Biblical Views: Noah, Enoch and the Flood: The Bible Meets Hollywood

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There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Noah—not the Biblical patriarch, but the new $125 million Hollywood epic Noah, featuring Russell Crowe as Noah and Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah. It’s an action-packed movie with a slew of special effects, including the flood, meteor showers, gory battles and giant six-armed rock-angels called the Watchers. It’s great eye-candy, with some surprising twists. Even before its release, the movie raised controversy. Some conservative Christian groups have complained that the movie’s approach is not an accurate depiction of the Biblical story. The movie certainly does take liberties with Genesis and even includes […]

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Footnotes

For more information about these sources, see Richard Elliott Friedman, “Taking the Biblical Text Apart,” Bible Review 21:04 and Baruch Schwartz, “What Really Happened at Mount Sinai?” Bible Review 13:05.

Endnotes

1 Enoch 1:9. Adapted from George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: A New Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), p. 20.

For more on the ancient and modern life of the flood story, see Ingrid Lilly, Noah’s Flood: Ancient Stories of Natural Cataclysm (multi-media blog), (www.floodofnoah.com).