For the last two thousand years and more, the story of Noah and the flood in the book of Genesis has been thought of as an historical account of what happened around 2,500 BCE, some 1,500 years after the creation of the world. For the last several hundred years, for mos,t it has become the stuff of myth and legend, but not of history, as the intellectual foundations upon which its truth was grounded began to crumble.
But whatever the many imaginings and re-imaginings of this story as history or myth over the past millennia, its meaning is overall a simple one. The earth and all living things upon it were once destroyed by a cataclysmic climate event brought about by human wickedness. With the exception of Noah and his family, humanity then was unredeemable and not worth saving.
It is hard to think of a legend in Western thought that has greater relevance in the present moment than that of Noah and the flood. For once again, the earth is faced with cataclysmic climate disaster brought about by human wrongdoing.
The environmental disaster that the world currently faces is the central theme of Darren Aronofsky’s film Noah (2014). The world that Noah inhabits in this film is a highly enchanted one. But the film has a message for a modern disenchanted world. For Aronofsky, the original earth was a paradisal place. In the beginning there was nothing, declares Noah, ‘Nothing but the silence of an infinite darkness.’ But out of nothing, God created the world, ‘our beautiful fragile home.’
As the days of the first week of creation passed, and the land emerged from the seas, there was a thick blanket of green stretching across all creation, and the waters teemed with life with vast multitudes of fish. Soon the sky was streaming with birds. And then the whole world became full of living beings. Everything was clean and unspoiled.
Aronovsky’s is the vision of a world that has an intrinsic spiritual value, beyond any instrumental benefit it may provide to humans.
Until the creation of man and woman, the earth was a paradise. But after Adam and Eve followed the temptation of the serpent, this paradisal world was destroyed by human wickedness. It led to a world much like our own. For Noah and his family lived in a barren wasteland where the cities were dead, refugees abounded, and violence against women, children, and animals ruled. As Noah explains to his family, and all was in balance. It was paradise. A jewel in the Creator’s palm. Then the Creator made Man. And by his side, Woman. Father and mother of us all. He gave them a choice. Follow the temptation of darkness or hold on to the blessing of light. But they ate from the forbidden fruit. Their innocence was extinguished. And so, for the ten generations since Adam, sin has walked with us. Brother against brother. Nation against nation. Man against Creation. We murdered each other. We broke the world. We did this. Man did this. Everything that was beautiful, everything that was good, we shattered.
In the story of creation in the first chapter of the Bible, God gave humanity dominion ‘over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth’ (Genesis 1.26). For Aronofsky, it was irresponsible use of this dominion that led to the destruction of the world, except for Noah, his family, and the animals that he saved.
For Aronofsky’s Noah, people – even including himself and his family – were not worth saving. The salvation of the animals was infinitely more important than the salvation of humanity. Noah was thus the first environmentalist, and the first to realise that dominion over all living things meant responsibility for them and the earth they inhabit and not the freedom to exploit and destroy them. With the animals gathered on the ark, Noah tells his son Japheth, ‘all of these innocent creatures are now in our care. It’s our job to look after them.’
At the end of the film, against his earlier judgement, Noah finally realises that humanity too, along with the animals, has been given a new beginning. The film ends with Noah’s declaration that the world after the flood will again be in our care.
The Creator made Adam in his image and placed the world in his care. That birthright was passed down to us. To my father, then to me, and to my sons Shem, Japheth, and Ham. That birthright is now passed to you, our grandchildren. This will be your work, and your responsibility. So, I say to you, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.’
In Aronofsky’s Noah, the rainbow that follows Noah’s blessing of his grandchildren is the still visible sign of the responsibility that his descendants have for the earth and all living things upon it. In a world in which God seems no longer to be present, the future of the earth lies in our hands, as it once did in Noah’s.
This is the meaning of the legend of Noah for our time. Whether we are able to meet that responsibility remains to be seen.
Noah and the Flood in Western
Thought by Philip C Almond
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