Story of Noah and Its Afterlives - Essay Example

The Story of Noah The story of Noah and the Flood is one of the most famous and contradictory biblical stories. It causes a lot of discussions on thematter of the huge world catastrophe that happened to the mankind ages ago. Still Noah’s story has pretty obvious moral which explains why God flooded the earth and gave Noah the great mission to revive life on the planet. The modern interpretation of the story was filmed by Darren Aronofsky in his epic “Noah”. It describes the biblical plot from another point of view and makes some important modifications in the original story. The story of Noah is presented throughout the five chapters of the book of Genesis. The 5th chapter is about Adam’s genealogy and at the end of it we find out that Noah is a relative of Adam and Eve. At the beginning of the 6th chapter the author explains that people have become spoiled and immoral. They started forgetting their Lord and give up His life principles, so God realized that there was no way for Him to save His people from sinfulness as the whole Earth was already filled out with their sins (New Jerusalem Bible, Gen. 6:1-3). But there was a decent man Noah who has been chosen by the Lord to save life on the Earth. That is why God inspired Noah to build a huge ark that would save a certain amount of living creatures including humans. In such a way the chosen one should have created a whole new world. Noah listened to his Lord. When the time for the Flood had come God told Noah to gather those species of animals and birds on the ark’s board. Noah’s family was supposed to be at that only safe place too, so his wife and three sons with their wives had also got into the ark after which the Flood started. The Flood lasted 40 days and 40 nights and destroyed every single living creature on the Earth. And then the rain stopped, nevertheless, Noah and others had to spend 150 more days adrift at sea until the Lord sent Noah the sign that he can find lands to start the new world. After Noah and his family landed the Lord arranged the Covenant between Him and people, according to which there will be no flood anymore on the earth. In this new world His people should have lived under the Lord’s guidance (Mallowan 62). The very last episode of the story is about Ham (one of Noah’s sons) who committed offence to Noah. Ham and his brothers came to their father when he was drunk and naked. Ham saw his father without clothes and he told everything to his brothers, but his brothers acted decently and covered their father with cloth. They didn’t look at his nakedness. When Noah woke up and found out the situation, he cursed Ham’s offspring, which seeded the first sin in the new world. The story of Noah has very precise message and it is totally clear why the Lord decided to destroy the previous world in order to start the new one. The point is that the Flood is that critical point of the story, when nothing can be changed anymore. Although there are a lot of uncertainties in this story, we still can try to interpret it, first, in the simplest way. First of all we can see that though god did his best and loved all the creatures he created, people appeared to be not that perfect and were totally sinful. That is why the only thing for god to do was to teach people and this was the reason why He sent the Flood. And it destroyed everything but Noah was saved, because he was the only decent man in the world. The very last episode of the story when Noah’s son commits sin is about a very essential thing: even though Ham was a son of decent man, human nature is sinful and there always will be people who do wrong things. The question is whether God knows His people and their essence? If people were sinful and remain sinful, so why did he save us? The biblical story doesn’t explain such points and claims that indeed people are bad but God is good. The movie “Noah” filmed by Darren Aronofsky emphasizes on such important ethical details that lead the story of Noah to its logic conclusion: God is good because He allows His people to make their life choices, which can justify their ambivalent nature. The point of the film interpretation is in the great decision of Noah: whether to stop mankind or let people live. Though Noah is the lover of Man, he notices the sinfulness of people and thinks that by this Flood the Lord wants him to stop human being in this world, so the children of the only fertile woman on the ark should be killed. The most essential difference between the filmed and original stories is the choice which is absent in the biblical version. In “Noah” God isn’t described as the dictating creator from the Old Testament as He is a father that lets His children make their mistakes and fix them. The film caused a big splash in the world especially in the religious communities (Mottram n.pag) as Noah’s personality is described in pretty contradictory way. He was not that decent man from the Old Testament any more. The important moment is that such interpretations of biblical events, like the one Darren Aronofsky presented in his film, are extremely risky because religion and its ethics are holy things for many people. So it is easy to offend community with even a little fault in interpretation. And the fact that the director reduces God’s role in this story is obvious and makes that crucial difference adding free will. And this means that the Covenant wasn’t signed by God but by human. The biblical story of Noah is quite symbolic. It says that God made the Covenant with His people by saving their good part from disaster. But the epic “Noah” by Darren Aronofsky changes the main point of the story into the following: God saved His people in order to give them choice to follow His path, so it is about humans whether to sign His Covenant or not. Works Cited Noah. Dir. Darren Aronofsky. Perf. Russell Crowe, Emma Watson, Jennifer Connelly. Paramount Pictures. 2014. DVD. Mottram, James. “Darren Aronofsky interview: Noah is an odd choice for me, I admit ”. The Independent.10 Oct. 2014. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/darren-aronofsky-interview-noah-is-an-odd-choice-for-me-i-admit-9226511.html Mallowan, M.E.L. “Noahs Flood Reconsidered”. Iraq. 26(1964): 62-82. The New Jerusalem Bible. Ed. Susan Jones. New York: Doubleday, 1985. Print. Read More