Many of my colleagues have expressed objections to my reflections about Aronofsky’s Noah. As I have said in various venues even though the movie deviates from the biblical text, I found it to be filled with theological images that faithfully reflect the meta-narrative of the Bible. Further, there are many extra-biblical variations on the Noah story, and various hermeneutical traditions, from which Aronofsky drew in producing his film adaptation. I find it somewhat ironic that some who object with great passion choose to ignore some of our own non-biblical adaptations. As a child I was taught that the curse of Ham was God making people black. Therefore, all people of color were cursed and if a white person married a colored person their children might be animals. Really, I learned that in Sunday school! Believe it or not, I still hear that from time to time. So let’s dispense with the hypocrisy.
I’ve been thinking about the way biblical images and motifs have been used in movies. The Matrix is filled with theological motifs, including the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then there are the Indiana Jones’ movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ included several extra-biblical scenes. Even Cecil DeMille’s The Ten Commandments is filled with extra-biblical dialogue and scenes. There are the more notorious examples like Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ or Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. Even classic writers like Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare have used biblical characters, themes, and motifs with great imagination.
The Christian church does not hold a copyright on the biblical narrative. The stories of the bible belong to humanity. Therefore we cannot, nor should we try to, control how these stories are told. These stories live in the imagination of humanity and will continue to be told with various twists. Some will be reverent; others will be irreverent, even corrupt. The issue is how Christians choose to respond. Remember the response of the Iranian mullahs to Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses? Do we really want to develop our own version of a fatwa that persecutes or condemns artists who are unfriendly to our Faith? When Andres Serrano won an award for Piss Christ, a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine, I was offended; but it never occurred to me that he should be prosecuted.
In the third and fourth centuries many spurious gospels began to appear – Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Jude, and many other pseudepigraphs – that did not conform to the Rule of Faith or the received Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This provoked the Christian bishops, led by the Holy Spirit, to establish a canon of sacred scriptures that reflected the Rule of Faith and could be used for worship and instruction in the Faith. We now call that canon the New Testament. My point is that when the Christian faith is challenged by atheist, agnostics, or heretics the most helpful response is to look to our sacred scriptures, our story, and our hermeneutical traditions. Then we must engage the world of myth and legend with the Christian truth.
One more point. In this world of great diversity we often share symbols which can have various meanings. In ancient Ephesus, the Church most likely met and worshiped in the shadow of the great temple of Artemis. In that great temple the priests of Artemis used wine to celebrate their devotion. In the local house church, a Christian pastor raised a cup of wine to celebrate the Eucharist. The rainbow is a biblical symbol that reflects God’s covenant of life. In the LGBT community, the rainbow is a symbol of sexual diversity and tolerance. Many major religions have washing rituals. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop baptizing converts or forbid the observance of foot washing. Instead, I’m going to faithfully teach the Christian faith and the significance of Christian motifs, symbols, and sacraments. Much has been written about the meaning of the various images in Aronofsky’s Noah. Some have seen Gnostic influences. Are they there? Sure. But when I see the same images through my Christian faith, I see and hear a story that I can embrace as my own.
With the success of Aronofsky’s Noah there will be many more movie adaptations of biblical stories that utilize extra-biblical influences. So, instead of paranoia let’s be prepared to engage by informed dialogue.
