Hollywood and History

[RSaba]

Sorry I missed that. Were there actually angels in the story of Noah? There is an interesting story about Noah in the book of Enoch. His father suspected Noah was the offspring of a god, because he was an albino, and the gods were also pale with white hair. So Noah's dad asked his dad who was Enoch's son to ask Enoch if Noah was completely human. Enoch being tight with "The Lord" asked God what the deal was, and found out that yes indeed Noah was fully human. However, I think I have read most of the extra-textual books related to the Bible, and I have never heard of "rock monsters".

Dale

I just finished a Religion class, and since we were studying the Bible as the Hebrew Bible, I completely forgot that the story of the fallen angels didn't make it into biblical canon.

Long and only semi-reliable historical ramble alert:

One interesting thing about the Bible is that there is no specific "Satan" in it, although the word "Satan" (translated) means "adversary" (to God), and this word makes a few appearances.The story of the fallen angels is where the idea comes from. This story is in the Book of Enoch, a Jewish religious text that doesn't always make it into the Hebrew Bible. The whole fallen angels thing appears in many related early Jewish and Christian texts but was largely rejected. The main idea seems to be that some angels fell in love with human women and came down (or "fell"), slept with them and created monsters. This is often linked to the reason God decided to send out that flood. However, other texts suggest that God cast these angels out because they refused to bow down to Adam, saying they would only bow to God. So who really knows. They are sometimes called the "Watchers," which is what they are called in the movie.

All this to say that (small spoiler alert) in the movie "Noah," these fallen angels are portrayed as rock monsters. They look kind of like Transformers, but made from rocks. They help Noah to build his ark. From the moment these rock monsters appear on screen, the story of Noah gets less and less Biblical and more Russell Crowe (who plays Noah). The character is basically Javert. While the story of Noah doesn't have lots of tiny details, the movie manages to make itself biblically inaccurate and just completely illogical.

But it is a LOT of fun to watch and make fun of! My friend and I were dying of laughter at the back of the movie theatre.

Sorry for the long response, hope I didn't bore anyone!