Mark Morris’s Noah: Vegetarians, Giants, and the Hollywood Revival

After decades of turning away from The Ten Commandments and The Greatest Story Ever Told, Hollywood is having a good old fashioned revival in 2014, with numerous biblical and faith-oriented movies both in the theatre now and upcoming. The most successful this year so far is Noah, which definitely isn’t grounded in your great grandmother’s understanding of the book of Genesis, but nonetheless is exegetically sound, probably to a fault, as the layman’s knowledge of The Bible doesn’t extend to either the Rephaim (aka giants, Genesis 6:4) or the Nephilim (aka sons of God, Genesis 6:1-2) mentioned therein. However, both beings were mentioned in the context of the Noah story in Genesis 6-9, so the filmmaker was right in thinking that giants are important to the story and including them, despite the fact that many (probably otherwise erudite) critics are accusing the film of playing loose with The Bible.

Titan Books sent Nerdspan a copy of Mark Morris‘s adaptation of Noah for review, and the book is also an excellent study and novelization of the events as depicted in the movie and in The Bible. The Creator sends visions and dreams to Noah, advising him to save the innocent that are left in the world. Said innocents are defined by representatives of the entire animal kingdom as well as Noah’s family. The day of the deluge arrives and wickedness is purged from The Earth. Weeks later, Noah’s family settles on the cleansed Earth.

Mark Morris’s adaptation, which follows the movie closely, also includes the aforementioned giants, and like the movie, will confuse a great many right wing fundamental Christians, not by making things up, but instead by hewing close to the original Bible text. This means not only giants but the strong ecological and animal rights messages that have been criticized by conservative critics of the film.

For instance, Morris goes to even further lengths than the movie to depict Noah as a vegetarian, pro animal rights, patriarch. However, this is also biblical, as the God of Noah did not have flesh eating in his original plan for humanity, as dictated by The Creator’s original plan in Genesis 1:29-30, and did not give humanity the flesh of animals to eat until well after the flood in Genesis 9:1-6. It is not only exegetically correct that Noah be vegetarian in this movie and novelization, but also hold meat eating as immoral and abhorrent, even though it no doubt upsets the meat and dairy industry. In the novel there is even an excellent stretch of prose which reveals that when Noah sees men chasing a dog in order to eat it, he judges them as depraved and immoral individuals contradicting the wishes of The Creator. After fighting the hunters, this is the conversation he has with them:

Despite the pain of his injury, confusion and indignation passed across the man’s face. “That is nothing but an animal.”

“As are you,” said Noah.

“Man has to eat,” the poacher whispered.

Noah’s face darkened. “Man has a choice. To destroy Creation or to tend it, to live and work alongside it. In peace.” (Noah, p.28)

Willing to defend a dog’s life with his own, Noah’s vegetarianism and animal rights views are militantly evangelical. Noah explains to his son later that those men ate animals because they believed animal flesh made them stronger, and goes on to affirm that only The Creator makes one stronger (p.30).

Perhaps you have so far passed on the movie due to preconceptions that a religious subject is not for you, or perhaps you have passed on it because your religious views have been swayed by the conservative critics of the movie. This Titan Books novelization is highly recommended for you as it coherently manages the movie’s arguments without distracting you with spectacle and CGI. If you are conservatively religious, you may find the ideological puzzles presented by the story to be an exegetical Rubik’s cube, unsolvable by your faith, and all the more prized for all that; if you are agnostic or atheist, you may appreciate the honesty and literality of the Noah novelization, which keeps to the original Genesis document at all costs. If you have seen Noah, the novelization is still recommended to you, as it adds ratiocination to Noah’s vision-inspired actions, and the adaptation is an excellent companion to the movie. You can buy the book directly from Titan Books and on Amazon.