of view. It's a performance that's gained wide praise from critics. Aronofsky himself has said that despite having "watched it hundreds of times, I'm always seeing little things that she's doing that I'm just like wow! I've never seen that before" (Kermode and Mayo, 2017). There's an intensity to the film, which combined with the whirling camera and the claustrophobic atmosphere make for extremely uncomfortable viewing.

What's interesting about mother! (small 'm', absolutely significant) is the way that on the one hand it presents the kind of film that feels unique and original (it's failure to conform to any one particular genre is doubtless part of the reason why many have dismissed it), whilst simultaneously being packed full of references and tributes to both other films and other stories. The archetypal references abound with resonances of God, Mother Earth, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Mary, "The Odyssey"'s Penelope and humanity itself rubbing shoulders with a more gnostic and eastern style philosophy.

At the same time it evokes such diverse films as The Amityville Horror, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rosemary's Baby, zombie movies and the work of Lars von Trier. Many have cited Buñuel's Exterminating Angel, but I see plenty of Viridana in it as well.

Yet at the same time as the cosmic elements of allegory and parable, it's also a story about two individuals, and our differing attitudes to our private spaces. It may be an Englishman's home that is supposed to be his castle, but this attitude clearly crosses gender and continental divides.

OK real spoilers from here on 
Having watched this film in close proximity to a further viewing of Noah the portrayal of the Javier Bardem's character, - Him, a God/creator type character - is clearly at the forefront of my mind. Here the character is a selfish narcissist. Him is so wrapped up in garnering praise for himself he is unable to see the damage it is inflicting on what we ultimately discover is his greatest creation. Strangers appear at his door out of nowhere. Are they, too his creations, created to stroke his ego. Is Aronofsky suggesting that God is at least partly culpable for the damage that is being inflicted on our planet? Certainly there's criticism of those that turn up and take from Mother's paradise without considering how their actions are destroying it. End spoilers

Ultimately, such readings are only those that occur to me. What is great about Aronofsky bizarre and ambiguous work is that it will speak differently to different people. The downside is that so many are horrified by it they don't like what they see.

More on Aronofsky's Noah Film

There's a little more news on Darren Aronofsky's plans for his Noah film. Aronofsky purportedly finished the script back in September, he's now revealed that he's planning to release it first as a graphic novel. Aronofsky is interviewed by Rope of Silicon, and talks about the film briefly:

RoS: Looking forward to the projects you have coming up, what is the situation with the Noah project?

DA: We have a script actually, it is a script but there is more work to do. We’re actually going to do a graphic novel of it right now, we’re just starting it, and we’re hiring a writer.

RoS: And are you shopping the script around to studios and actors…?

DA: There is an actor attached, but I’m not going to say who, but he’s a big movie star.

RoS: Steve Carell… [joking]

DA: [With a smile] Yeah, exactly… Eventually we’ll set it up, but we’re just figuring it out. It’s a very difficult film to get made and we’re slowly working on it to get it put together.

I wonder if part of the thinking behind the graphic novel idea is its similarity to storyboarding? And, of course, it's also a cheap way to test out the market for such a film, whilst simultaneously building that market up.

The September interview with /film is also contains slightly odd quotation:

It's the end of the world and it's the second most famous ship after the Titanic... I think it's really timely because it's about environmental apocalypse which is the biggest theme, for me, right now for what's going on on this planet. So I think it's got these big, big themes that connect with us. Noah was the first environmentalist. He's a really interesting character.

Second most famous?

Noah adaptations p05: Jewish Texts After the Hebrew Bible

This is part 5 of a series investigating adaptations of the "Noah" story.

"The Animals Entering Noah's Ark" (1570s) by Jacopo Bassano

In the last part of this series on adaptations of Noah, I looked at the variations of the flood story that were brought together to form Genesis. Now I want to turn to how Jewish writers continued to amend and adapt the flood narrative after Genesis had been written. While the number of Jewish sources that do something with the flood narrative are too numerous to track, I'm going to focus on the main ones here, written in the Second Temple (intertestamental) period, beyond into the era following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 

CE to the later part of the first millennium CE.

I've laid out the most relevant sources in a rough chronological order, though I should point out that dates are nearly always disputed, and vaguer than the dates I cite. I just find it useful to find an approximate middle of the range to help establish what is likely to have come before what. (DSS = Dead Sea Scrolls)

200 BCE - The Book of Enoch 
200 BCE - The Book of Jubilees

100 BCE - DSS - Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20/1QapGen)

50 BCE - DSS - Pesher/Commentary on Genesis (4Q252/4QPGen)

40 BCE - DSS - Flood Apocryphon/Admonition Based on the Flood (4Q370)

80 CE - Pseudo-Philo (Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum)

94 CE - Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews

400 CE - Bereshit of Rabbah (Genesis Rabbah)

500 CE - Sanhedrin 108b (Babylonian Talmud)

600 CE - Sibylline Oracles

750 CE - Tanchuma Noach (Tanhuma Noah or Tanakh Noah)

1000 CE - Sefer ha-Yashar (Tole dot Adam, Book of Jasher)

Enoch

The Jewish source that is most frequently mentioned in relation to Noah (2014) is the Book of Enoch, a composite work of five smaller books that was compiled sometime "between the late fourth century B.C.E. and the turn of the era".¹ I want to get into this in a bit more detail, so I'm going to return to it in part 6.   

Jubilees

The Book of Jubilees is a rewriting of the material found in book of Genesis and the start of Exodus from the second century B.C.E.². The Dead Sea Scrolls included sections from 15 different manuscripts, roughly the same number of copies as they had of Genesis itself, so it was certainly popular among the Essene community³. The relevant passage starts with the last verse of chapter 4 and runs through to the fifteenth verse of chapter 6.  Most of the story remains intact, though the references to the animals on the ark is reduced to an afterthought. There's no mention of them entering two by two, let along seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean.

This is unusual, because Jubilees tends to elaborate on the Genesis text quite a lot and many of those additions seem quite fastidious. In stark contrast to the absent details about the animals entering the ark, the list of the animals Noah sacrifices afterwards is very specific. Indeed, in general, the new material seems to be intended to reflect cultic practice. There's a great deal of concern about consuming blood, for example. That said, more general principles such as not killing other people (shedding blood) and about justice also come through quite strongly.

In my previous piece in this series I mentioned how the gods' attempt to depopulate the earth is turned on its head in Gen 9:1 and Jubilees 6:5 repeats the command to "increase and multiply yourselves on the earth and become numerous upon it", as well as the promise that "I will put fear of you and dread of you on everything that is on the earth and in the sea" [James VanderKam's 2018 translation]. It's funny, the "fear and dread" is in Genesis too, but I've never noted it before – a widening of the rift between humanity and its environment.

Lastly, one point relating to the Aronofsky adaptation in particular. In the film, Madison Davenport plays Ham's wife, who is called Na'el. As Peter Chattaway points out the name is a shortened form of Ne-el-atamauk, which derives from Jubilees 7:14).⁴

Dead Sea Scrolls 

Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20, IQapGen) has large parts missing, but is still arguably the most interesting account of Noah amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. It dates from somewhere between 3rd century BCE and 1st century CE and was one of the seven scrolls that were first discovered, though the last to be translated because of its poor state. What we have starts with the "miraculous" birth of Noah in col.II and runs on into the life of Abram in col.XXII.⁵ Much of the Noah story is fragmentary, but of what remains we begin with his father Lamech's concern about how the yet to be born Noah will turn out. He asks his father (Methuselah) who in turns asks his father Enoch, who is held to be properly in touch "with the holy ones" (col.II:20).⁶. Collins observes how the "Genesis Apocryphon (ca. first/second century BCE) shares a number of features with both 1 Enoch and Jubilees, including the role of the Watchers".⁷ 

Cols III to XI are reduced to just a few phrases, but there's enough of col.VII to be able to figure out that now it's Noah that is speaking, recounting the events in the past tense. This is the first time since the flood hero became Noah that he has had a voice (aside from to curse Ham/Canaan). The first sentence particularly stands as Noah is recalling God's promise that he will "rule the earth and all there is in it" which feels like an expansion of what has gone before.⁸ Col. XII is better preserved and contains a few details of his family and a bit more about his vineyard. Collins notes that this is where the idea of Noah hearing God through visions, rather than words, is first found (e.g. XII:1).⁹

Fragment 4Q370, dating from around 160 BCE to 60 BCE almost has more titles than extant words (see here). It's variously called "A Flood Apocryphon", "Admonition Associated with the Flood",¹⁰ or "Exhortation Based on the Flood"  (Martinez).¹¹ The only bit that really stands out is the specific mention that "the giants did not escape". This seems to be in contrast with other traditions, that seek to explain the existence of giants/Nephilim after the flood in the Bible (not only Goliath, but those mentioned in Numbers 13:33) with a story of Og king of Bashan riding on a unicorn to stay alive (Zevachim 113b in The Talmud). See here, here and here for more on that...

Genesis Pesher (4Q252) also called a "Commentary on Genesis A". "Pesher" is a fairly terse retelling of the story, adding almost nothing and abridging the material quite significantly though typically it's employing a more disciplined word count than excising elements of the story. The most obvious actual omission seems to be that of the animals with a single dove being the only mention of animals in the whole text. It also clarifies the timings and mentions the 364-day calendar (as does "Jubilees").¹² It dates from around mid-1st century BCE to late 1st century CE.

(Pseudo) Philo

As with the Book of Jubilees the word "polluted" also crops up in Pseudo-Philo, but in an entirely different context. Pseudo-Philo, more formally called the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, was "produced in Palestine in the first century AD... (covering)... the story of Israel from Adam to David".¹³ It generally abridges the biblical text, such that the inclusion of the flood story is notable in itself given the omission of most of the rest of Genesis. The Noah (or Noe) story is found in Chapter III flanked by genealogies of Noah's ancestors and descendents. 

The most significant addition to the text is an apocalyptic section that comes immediately after God's promise not to destroy the world again (III:9). Following a pivotal "but" God launches into a promise to punish sin by famine / the sword / fire / death / scattering through the nations / earthquakes and from there moves onto a prediction what will happen when "the times are fulfilled". These are similarly apocalyptic in tone (and here I use the term in both the colloquial and the technical sense), using phrases that will bring to mind the more apocalyptic parts of the New Testament (such as Revelation).

This use of "polluted" comes in III:10 in the middle of the various predictions of destruction and judgement. God adds in that despite "none shall be polluted that hath been justified in me" before going on to promise "another earth and another heaven". Again this is clearly being used in a very different sense to how we the word would typically be used today, albeit in a way that it might be used in certain circumstances.

What is particularly interesting though is how the insertion of this apocalyptic passage fits with Aronofsky's intentions. Like Pseudo-Philo he too is retelling the story of Noah while casting an eye on a more cataclysmic future. As Pseudo-Philo sought to warn his audience of the perils of living wrongly through the language and style of the apocalyptic genre, so too Aronofsky use the language and style of the disaster movie genre to encourage his audience to live in a more environmentally conscious manner.

It's also worth mentioning that while quite a lot of the story is truncated, James Wyke finds the removal of the story about Noah's drunkenness particularly significant.¹⁴ It's a much longer piece and I'm not sure he reads the Jewish apocalyptic genre correctly, but he finds Pseudo-Philo's airbrushing of "the one flaw in his character" contrasts with how early church fathers made excuses for his drunkenness.¹⁵ Essentially though, the effect is the same, sanitising Noah's reputation to present him in more saintly fashion.

Josephus

Josephus's retelling of the story in his "Antiquities" is interesting because in a sense it does what I have been attempting to do: set out the story in a broader historical context. Not only does it offer more dates and numbers than even Genesis itself, but there's a remarkable passage where Josephus stops to discuss how "the writers of barbarian histories" (93) also mention the flood. He agrees with them that the ark's final resting place was a mountain in Armenia.

Give the eco-critical nature of my current project, I'm really struck by Josephus' use of the word "polluted" even if he is using it differently from its typical use today (of course, it's his translators -- William Whiston in my case -- that landed on that word, but you get my point). Following Noah's post-flood sacrifice, Josephus has God say that it was he (God) "who brought the destruction on a polluted world, but that they underwent that vengeance on account of their own wickedness". 

What I find interesting about this is while Josephus/Whiston mean this in the sense of sin/evil it does echo something of Aronofsky's ideas about modern-day humanity destroying its world through chemical/CO₂ pollution. And we could add that in previous versions of this story it was noise pollution that was the issue.

The other thing that links to Aronofsky's film is in v75 which says God "determined to destroy the whole race of mankind, and to make another race that should be pure from wickedness" this is actually consistent with the thought process of Aronofsky's Noah who sees humankind's total destruction as God's plan. The difference is that in the film Noah is dissuaded from ending his race by his family, whereas in Josephus following the first flood Noah seems to talk God out of sending a flood of that magnitude ever again. 

This seems to cue up Josephus's take on humanity's power over the creatures. He extends things a little further than the Genesis account saying "I permit you to make use of all the other living creatures at your pleasure, and as your appetites lead you; for I have made you lords of them all". The sense that the rest of creation is their for humans to exploit seems to have expanded a bit.

Finally, one of Josephus' major elaborations of the text is a discussion about the length of years that Noah and those before him lived (104f). Here too he refers to writers from other nations who "agree" with him that "the ancients lived a thousand years". He also finds an astrological basis for their longevity, essentially that they had to live over 600 years to observe a full cycle of the stars.

Genesis Rabbah (Bereshit Rabbah?)

Bereshit Rabbah is a midrash/"running commentary" on Genesis from around 300 CE to 500 CE of which the Noah-related material runs to about about 100 pages in Freedman's 1961 translation into English.¹⁶ This is obviously an enormous amount of material (given the NRSV text of Gen 6:1-10:1 in English is only around 2270 words). As well as the numbers of Rabba's verses, I'll also cite Freedman's page numbers alongside them as a copy of his third addition is available via Internet Archive. Page numbers for other sources are below as normal).

Actually though the relevant parts of this source come from before the Noah story even really starts in 23:3 (p.194). The name Aronofsky's film gives to Noah's wife's name is Naameh, who here is identified as both the sister of Tubal-Cain and Noah's wife.¹⁷. Not all contributions from Bereshit Rabbah are so conventional. Lee notes how 28:8 (p.22) claims “the dog [copulated] with the wolf, the fowl with the peacock” and are also deemed guilty in contrast to the film's attempt to "exonerate the animals from guilt".¹⁸ 

However, there is quite a bit here that has a potential environmental spin on it. Neril and Dee note how "Noah actually planted the trees from which he would take the wood for the Ark" (30:7, p.235).¹⁹ Sustainable forestry is easier when you live to over 600 years old, I guess. 

Neril and Dee have two other interesting observations in this vein. Firstly, they make the point several times  that the designation of one of the three levels of the ark for animal excrement (31:11, p.245 "garbage" alternately translated in n5) embodies an eco-friendly approach. Not only does it show care for the animals (providing a "clean, healthy living space" p.21), it also pioneers "organic fertilizer" (p.20) or "compost" (p.26).²⁰ A good use for this compost would have been to help "revitalize the land" after the flood,²¹ when we're told in 36:3 (p.289) Noah planted "vine shoots for planting, and young shoots for fig trees and olive trees" that he had brought onto the ark. The rabbis speculated that he'd also used those shoots as part of providing a varied and appropriate diet for the animals (31:14, p.247). 

 

The other key instruction about the construction of the ark concerns its source of light which revolves around Gen 6:16. The rabbis elaborate onn of differing understandings of the word tzohar. (which is "linguistically distinct" from the word zohar).²² It's a hapax legomenon which modern English Christian bibles tend to translate as "roof", older Christian English bibles translate as "window" and some Jewish English translations choose "light" based on the similar word zohar (literally 'shine'/'radiant').²³ Back in  200CE or thereabouts Targum Yonatan translated it as "precious stone". Here the writers elborate. Noah "did not require the light of the sun by day or the light of the moon by night, but he had a polished gem which he hung up" (31:2, p.244).

Neril and Dee bring these three elements together to conclude that "The Ark was a 'green building,' with a window for natural lighting from the sun, a whole floor dedicated to a composting of animal waste, and wood from forests Noah planted according to the midrash" a "reference to organic fertilizer".²⁴

Given all this, it's perhaps not surprising that Genesis Rabbah stresses one key difference between the text of Genesis 1:28 and the similar words in Gen 9:1-2. Despite the other similarities the word "dominion" is now missing, 34:12 (p.278) it notes "dominion did not return", even if the author(s) see(s) it as returning later.

Seth Sanders (cited on p.15 in Collins) also claims this adaptation gives Noah his first line of dialogue. "Genesis Rabbah helped make the flood filmable by giving Noah his first lines of dialogue and bringing in Tubal-Cain (as Noah’s father-in-law)".²⁵ Strictly speaking, he's wrong of course. Noah speaks even in the text of Genesis itself where having remained silent for almost the entire story, he pipes up right at the end to curse his grandson. But that's not really his point. The additional dialogue and family relationships Bereshit Rabbah introduce dramatic elements to the biblical narrative.

Sanhedrin 108 (Babylonian Talmud)

The (Babylonian) Talmud consists of six sedarim, which comprise of a total of 60 (or 63) tractates. Sanhedrin is one of these tractates. While Sanhedrin subdivides into 11 chapters, it's more common to reference the relevant folio directly, so we're looking at the 108th folio. These are still quite large Sanhedrin 108 consists of about 3000 words, though is usually divided into two parts "a" and "b". Dating is sometime between late 5th to "the formal closure of the Talmud, in about 600CE".²⁶ 

108a is mainly taken with describing the "generation of the flood" in very negative terms as you might imagine. It's hard not to think of some of Tubal-Cain's speeches in the 2014 film, when one reads words such as these

Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have, if we pray unto him? They said thus: Do we need Him for aught but the drop of rain? We have rivers and wells to supply our wants.

So Noah responds, the first time (at least in the Jewish tradition) he has done this. "Noah rebuked them, urging, 'Repent!'" and goes into more detail. Nowadays the "traditional" Jewish view is that Noah was not righteous, because "righteousness is all about what you do for your fellow man. And Noah does NOTHING for his fellow man."²⁷(Emphasis original)

 

The other part of 108a to stand out was a discussion between the rabbis as to whether saying Noah was "perfect in his generations", meant he would be relatively even more perfect in other generations, or less perfect. One compares him to wine in acid, the other to the scent of "spikenard oil" lying in refuse compared to lying among spices.

108b continues this evocative imagery continues in when Noah's neighbours laugh off his prediction claiming that whether the flood is of water or fire they can survive. The rabbis respond that the "waters of the flood were as severe as semen" (though R. Hisda then uses a more literal "hot water"). I'm fascinated as to what the main points of comparison were when they used this simile and quite what they thought they were doing using it. 

There's another sex-related passage later on: "Three copulated in the ark, and they were all punished — the dog, the raven, and Ham. The dog was doomed to be tied, the raven expectorates [his seed into his mate's mouth] and Ham was smitten in his skin" I've touched on Ham's 'punishment' already, but the other two touch on elements that are expanded elsewhere in the text. This passage seems to be used as a conclusion to a previous story about the raven complaining that he was sent out to hunt for land when he and his mate were the only ones of their species (in contrast to the kosher birds). Hence why next time Noah sends out the dove which Neril and Dee interpret as an act of "preserving the diversity of life on earth".²⁸

That's not an explicit motivation the text makes, but elsewhere, in similar fashion, it does suggest "an intimate knowledge of and desire to learn from animals" with a lengthy story about Noah's discovery of what to feed the chameleon which also expresses the attention they gave to all the animals about how and when to feed them.²⁹ There's something particularly touching about this story and the connected one about the phoenix. 

Sibylline Oracles

The Sibylline Oracles sit awkwardly on this list, a strange mix of prophetic utterances that reflect a hotpotch of religious and cultural backgrounds: Jewish, Christian, pagan, Hellenistic, Gnostic. The majority of the flood material lies in Book I, lines 149-343, which seems to be Christian in origin.³⁰ While the Sibylline Oracles were composed over centuries, we're looking at a final dating of around the 6th or 7th century CE. Interestingly, both Book I (lines 350-54) and Book III (lines 1023-28) claims to have been written by Noah's daughter-in-law, despite them seeming to have different origins.

Book I is considered Christian in origin and certainly the way that almost a third of the total number of lines, 186-243, are given over to Noah's preaching to the people to repent, seems very different from anything we've seen so far in the Jewish takes on this story, though Josephus (1.74) does mention this briefly. We do find this idea of a preaching Noah in the New Testament though, in 2 Peter 2:5 which calls Noah "a herald of righteousness". He is also rebuked by the people who are recorded "(c)alling him mad, a frenzy-smitten man" (line 214).

Strangely, though, aside from its apocalyptic tone there's not that much of note, aside from perhaps the implication, and it is a little ambiguous, that God both shuts the door and bolts them in. So the Sibylline version of the story is perhaps best summed up by Seth Sanders "The Sibylline Noah anticipates his own misery at human suffering, tempered by awe at the flood’s sheer apocalyptic wonder".³¹

Tanchuma Noach (aka Tanhuma Noah or Tanakh Noah)

Tanchuma Noach is part of Midrash Tanchuma (or Yelammedenu), a midrash on the first five books of the Hebrew Bible with its original version dating from sometime around 500-800 CE. Noach is the second of 54 sections and it consists of 19 simans. Each consists of the rabbis expanding on the biblical text like the sources above.

A few things stand out here as the tradition progresses. Siman 5 says, for example, that not only was Noah righteous, but that "(e)ven Noah's sons, the animals, the beasts, the birds and the creeping things that accompanied him onto the ark were righteous". Moreover, it considers Noah so righteous that he was born circumcised. This is an interesting development from some of the rabbis from Sanhedrin 108b who consider  his righteousness to be only relative to his time. That discussion crops up again here only with a bit of a twist, the fragrant substance is now "Balsam oil" being placed  in a "filthy area" as opposed to a "clean"/"attractive" area. Again this seems to resonate with modern ideas about pollution, albeit as a metaphor.

Again we have Noah being mocked for telling the people God has ordered him to build an ark, but here things go further in Siman 7. The giants, eventually realise their fate, and try and storm the ark only for God to send lions to protect them and prevent these "mighty" men forcing their way on board the ark. This links to the watchers protecting the ark from Tubal-Cain's people in the film as well as giving some acknowledgement to "those about whom the biblical text is silent".³² Lions appear later as well in Siman 9 where a lion bites Noah so severely that "he left the ark crippled".

Elsewhere in we hear that Noah and his family didn't sleep because of feeding duties (Siman 9), so Lilly suggests "(t)his tradition of sleep-deprivation offers a rich opportunity to explore Noah as a character on the edge of sanity".³³

The other thing that stood out for me was the story in Siman 13 about Satan making a deal with Noah while he was planting his vineyard and then slaughters four animals there to make a point about the stages of alcohol consumption: people go from being as innocent as a lamb, to feeling as strong as a lion, then behaving like a pig before finally adopting the foolishness of an ape. "All this happened to the righteous Noah".

Sefer ha-Yashar (Tole dot Adam, Book of Jasher)

The first thing to explain with any title linked to "The Book of Jasher" is explain what it is not. This is not the Book of Jasher referred to frequently in the Hebrew Bible, which seemingly forms part of its source material, nor is it the 18th century forgery claiming to be the same. To make things even more confusing there's also another Jewish text from the middle ages called Sefer ha-Yashar/The Book of Jasher which is an ethical text. 

The one I'm looking at here is a medieval midrash, which can be read here (despite the initial pages of the scan it covers Genesis as well). The Hebrew title Sefer ha-Yashar, translates as "The Book of Righteousness". I've given a date of 1000CE above but that is probably the earliest feasible date. The latest date is 1625 when the earliest remaining copy was printed. Whereas the last few sources above have been styled around discussions between rabbis, this returns to a more "scriptural" format such that those not overly familiar with Genesis would find it difficult to distinguish between the two. It also feels like it branched off from those previous accounts at a much earlier stage, it doesn't seem to be building on those discussions. 

 
There are a few discrepancies about some of the details of Noah's descendants and different timings in places, and his wife's name is again given as Naameh (5:15). Narratively there's a quirky story about a lioness, and of animals having to humble themselves to be permitted entry, with unsuccessful ones remaining by the ark for seven days before the rain began (6:1-10). The flood itself is preceded by an earthquake and various other bits of apocalyptic imagery which actually feel similar in tone to Michael Curtiz's Noah's Ark (1929).

The bit that feels most like Aronofsky's film, and perhaps least like Genesis is 6:17-25 where 700,000 people gather round the ark having realised their error and repenting, but Noah does not relent. As part of his rebuke to them he mentions that he had spoken of this 120 years ago and they had ignored him. Infuriated the people try and 'storm' the ark but this time all the animals (not just the lions as in Tanchuma Noach) prevent them from doing so.

Those inside the ark are also frightened and anxious (6:28-33) with cries of the apex predators being detailed. Once the rain stops and the waters subside there's no sending of birds (God instructs them when to leave) and no mention of Noah planting vineyards or getting drunk. We do get an additional interesting detail about the skin garments that God had given Adam and Eve being passed down the family line to Noah who brings them on board the ark (7:24-30). Echoes here of Aronofsky's snakeskin. Moreover, Ham then steals them, passes them to Cush who clothes Nimrod in them which means God gives him strength.

Later sources

When I started writing this blog post several weeks ago now, I had hoped to follow it up with one about later Jewish mystic texts, such as those of Kabbalah e.g. Zohar, but my deadline is sooner than I had remembered and the chapter itself is only meant to be 5000 words and this blog post alone is already longer than that, so I need to focus. Perhaps I'll return at a later stage. I'm still planning to do something on Enoch, but even that might be a push now. We'll see. I say we, but I must admit I have my doubts that after 5000 words about obscure texts on a now out of the way weblog I'm not sure anyone is still reading at this point. So let me know if you made it this far!

===========

1. Nickelsburg, George W.E. and James C. Vanderkam (2012) 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Ebook loc.47.

2. Vanderkam, James C. (2020) Jubilees: The Hermeneia Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press). Ebook loc.110.

3. Kugel, James (2014) The Book Of Jubilees, The Oldest Commentary On Genesis. Audio recording. Available online: https://archive.org/details/TheBookOfJubileesTheOldestCommentaryOnGenesis

4. Chattaway, Peter (2012), "A Few New Details about Aronofsky's Noah", FilmChat Aug. 9. Available online: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2012/08/a-few-new-details-about-darren-aronofskys-noah.html 

5. Vermes, Geza (1976) The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin). 2nd edition. p.215.

6. Martinez, Florentino García (1994) Dead Sea Scrolls: The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden/New York / Cologne: E.J.Brill). p.231. (which you can read here)

7. Collins, Matthew A. (2017) "An Ongoing Tradition: Aronofsky's Noah as 21st-Century Rewritten Scripture" in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch and Jon Morgan (eds) Noah as Antihero (Abingdon/New York: Routledge). p.15.

8. Martinez, p.231

9. Collins p.17

10. Vermes, Geza (1998) The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Penguin) 4th Edition. p.518.

11. Martinez, p.224-5.

12. Collins p.15

13. Russell, D.S. (1987) The Old Testament and Pseudepigrapha: Patrirachs and Prophets in Early Judaism (London:SCM Press), p.97.
14. Wykes, James (2012) The Contextualized Noah: The Deluge Patriarch in Genesis, Jubilees, and Pseudo-Philo Master's. Unpublished thesis (University of Dayton). pp.55-74. Available online: https://www.academia.edu/3631710/The_Contextualized_Noah_The_Deluge_Patriarch_in_Genesis_Jubilees_and_Pseudo_Philo

15. Wykes, quote from p.74. Observation about Church Fathers from n232, p.66.

16. Freedman, H. and M. Simon (1961) Midrash Rabbah (London:Soncino Fine Arts Society). 3rd edition. p.XXVII.

17. Lee, Lydia "The Flood Narratives in Gen 6-9 and Darren Aronofsky’s Film Noah" in Old Testament Essays 29/2 (2016): 297-317. p.303 n24.

18. Lee p.302, esp. n17

19. Neril, Yonatan and Lee Dee (2020) Eco Bible: Volume 1: An Ecological Commentar on Genesis and Exodus (Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development). p.21.

20. Neril pages as cited

21. Neril p.26

22. Dennis, Geoffrey (2014) "Tzohar: Gem of Noah, Light of Heaven" at Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism (blog). 2nd April 2014 - Available online: https://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2008/10/tzohar-miraculous-light-of-noah-window.html

23. Dennis

24. Neril (p.20 (+21 & n118))

25. Sanders, Seth (2014) "Noah: The Movie" for Religion in the News (Hartford CT: Trinity College). November 18. Available online: https://commons.trincoll.edu/religioninthenews/2014/11/18/92/

26. Neusner, Jacob (1995) "Foreword" in Cohen, Abraham Everyman's Talmud (New York: Shockhen Books). First published 1949. p.x-xi.

27. Shmuley Boteach cited in Chattaway, Peter (2014) "The Jewish roots of — and responses to — Noah" Patheos: FilmChat 31 Mar 2014.
Available online: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2014/03/the-jewish-roots-of-and-responses-to-noah.html

28. Neril p.24 

29. Lilly, Ingrid E. “Rock Giants and the Magic Stone of Torah.” in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch and Jon Morgan (eds) Noah as Antihero (Abingdon/New York: Routledge). p.40

30. Collins mentions the Sibylline Oracles in the same sentence as "Cave of Treasures" (p.15), but that is a more exclusively Christian text so I've not included it here.

31. Sanders

32. Collins p.17

33. Lilly p.40. She also cites Genesis Rabbah 30:6 as saying this, but really it only says that Noah fed "the whole twelve months in the Ark". This was probably the root for the rabbis elaboration here, but it's from them not Genesis Rabbah.

The Ark (2015)

I must admit I'm a big fan of Darren Aronofsky's Noah from 2014. It's a huge, dark exploration of- some of the textual and philosophical issues surrounding the flood story written in bold, dramatic tones. Tony Jordan's The Ark is not those things, indeed it's a very different take on the story, but none the worse for that. Out go the volcanic landscapes of Iceland, in come the warm dry Moroccan dessert. Out goes the grunting, moody grit of Russell Crowe and in comes the quirky warmth of David Threlfall, no less determined, but very much in his own fashion. Out goes the primitive, mythical operatic style of Aronofsky's film and in it's place we find an approach that probably owes more to soap opera than anything.

Both films have been criticised for their dialogue: Crowe et al. talk in that way which is so familiar from epic films - a sort of halfway between Yoda and Frankenstein’s monster; Threlfall and family for lacking gravitas. The truth is that we don’t know how they spoke. And whilst the importance and severity of the situation Noah foresaw is enough to make anyone strip their sentences down to the bare minimum, it’s also likely that aspects of Noah’s normal family life remained as well, like catching up with cousins at a wake.

So Jordan’s comes into it’s own. To the cynics, of course, it’s the easiest of targets. The Bible film genre is easier than most to poke fun at, purely for it’s own existence; but somehow the story of Noah is the largest and slowest moving fish in a particularly well-crammed barrel. But if you want to use film to explore the stories of the Bible, and to think about what they might have to say about our relationship to the word today then using a modern soap-operaesque approach is as legitimate as any. INdeed the nature of myth through the ages has been taking an old story and reworking it in a way that your new audience relates to.

Interestingly The Ark starts with a shot taken under water. In a film about a flood there’s barely a drop of the stuff on display. The Ark is surely the driest Noah film on record. Not only is it set in arid desert, but the rains don’t start until the last ten minutes and even then the time spent afloat is over before it’s really started. Even the post-flood scenes take place against a sandy, dry background, asif the Ark’s inhabitants had wanted to hang on, just in case it was going to start up again.

So the film’s wettest scene is actually of Noah’s sons, and then the patriarch himself, enjoying a bonding moment in a local oasis. It’s an indication of the way the relationships will continue throughout the film. Noah is a friendly, loved and admired father. Even when his sons think he may have lost his mind they can’t quite entirely rule out the possibility that he might be right. Time and again they honour him for the way he has brought them up.

Whilst the film overall relies rather more on the Bible that on the Qur'an, in one important aspect it follows the Islamic version of the story - Noah has four sons rather than the more familiar three. From the moment he appears on screen you get the same feeling you have for the fate of anyone who beams down from the Starship Enterprise wearing Any sense of foreboding that presents the viewer with is only heightened by the realisation that the fourth son, Kenan, is played by the excellent Nico Mirallegro.

Perhaps it's just because I last saw him in his excellent performance in 2014's Common, but the moment he appeared on screen as Noah's fourth son, I got the same feeling I used to get whenever an unknown actor in a red jumper beamed down from the Starship Enterprise. Somehow someone's not going to be on board at the end of the film. Either way Mirallegro is reprising the role of a young man whose punishment seems somewhat out of proportion to his “crimes”.

But Mirallegro’s Kenan, with the link to the land of Canaan which only becomes explicit in the final scene, is where, I suspect, Jordan’s wrestles most earnestly with his subject matter. Early in the film the distinctions are more black or white (perhaps a little too literally). One the one hand is Noah a believer in God. On the other the city dwellers who worship not, as would have been most likely, an assortment of local and/or ancestral deities but instead are pre-historic new atheists. It’s a little cringeworthy, but Kenan adopts Noah’s arguments against atheism, even at one point, parrotting his argument that "[o]nly an idiot would say there is no god because to say that you'd need to know everything, and only an idiot would think they do".

Kenan gains far more screen time than Ham, Shem and Japheth. Just as Aronofsky used the fictional Ila to pose his questions, so Jordan employs Kenan for the same purpose. When Kenan fatally writes off the deluge as just another storm, choosing to stay with his girlfriend instead you can sense Jordan’s dilemma. If atheism is idiotic, a more traditional take on the Noah story is no less troubling. The sin which has ruined the world need only be “wanting” rather than being “content”. Kenan might be sleeping with his girlfriend and enjoying the odd puff of a pipe, but his behaviour hardly seems to merit his extinction.

Certainly, the strain of atheism Noah and his family encounters is rather anachronistic. Its followers pour scorn on the idea of an old man in the sky with a white beard millennia before the greeks would first picture Zeus in such a fashion. They argue that they “have science” and that the "universe created itself". Surely they argue if the world is designed then "Who designed the designer?"

Elsewhere however these kind of modern-sounding objections feel much more realistic, most notably when first Noah’s wife and then his sons respond to his plan to escape the world’s watery demise. “Won't they all eat each other?” asks Mrs Noah (played wonderfully by Joanne Whalley). “Can’t we just escape to higher ground?” suggests one of his sons.

It’s these interactions which feel the most natural and are, for me, the the strongest part of the film, whereas the earlier scenes had felt a little too stereotypical. Noah and his godly family are white: the non-white characters are the sinners who will drown. The women either deny sex to their husbands, or are too frigid (and I would estimate that the length of time discussing sex is far greater than the time The Noahs ultimately spend afloat).

Thankfully this seems to change once a “messenger” appears from God and instructs Noah to expand his farming-come-boat-building business (making a line drawing in the sand as if Noah was unsure what a boat looked like). It becomes a spot Noah returns to as the story progresses, the rains seem delayed and even his faith starts to waiver. The messenger however does not return until the very end of the film, and even then only to pose the question "Will Man learn his lesson?”

Gradually, though, people start to come around. First Noah’s wife, then his sons and daughters in law. Whilst Noah’s preaching in the city appeared, initially, not to have gained any new converts to his cause, later on a handful of followers turn up. And then, at last, the animals appear, and, just as Noah’s wife had predicted, the family end up having to “make a dash for it when it starts raining."

The animals appearance is one of the films boldest and best choices and allows the films focus to remain on the human drama at the heart of the story. It also allows it to capture a strange kind of fear as the doors to the ark close and suddenly a bunch of strangers realise they are trapped in a confined space with one another and bunch of equally frightened animals.

If the ending is rather twee, it’s perhaps because Jordan didn’t want to include it at all. Like the writer of the book of Hebrews Jordan’s interest is more in Noah as a man of faith than the more Old Testament ideas of origins and covenant. Purportedly the first draft of the script ended with very first drop of rain. Whilst that might have felt a little under-done, it’s testimony to Jordan’s writing skills that the happy ending and the token appearance of the rainbow feels a little surplus to requirements.

Bible Films Blog Review of 2014

In previous years, I’ve offered a review of the year, although this has rather fallen by the wayside in recent time. However, 2014 was a bit of a stonker, so it would seem remiss not to do at least something.

The big news was, of course, the long awaited release of a number of biblical epics, which hit not just the odd art-house cinema, or graced a local congregation with a decentish video projector, but in the local, everyday cinemas. Russell Crowe was talking about Noah in primetime TV shows. The Guardian was offering opinion pieces about Moses every time Ridley Scott coughed in a vaguely atheistic manner.

As it turned out neither film made the, um, waves, that their respective studios had hoped for and neither director will be pleased to hear that they are more likely to win a Razzie than an Oscar come the spring.

But before all that there was the matter of the Son of God - not so much the actual one as the cinema release of the Gospel footage from the History Channel’s 2013 series The Bible. Cutting down a TV series to a movie is a risky strategy. On the one hand the popularity of the “best of” genre might mean that he TV series might just be part of a lengthy marketing campaign – the world’s longest ever trailer if you like. But the question still remained, why would people get in their cars, drive out of town and pay through the nose to watch something they have already seen for “free”?

As it turned out Son of God did rather well, perhaps because compelling answers were found to that question. Buying a ticket to Son of God was a statement of faith, a chance to send a message to Hollywood. Or you could buy two and bring along a friend with whom you wanted to share your faith.

From an artistic point of view however the quality of the product was largely the same as that of the original 2013 series. Jesus was still too blond and off-puttingly good looking; the dialogue and the acting still left a great deal to be desired; and it still wasn’t really clear what Jesus was actually about other than being nice.

One Bible film hero who eluded, with consummate ease, any charge of being overly nice, was Russell Crowe’s Noah, who shifted from grunting environmentalist to genocidal maniac over the course of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. It’s the kind of precipice along which many edge along when they tell us how bad humans in general, and children in particular, are bad for the environment? But that’s another matter.

Actually the scenes where Noah contemplates whether he should kill his own granddaughter were, in my opinion, rather misunderstood. Noah didn’t want to murder members of his own family, he just thought it might be what “The Creator” was calling him to do. After all it was the logical extension of what he had already done – a point that may of the faithful struggle to appreciate. It was a great performance from Crowe, but the terrain of unlikeable anti-hero seemed to leave the film, rather than just its antihero rather unloved. It was a shame. Aronofsky’s bizarre epic was drenched in biblical and other religious references, many of which weren’t even half as odd as the original text.

December is often a busy time of year for those of us interested in Bible films and 2014 would prove no exception. In the cinema Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods and Kings (my review ) received a fairly lukewarm welcome in many western countries and was banned in several countries in North Africa and the Middle East. In the current climate it's hard to know which is more damaging, western indifference or Egyptian anger.

In the west the film's biggest talking point was the supposed white washing, casting Joel Edgerton and Christian Bale as an Egyptian and someone who manages to pass as an Egyptian for forty years. I must admit I can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand Christian art has always portrayed the faith's heroes in its own image as a way of relating to them. At the same time, as my comments above about Son of God suggest I also like to see more realistic casting.

One film that did embrace a more ethnically accurate Jesus was The Gospel of John the latest output from the Lumo Project (an offshoot of Big Book Media). The series, which is available on Netflix, narrates John's Gospel over dramatized reconstructed video footage. Jesus is played by Selva Rasalingam who is half Tamil. If his face is familiar it’s because he has been playing Jesus in various Lumo/Big Book projects over the last few years, including the music video for Deliriou5?'s "History Maker" and the BBC’s The Story of Jesus (2011). Also part of those projects, as well as 2012’s David Suchet: In the Footsteps of St Paul, is director David Batty.

The Lumo Project will eventually cover all four gospels in the same style, and Netflix features narration in both the King James and the New International versions of the Bible. As a medium it’s very similar to the Genesis Project’s Gospel of Luke (1979) which starred Brian Deacon and was recut as Jesus (1979), certainly it’s quite different in feel from other the two Visual Bible word for word projects Matthew (1994) and Gospel of John (2003).

Given that John’s Gospel only received the word for word treatment 11 years ago, it’s surprising that the filmmakers have chosen to start with John, particularly as John’s wordy gospel is perhaps the one least suited to such a treatment. Personally I wished they’d opted for the only gospel not, yet, to have been filmed this way, Mark. But that will later this year if the IMDb is to be believed. Hopefully it will get a UK Netflix release as well. Incidentally 2015 will also see Rasalingam star as James in a Jesus-cameo film Clavius

The appearance of The Gospel of John on Netflix seems to reflect a broader trend of niche faith-based films being broadcast away from traditional channels. Another such production in 2014 was The Red Tent, an adaptation of Anita Diamant’s historicalish novel of the same name. Diamant’s novel took the stories from around Genesis around Leah and Jacob’s daughter Dinah and re-imagines Shechem as her lover rather than her rapist. Young’s mini-series, which aired on the Lifetime network early in December, cast Rebecca Ferguson, star of 2013’s excellent The White Queen’s, and also features Minnie Driver, Debra Winger, Morena Baccarin and Hiam Abbass in prominent roles. Peter Chattaway has a great interview about the series with the director Roger Young.

The other TV film worth a mention was the BBC animated short film On Angel Wings, which aired in the UK on Christmas Eve. It starred an old man recalling the visit of the Angels on the first Christmas night to the group of shepherds he worked for and how one angel secretly flew him to the stable so he got to meet the baby Jesus. Readers may recall my enjoyment of the Fourth King a fictional tale about the magi. On Angel Wings would make a good companion piece dealing as it does with Jesus' other Christmas visitors.

Then there were several smaller films which brought the more poetic parts of the Bible to the screen. The Song re-imagined the life of King Solomon as an amorous country singer, with nods to both Song of Songs/Solomon and Ecclesiastes. Meanwhile Amos Gitai directed one of the short films in the anthology film Words with Gods. Gitai already has two fine Bible films under his wings, [Esther (1996) and Golem: l'esprit de l'exil (1992)] and here he took the on the work of his namesake, the prophet Amos.

Perhaps the most significant of the films dealing with the more poetic parts of the Bible was Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan. As with The Song it took the form of a modern story, this time the story revolves around a man fighting corruption in the coastal town where he lives, but there is also a healthy dose of the Book of Job. It's also likely to be the most successful of those films with a substantial link to the Bible, having been Russia's entry for the foreign language Oscar it's now one of the final nominations and has already won the Golden Globe in the same category.*

Documentary-wise it was a fairly light year, though it's more than possible I missed something. David Suchet did feature in In the Footsteps of St. Peter, the follow up to his 2013 In the Footsteps of St Paul .

However, there were a couple of new books about Bible Films that are worth a mention. David Shepherd's "The Bible on Silent Film" looks to be an excellent guide to an under-discussed period in the genre's development. I couldn't afford the hardback or a Kindle editions so I've only read excerpts but the bits I've read are full of fascinating detail and insight. Technically the hard back was released right at the end of 2013, but seeing as the paper back will be released in March this year, we can split the difference. I'm looking forward to getting a copy.

Another book to touch upon the sub-genre is Graham Holderness' "Re-Writing Jesus: Christ in 20th-Century Fiction and Film" which touched on Last Temptation of Christ, The Passion of the Christ and The DaVinci Code, as well as various books about the life of Jesus. There were also various books released related to the films mentioned above including a picture book for the team behind Son of God.

And lastly there was a conference. Not so much about a Jesus Films as a very close relation. "Jesus and Brian: or What Have the Pythons Ever Done for us?" ran for three days in June in Kings College, London and featured an impressive team of speakers, including John Cleese and Terry Jones, and even gained some national press coverage. Sadly neither time, nor money, nor health, permitted me to be there, but Mark Goodacre made it, blogged about it and did rather rub salt in the wounds of those of us who would have loved to be there but weren't. I mean, he got to meet John Cleese.

Anyway 2015 promises a great deal. There are various films due for release about which Peter Chattaway is doing some great blogging. He also posts numerous things on the Bible Films Facebook page, for which I'm incredibly grateful. There's also a few books to look out for, including David Shepherd's follow up volume "The Silents of Jesus" and there might even be a book with a couple of chapters by myself to report on in next year's review of the year.

*There were some subsequent edits here, made after the Oscar nominations