the weekend of Noah

Ha! We devoted a whole weekend towards this story. Friday night (6/29/07) we saw the film Evan Almighty at the theater. It is a modern retelling of Noah's ark with obvious differences from the original besides the whole different time thing. Still, it is quite entertaining, funny, and still holds on to the core themes found in Genesis. God asks a man to do crazy task of building a huge ark. Man listens to God and does it, despite ridicule and a lengthy period of hard work. God causes/allows flood to occur.

On Sunday (7/1/07) we followed up the movie with going over the actual story in Genesis 6-8. We got through chapter 7 during this study session. Along with a few notes on some verses, we also discussed the differences between the modern day movie and Scripture.

6 "The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain." It is important to note that although God was grieved, He did not regret making man. This follows what is said in verse 5 that God grieved over the wickedness of man. His people did not follow Him at this time. Noah was the only one who found favor in God's eyes.

Verse 15 gives the dimensions of the ark in cubits. This was enormous! The length of one and a half football fields! Scholars estimated that around 45,000 animals could fit in the ark.

2 "Take with you seven ^[g] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate" Clean animals were those that could be sacrificed. 'Seven' and 'two' refer to pairs of animals.

SPOILER ALERT! DO NO READ IF YOU WANT TO SEE HOW THINGS HAPPEN IN THE MOVIE FIRST!
One of the major differences is how the flood started and how vast it was. The flood in Evan Almighty resulted from a poorly constructed dam that burst forth and swept through a large portion of the Washington DC area for one day. In Genesis, God sent rain for forty days and forty nights (7:4) that covered the whole earth and flooded it for 150 days (7:17-24).

Once again, despite the differences, the major themes are still shared. Both Noah and Evan did what the Lord commanded. Both built incredibly huge arks (although Evan had the help of a book, Buliding Arks for Dummies!) even though they lived in dry climates that barely rained, if at all. No doubt they were both made fun of. Their families did not understand what was going on.