Noah

Yesterday, I did some writing for a lesson at church. Today, I am making an online version of the lesson for the blog. With the release of Noah, the film starring Russell Crowe, I thought it would be nice to talk about the real story instead of the Hollywood version.

The web is filled with complaints from Christians about the content of the movie. I don’t know why this is a surprise to anyone. Hollywood is not interested in the Christian beliefs, just Christian dollars. I started the lesson with a few questions from the Noah quiz on Huffington Post. Most of us got most of the questions right, but I think it made a good point. We shouldn’t expect an atheist director making a Hollywood action movie to be Biblically accurate. We should expect Christians to know Christianity though.

We ventured into the topic of the Nephilim, in Genesis 6, and who they were. They were not giant stone transformers, if you got that impression from the movie. We also covered the epic of Gilgamesh. It was an interesting discussion. Some people argue that the Genesis story came from Gilgamesh, others argue that Gilgamesh came from the Genesis flood story. Every culture has a deluge story in ancient literature and, I believe, there is a good reason for that.

I ended the lesson with the suggestion that everyone go home and watch a Noah film online. I watched it yesterday and it made me shake my head. Let me know what you think if you watch it.