Posted on 04/04/2014 10:42:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
"In the days after Noah hit theaters, people opening the Noah story in Genesis 6 increased about 300% in US & 245% globally on @YouVersion," reported YouVersion on Twitter on Tuesday.
"Visits to the #Noah story in Genesis 6-9 at Bible Gateway saw a 223% increase over the previous weekend," tweeted Bible Gateway on Thursday.
In addition to YouVersion, an app of the Scriptures which hit 100 million downloads last summer, and the website, BibleGateway, Google trends also showed spike in substantial increase in search queries for the Old Testament text.
Commenting on the spike in Genesis traffic, Patton Dodd, the editor-in-chief of the religious site On Faith, wrote in a story Tuesday that "movies like 'Noah' are an invitation into stories like Noah."
"Whatever else the film does (incidentally, I found it to be a memorably filmed mixed bag of the sublime, the over-the-top, and the troubling — your basic Aronofsky experience), it makes you wonder what the story of Noah is about, why it holds so much power, and what it might have to say to us today," he continued. "It makes you go home and look up the story. That's true in part precisely because the film is so imaginative and weird — unlike some other recent Bible films, it doesn't pretend to be delivering the story in a straightforward way, so you're left wondering what the story actually says."
Dodd argued that "so long as people hear that the story of Noah is simply a story of a righteous man doing God's work, a story that ends with a sentimental rainbow — or an account of a meteorological event — believers are less likely to crack their Bibles and actually read the story."
The movie, which stars Russell Crowe, topped the box office in its debut over the weekend, grossing $43.7 million in the United States and Canada. The new film, which some Christians criticized for deviating from Genesis upon which it is based, exceeded the projection that it would garner $41 million.
Film analysts believe that "Noah" attracted a wider audience, and not just the religious, due to Hollywood touches given to the film by Aronofsky.
"It certainly feels like the 'biggest' film of 2014," Tim Briody, analyst for Box Office Prophets, told USA Today.
He doesn’t need an ark full of animals to achieve that.
If that’s the same study I’m thinking of, they dont factor in food or water. Fresh water alone would be many factors the size of the animal mass.
He doesn't need very much of anything, yet He chooses to do things such as salvation through boats. As I mentioned previously, Dr. Brown's book discusses the catastrophy of a cooling planet and how water was the lubricant that allowed the continents to break up and reform. Earthquakes would have been pegged at 10.0 on the Richter and I doubt very much of anything would have survived. A boat floating on a newly formed sea gave them the insulation from such an event.
Right, and He didn't NEED a rib from Adam to make Eve either, but He did it that way because it communicated many truths to us. In the case of Adam's rib, God showed us a beautiful picture of how a husband and wife would be bone of each other's bones, how Eve came from close to Adam's heart, his companion, and the bone marrow from Adam's rib blended his blood with hers, his life giving force with hers, all of this showing us just how beautiful and important husbands and wives would be to each other in God's plan.
So it was, when God found it necessary to wipe the evil from the earth and start over, he did it in such a way that would paint a picture (communicate the idea) for us of God's promise to save those who chose with free will to belong to God. The ark, was a picture of Jesus. Jesus is our ark. If we believe, if we accept the gift and "get aboard" so-to-speak, Jesus will save us from the inevitability of God's righteous judgement of our sin.
So long as they think it’s mythology it’ll do ‘em no good.
http://wordonfire.org/Written-Word/articles-commentaries/April-2014/Noah—A-Post-Modern-Midrash.aspx
Darren Aronofsky’s cinematic re-telling of the story of Noah has certainly stirred people up. While quite a few reviewers, both religious and non-religious, have given the film high marks, many Christians, both Evangelical and Catholic, have registered a far less than enthusiastic reaction. One prominent Catholic blogger and movie reviewer opined that “Noah” is “embarrassingly awful” and “the stupidest film in years.” Most of the religious critics have complained that the film plays fast and loose with the Genesis account, adding all sorts of distracting and fantastic elements to the well-known story. In the midst of all of this—and no doubt in part because of it—“Noah” took in $44 million on its opening weekend.
“Noah” is best interpreted, I think, as a modern cinematic midrash on the Biblical tale. The midrashim—extremely popular in ancient Israel—were imaginative elaborations of the often spare Scriptural narratives. They typically explored the psychological motivations of the major players in the stories and added creative plot lines, new characters, etc. In the midrashic manner, Aronofsky’s film presents any number of extra-Biblical elements, including a conversation between Noah and his grandfather Methuselah, an army of angry men eager to force their way onto the ark, a kind of incense that lulls the animals to sleep on the ship, and most famously (or infamously), a race of fallen angels who have become incarnate as stone monsters. These latter characters are not really as fantastic or arbitrary as they might seem at first blush. Genesis tells us that the Noah story unfolds during the time of the Nephilim, a term that literally means “the fallen” and that is usually rendered as “giants.” Moreover, in the extra-Biblical book of Enoch, the Nephilim are called “the watchers,” a usage reflected in the great hymn “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones.” In Aronofsky’s “Noah,” the stone giants are referred to by the same name.
What is most important is that this contemporary midrash successfully articulates the characteristically Biblical logic of the story of Noah. First, it speaks unambiguously of God: every major character refers to “the Creator.” Secondly, this Creator God is not presented as a distant force, nor is he blandly identified with Nature. Rather, he is personal, active, provident, and intimately involved in the affairs of the world that he has made. Thirdly, human beings are portrayed as fallen with their sin producing much of the suffering in the world. Some of the religious critics of “Noah” have sniffed out a secularist and environmentalist ideology behind this supposed demonization of humanity, but Genesis itself remains pretty down on the way human beings operate—read the stories of Cain and Abel and the Tower of Babel for the details. And “Noah’s” portrayal of the rape of nature caused by industrialization is nowhere near as vivid as Tolkien’s portrayal of the same theme in “The Lord of the Rings.” Fourthly, the hero of the film consistently eschews his own comfort and personal inclination and seeks to know and follow the will of God. At the emotional climax of the movie (spoiler alert), Noah moves to kill his own granddaughters, convinced that it is God’s will that the human race be obliterated, but he relents when it becomes clear to him that God in fact wills for humanity to be renewed. What is significant is that Noah remains utterly focused throughout, not on his own freedom, but on the desire and purpose of God. God, creation, providence, sin, obedience, salvation: not bad for a major Hollywood movie!
There is a minor scene in the film which depicts some members of Noah’s family administering the sleep-inducing smoke to the animals. They look, for all the world, like priests swinging thuribles of incense around a cathedral. I’m quite sure that this was far from the mind of the filmmakers, but it suggested to me the strong patristic theme that Noah’s Ark is symbolic of the Church. During a time of moral and spiritual chaos, when the primal watery chaos out of which God created the world returned with a vengeance, the Creator sent a rescue operation, a great boat on which a microcosm of God’s good order would be preserved. For the Church Fathers, this is precisely the purpose and meaning of the Church: to be a safe haven where, in the midst of a sinful world, God’s word is proclaimed, where God is properly worshipped, and where a rightly ordered humanity lives in justice and non-violence. Just as Noah’s Ark carried the seeds of a new creation, so the Church is meant to let out the life that it preserves for the renewal of the world.
If Aronofsky’s “Noah” can, even subliminally, suggest this truth, it is well worth the watching.
It’s pulled in $44 million in the US, $95 million overseas, and cost $125 million to make, so, alas, the studio made $14 million so far, an 11 percent return. Thanks SeekAndFind.
“Earthquakes would have been pegged at 10.0 on the Richter and I doubt very much of anything would have survived.”
So how did marine life reconstitute itself afterwards?
PFL
This was Hollywood’s version of Noah. Need I say more?
What’s also interesting is the fact that there are real underground bodies of water, that are known to exist on Earth today, such as the guariana aquifer under Brazil. To know how much fresh water that is, it’s estimated to have enough fresh water to supply 7 billion people with drinking water for 200 years.
Think of what would happen if such a comparably large aquifer broke open.
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