Just when I thought people couldn’t get much goofier! Now we
will be treated over the next weeks to both Fundamentalists and other
Christians/non-Christians providing the producers with much needed free
publicity regarding the, soon to hit a theater near you, film “Noah.”
Muslims are pissed, because of a fact the vast majority of Christians
don’t know, which is that the Qur’an considers Noah as a prophet, and making images
of prophets for profits (or any other reason) is forbidden. So some Muslim nations have banned the film. So, do ya
still want to live in a theocracy?
Fundamentalist Christians are pissed because they say the
producers filled the film with inaccuracies. Back away and consider the nature
of that statement. This is essentially saying that this oral history, no more
or less than any other civilization’s creation/annihilation story, which has
been dated differently every time
geology proves the previous version impossible, has details which can be classified
“right” or “wrong.”
For Fundamentalists, the story is word for word as described
in whatever version of the Bible they are currently using. Scientific
contradictions (and they are legion) aside, they subscribe, similarly to
Muslims insistence on the immutability of the Qur’an, to the belief that the Bible constitutes
nothing less than the immutable, literal
word of God. If the Bible said Noah
saved the animals (and himself and his family and 76 other righteous persons (most of you never heard of them, either huh?)
in the trunk of a 1948 Packard, it has to be regarded as divinely revealed
truth.
In reality, which never seems to infringe on the mythology
of Fundamentalist Christians, The Genesis flood narrative is one of a number of
similar flood myths. Many scholars believe that the Noah story and the Biblical
Flood story are derived from the Mesopotamian versions, predominantly because
Biblical mythology that is today found in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and
Mandeanism shares overlapping consistency with far older written Mesopotamian
stories of The Great Flood, and that some of the early Hebrews were believed to
have lived in Mesopotamia, for example during the Babylonian captivity. The
earliest written flood myth is the Sumerian flood myth found in the 'Epic of
Ziusudra’. Later and very similar
Mesopotamian flood stories are found in the Epic of Atrahasis and Epic of
Gilgamesh texts.
What the vast percentage of modern theologians except for reality challenged Fundamentalists now believe is that
just like almost every Bible story, including many of the New testament, the
Flood story is allegorical in nature. Thomas Jefferson calculated that there could
never be sufficient water to actually “cover the world with water.” I mentioned this to a semi-relative who
immediately said that all the extra water was contained in a globe of water
called the “firmament” which God had placed around the earth (just in case he
needed it, I suppose) I then asked the logical question, “If that were so, how
did sunlight get through to make the trees grow so Noah could build the ark?”
Silence.
Reality poses far simpler solutions. The Tigris and
Euphrates rivers have between them lands
which have been, for thousands of years, subject to flooding when the snow melt
in the Turkish mountains combines with spring rains. This is mirrored in the
Mississippi/Missouri system in North America. For civilizations in the fertile crescent
(modern day Iraq, where Noah would have lived), large floods were common, but a
“1000 year” flood would appear to residents to be the entire world covered with
water. Even the Missippi system, with all the flood control measures in place,
neared 40 miles in width during the worst floods, and that was in the late 20th
century. Small wonder that Neolithic herdsmen, who probably travelled less than
ten miles from their home lands during their lives thought the world was
covered with water, because to their limited understanding, it was! Of course
what is missing from the region, at least today, are the forests capable of
producing the sort of timbers necessary to build the Ark to biblical specs.
Other problems include the distribution of species. If you
are a Fundamentalist, then based on the Creationist “manifesto” you must
believe that Noah wrangled T-Rexs, Polar Bears, and all the North American
fauna (which never existed in the fertile crescent) across the Atlantic and
into the ark. Based on the 150 days of rain and 220 days of drying version, he
also must have been towing a prodigious barge filled with food.
One more issue is simple biology. In the most restrictive version,
all of Noah’s issue after the flood were
the products of second degree incest (at best). If all the “Arkians” were Noah
and his peers, there is no explanation for the proliferation of human races today.
In other words, a literal Flood Story interpretation has more holes than a
tennis racket, so to lambast it based on “inaccuracies” is sheer insanity.
As a rational believer in Geology, Archeology and Anthropology,
there are also reasons to criticize the film. Availability of wood is a first
problem, although not insurmountable, until you consider that Noah and his immediate family couldn’t possibly really lived long enough to obtain the wood and do the
construction. And, please don’t give me
that bullshit about Methuselah and the other alleged long lived patriarchs in period
when any infection was a potential death sentence, not to mention that every
single human remain from the period has shown 40 as an advanced age.
An even
better reason is the appearance of the principals in the movie. Just like “Son
of God”, which features “Sven Christ” (my obviously ironic reference to the Scandinavian
looking six foot two male model playing
Jesus) in a period when the average man
was lucky to hit 5 foot 6 inches (again, by actual remains). If “Son of God” is
accurate, Jesus and the Apostles would have looked like the LA Lakers compared
to the rest of the residents of Galilee. In like manner, Emma Watson, the
divine Hermione Granger, a far more realistic casting, bears zero resemblance
to even any current resident of the region, let alone a contemporaneous one.
The final straw is tidal waves and water spontaneously
shooting up from the ground in geysers, rather than simply raining down. Clearly
this is a gross contradiction to the Bible version, and is reminiscent of the artistic
license taken by the producers of “2012” and others of the slew of
fictionalized apocalyptic films in vogue.
Debating the “realism” or “accuracy” of Biblical allegory
(at best, fiction more likely) is
reminiscent of the recent tempest in a teapot when Faux News talking heads
debated the ethnicity of Santa Claus!
If the film were to be realistic, you’d have Noah portrayed by
Shelley Berman, with his sons, Shecky/ Richard Belzer, Morty/Jackie Mason, and Moshe/Gene Wilder with their wives, Bea Arthur, Linda Lavin, and Barbra Streisand.
Now that, I’d pay to see!
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