A Myth for the Sixth Mass Extinction: Telling Noah’s Story during a Climate Crisis

Abstract

Myths are open storylines that invite elaboration and modification. The flood narrative of Genesis 6–9, for example, has been readily employed to motivate endangered species protection and to reflect on the rising seas and mass extinctions associated with climate change. The distinctive features of any retelling of the Noah’s ark story reflect the needs of historically situated and culturally embedded audiences. This paper focuses on four versions of Noah’s story: in Genesis, in the Qur’an, at Ark Encounter theme park, and in Darren Aronofsky’s film Noah. Analysis identifies the narrative choices that align each telling with its cultural context and draws out insights for adapting the story for the contemporary climate crisis. A conclusion addresses issues of race and racial injustice in traditional interpretations of Noah’s story, and highlights approaches to redress those inequities in new imaginings of the flood narrative.

1. Introduction

Following the electoral success of the Contract with America in the first midterm election of Clinton’s presidency, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. When the 104th Congress opened in 1996, conservative Republicans intended to dramatically weaken the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In late January, Calvin DeWitt—wetlands ecologist, environmentalist, and evangelical Christian—accompanied a cougar named Maverick (standing in for the endangered Florida panther) to three media events in Washington, DC: an appearance on Fox Morning News, a news conference hosted by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, and a press conference hosted by the Evangelical Environmental Network (DeWitt 2012). Meanwhile, a group of evangelical Christians fanned out to lobby Republican congresspeople opposed to the ESA. One participant, Stan LeQuire (2016), noted that their reception by Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s staff was “memorably chilly”. This media blitz and lobbying effort was part of a $1 million campaign to mobilize evangelical Christian support for endangered species protection and for the U.S. Endangered Species Act (Kearns 1997). In an interview with The New York Times, DeWitt emphasized that the ESA was “the Noah’s ark of our day” and that “Congress and special interests are trying to sink it” (Steinfels 1996). The political tide turned, and funding for the ESA was reauthorized.1

References to Noah’s ark in arguments to save endangered species were common a quarter-century ago.2 Commending the “Noah principle” of preserving every species, David Ehrenfeld (1976, p. 654) wrote that Noah set an “excellent precedent” for conservation policy.3 According to Richard Hiers (1996, p. 167), Noah “was famous above all for undertaking to preserve genetic diversity”. And Holmes Rolston III made a direct link between Noah’s ark and the Endangered Species Act. “Noah with his ark was the first Endangered Species Project, despite the disruptions introduced by human evil. The science is rather archaic”, Rolston wrote, “but the environmental policy (‘keep them alive with you’; Gen. 6:19) is something the U.S. Congress reached only with the Endangered Species Act in 1973” (Rolston 2006, p. 379). Other authors, cognizant of the political challenges of implementing the ESA and, thus, less committed to saving every species, still drew on the ark metaphor to advocate for reform of the ESA, arguing for rebuilding the ark or exploring what it might mean for Noah to make choices about which species to save (Adler 2011; Carr and Thomas 1995; Mann and Plummer 1992, 1995; Nagle 1998).

The dominant use of the flood myth has since shifted away from species preservation. In recent years, activists, journalists, and others have increasingly drawn on the flood narrative of Genesis to interpret the devastations of climate change. Elizabeth Rush, for example, writing of the ongoing impacts of sea-level rise on human and ecological communities along the United States coastline, imagines houses raised on stilts in East and Gulf Coast localities as a stationary “fleet of arks” (Rush 2018, p. 78). Noting the shifting populations of people, mangroves, and roseate spoonbills in southernmost Florida, she asks: “Who will get to enter the boat?” (ibid., p. 90). The implication is that the biblical narrative can stimulate imaginative responses to current ecological predicaments. The Noah’s ark story itself, Rush notes, may have its origins in cultural memories of rapidly rising seas almost 15,000 years ago, as the post-glacial collapse of continental ice sheets produced Meltwater Pulse 1A (ibid., p. 91).4 Cultural imaginings of ancient flood events—especially in mythic form—can stimulate creative and critical reflection on the rising seas and existential threat of our contemporary global crisis.

Rhetorical allusions to the flood myth are not limited to ethical pleas to save endangered species and foreboding reflections on rising seas. The basic storyline accommodates diverse interpretations. There is the ubiquitous sentimental whimsy of cartoon images of the long necks and ossicone-topped heads of a pair of giraffes rising above the deck of a small ship, bobbing safely on endless seas. Children’s books, toy arks, and other sanitized depictions of the story abound. The claim that everything is “fine and dandy, dandy” on the “arky, arky” is also central to the children’s song “Rise and Shine and Give God the Glory, Glory!”5

More ominously, there is Bron Taylor’s (2015, p. 11) description of the biblical flood narrative as “an ethical and ecological horror story”, a tale of willful divine destruction. If God intended to save every species, Taylor reminds us, God did so by destroying all but two individuals of most species (eight individuals in the case of the human species and perhaps as many as 14 individuals of species intended for sacrificial offering). In their research for a forthcoming book, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Julian Yates identify two things that stand out to them in medieval and modern images of the ark: “That the artist in general stands with the drowned, not with the saved. And that salvation always comes at a cost”.6

The aftermath of the flood is also evident in modern imaginings of the bone-strewn land once the waters have abated. “Noah, speaking upward to heaven, exits the ark” was the title of a one-panel cartoon by Edward Steed, published in early 2016 by The New Yorker. Noah and his wife—both of whom appear quite well fed—stand on the gangplank at the side opening of the ark. Noah holds a shepherd’s crook. Two horses behind him—still in the ark—peer out of the doorway. One sheep is in front of Noah on the gangplank. The other has already stepped off and is standing on a landscape covered with human skeletons. Three dead trees—I see them as a premonition of the crosses of Jesus’s Golgotha—are shown in the distance on the left side of the image. Above them is God’s reconciling rainbow. Noah’s eyes are turned upward toward heaven. He is saying, “No, you were right—this is much better than how it was before”.7

Some might wonder which of these interpretations is ‘correct’. I wonder how to hold all these diverse possibilities simultaneously—and to work with them fruitfully—because the challenges facing us are complex. We do indeed live in a time of changing climate, rising seas, species extinctions, devastating floods, and catastrophic fires. Given the diverse depictions of Noah’s ark and its ethical import, as illustrated above, how might the flood myth help us in our current time of crisis? I begin by describing four tellings of the flood narrative—in Genesis, in the Qur’an, at the Ark Encounter theme park, and in Darren Aronofsky’s film Noah—then show how the narrative choices in those tellings align the myth with the cultural expectations and relevant issues of their respective audiences. How does the Qur’anic treatment of Noah, for example, reflect core Muslim beliefs and address challenges faced by Muhammad and his early followers? Or why do the informational displays at Answer in Genesis’s Ark Encounter theme park repeatedly stress the scientific plausibility of the ark story, exactly as portrayed in scripture? I conclude by drawing insights that are generated by viewing our current climate crisis through the lens of extant tellings of the Noah’s ark myth. This way of thinking with myth is an exercise of the religious imagination. And, as we imagine how best to align the story with our current cultural and ecological context, we develop the ability to imagine ways of living well in the midst of a climate crisis, with clear visions of possible futures.

2. One Story, Four Tellings

2.1. Genesis

The biblical flood narrative is found in Genesis 6–9, but Noah first appears at the end of chapter 5. He is born to his father Lamech and named as the one who “will console us for the pain of our hands’ work from the soil which the LORD cursed” (Gen. 5.29, Robert Alter translation).8 Then—sometime after attaining the age of 500 years—Noah fathers three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The “sons of God” copulate with the “daughters of men”, producing semidivine offspring, the Nephilim (Gen. 6.1–4). Displeased at this intermingling of human and divine, God decides to limit the human lifespan to 120 years. In the face of unrelenting human evil, God laments having created humankind, and resolves to exterminate them along with all the other creatures of the lands and skies.

Noah himself, however, is recognized by God as being righteous and blameless; he is said to “walk with God” (Gen. 6.9). God warns Noah of the coming flood and gives him explicit instructions for the ark’s construction. So that their lives may be preserved, God commands Noah to bring his family and pairs of each kind of creature, along with adequate food stores, into the ark. Once on the ark, God shuts them in, the rains begin, the waters rise above the mountains, and all land-based life outside the ark perishes. Even after the rains stop, the waters remain; birds are repeatedly sent out from the ark until they find evidence of dry land. The rains began when Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month (Gen. 7.11); more than a year later, Noah’s family and the animals depart the ark onto dry ground, when Noah is 601 years old, on the twenty-seventh day of the second month (Gen. 8.14).

Upon exiting the ark, Noah builds an altar and offers a burnt sacrifice to God, who finds the odor pleasing. God decides not to destroy the whole earth ever again, even while noting to himself that humankind remains thoroughly evil. God then blesses Noah’s family and makes a covenant—with the humans and with all the other creatures who came out of the ark—not to destroy the earth by flood again. The rainbow will be a sign of the covenant, so that the appearance of clouds does not bring terror to mortal flesh and so that God is reminded of his promise. Noah plants a vineyard, makes wine, and passes out naked. Upon seeing his father’s nakedness, Ham responds inappropriately, after which Noah curses Ham’s son, Canaan. The flood narrative concludes by stating that Noah lived another 350 years and then died.

2.2. The Qur’an

In contrast to Genesis, in the Muslim scriptures the story appears in a much-abbreviated form.9 Noah is understood to be a prophet in the Islamic tradition, so some of the references are brief inclusions in a list of prophets, without any textual elaboration.10 The longest narrations of the mythic tale occur in Sura 71 and in verses 25–48 of Sura 11, but briefer references are made in other suras.11 In the following summary, note the Qur’anic emphasis on Noah’s role as a prophet, or warner.12

The story is this: Noah is sent to warn idolators to turn from their worship of false deities and to worship the one true God, lest they be punished. Noah makes repeated attempts, over the course of 950 years, trying various approaches. He is largely unsuccessful and even actively opposed.13 He is called a liar and fabricator; he and his few followers are criticized for being poor and of low social standing.

Noah cries out to God, who inspires him to build an ark, taking on it the believing members of his family, other believers, and two of each species. Noah is scoffed at by the unbelievers when he builds the ark, but everyone not taken onto the ark is drowned in this life and, in the afterlife, thrown in the fire. One nonbelieving son of Noah’s is left behind, and God tells Noah not to intercede for him.14 After the waters retreat, those on the ark disembark with God’s peace and blessings.

2.3. Ark Encounter Theme Park

The Ark Encounter theme park, which opened in 2016 outside Williamstown, Kentucky, offers an immersive experience of the ark itself. Both Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum (45 miles away in Petersburg, KY) are part of an outreach by Answers in Genesis, a young-earth creationist organization, to promote their understanding of a biblically grounded creation science.15 Both sites include exhibits, dioramas, and informational placards such as one would expect in any family-oriented museum. I visited Ark Encounter in March 2017.

The ark itself rests some distance from the large parking lot just off I-75, inviting one to shift into a different state of mind as one approaches the life-size vessel, 300 cubits (510 feet) long and 30 cubits (51 feet) high. Upon entering the ark, one is startled by the sound of a rattlesnake unseen in a small cage on the right. Other animals are also heard, coming from every direction. The interior of the ark contains wooden enclosures of various sizes, to hold different animals. Clay vessels for storing water and food supplies are abundant, as are informational displays, dioramas, and creative interpretations of what life may have been like on the ark. Scriptural verses are cited where appropriate, but the placards acknowledge that much of the information presented is based on “educated guesses” and with “artistic license”.

A handful of themes predominate. First, the account of a six-day creation (occurring about 6000 years ago) and a subsequent worldwide flood, as presented in the opening chapters of Genesis, are presented as historically accurate and consistent with a loosely wrought scientific reasoning. Second, because God was able to bring about multiple species from a single ‘kind’, Noah was asked to bring two of each kind rather than two of each species onto the ark. For example, God could bring about the full diversity of bears now known in the world from just two bears on the ark. The upshot of this is that all the animals Noah needed to bring along, including dinosaurs, could fit on the ark. Third, Noah and his family are presented as cultured and cosmopolitan; they had a library of scrolls on the ark, played musical instruments, etc., and were—as shown by the physical appearances of the wives of Noah’s three sons—ethnically diverse.16

Finally, and most importantly, one must choose between two opposing worldviews to understand the flood narrative truthfully. One version—the false one—is the dominant cultural perspective: the modern scientific worldview, or naturalistic evolutionary model. The other version—presented at Ark Encounter as faithful to a literal reading of the biblical text, which is held to be trustworthy—is the biblical creation model. Visitors to Ark Encounter are repeatedly exhorted to trust a biblical worldview consistent with the tenets of young-earth creationism rather than the religious, historical, and scientific knowledge taught in the public K-12 and post-secondary educational systems. Despite what may be taught outside the immersive experience at Ark Encounter, visitors are encouraged to believe that the Noah’s ark story occurred in history just as it is presented in Genesis.

2.4. Darren Aronofsky’s Noah

When Darren Aronofsky was in 7th grade, his English teacher asked the class to write something extemporaneously on peace. Aronofsky wrote a poem about Noah called “The Dove”.17 His teacher submitted it to a contest sponsored by the United Nations, and he won (Falsani 2014). The poem captured his sense of the pervasiveness of evil in the biblical flood story, and his success in the contest inspired him to become a writer and filmmaker. “So”, Aronofsky said in 2014, “Noah’s kind of been this patron saint for me for 32 years” (NPR Weekend All Things Considered 2014). After achieving critical success as a filmmaker—directing films such as Pi (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Fountain (2006), and Black Swan (2010)—he convinced Paramount Pictures to let him produce an epic film telling Noah’s story, which was released in 2014 (Aronofsky 2014).

Aronofsky’s Noah opens with a quick retelling of the antediluvian myths in the chapters preceding the flood in Genesis: the act of eating the fruit in Eden, the original fratricide, Cain’s banishment, and the help provided to him by angels descended to earth, the Watchers. The descendants of Cain, led by Tubal-Cain in Noah’s time, are violent and acquisitive; they build cities and spread across the earth, leaving devastation in their wake. The descendants of Seth are few in number. With the exception of grandfather Methuselah, who lives as a hermit in a remote mountain cave, there is only a single family of two adults and three children in Noah’s time. This small family group lives lightly on the land, recognizing the purpose in all created things, taking only what they need, and believing that they have been called by the Creator to care for the creation.

Although the Creator has been silent for many generations, Noah (played by Russell Crowe) sees the sudden growth and blossoming of a small white flower and, through dreams and visions, comes to understand the Creator’s intention to destroy everything with a great flood, with the animals saved in an ark. A seed from the original garden in Eden, given to Noah by Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), produces the forest needed to provide wood for the ark, which the Watchers help build. Birds and animals of all kinds come on their own to the ark and are put to sustained sleep by the smoke from herbs mixed by Noah’s wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connelly).

When the rains begin, Tubal-Cain’s men try to take the ark by force, but it is protected by the Watchers. Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone), hacking his way into the side of the ship with a hatchet, slips in as a stowaway among the animals. The floodwaters destroy all human and land-based animal life outside the ark. In addition to Noah and Naameh (and Tubal-Cain), the humans on the ark include Noah’s three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—as well as a barren young woman, Ila, whom the family had rescued earlier as a child.

There is a tension between Ham (Logan Lerman) and his father: Ham had wanted a wife, but Noah has decided that the Creator’s intention is to end humankind after the task of saving “the innocent”—the animals—has been completed. Ila (Emma Watson), however, becomes pregnant, following an intervention by Methuselah negotiated by Naameh. Committed to the idea that it was just to punish humans because they “broke the world”, Noah resolves to murder the infant if it is born a girl, capable of reproducing. But as Ila goes into labor, Noah is lured into an ambush by Ham, who has conspired with Tubal-Cain to murder him. Ham, though, kills Tubal-Cain instead and saves his father.

Noah returns above deck to find that Ila has borne twin daughters. He prepares to kill them but is unable to carry through with the act. Everyone eventually leaves the ark for dry ground. Noah isolates himself, takes to drinking, and passes out. Ham chooses to leave the family compound, striking off on his own. As he leaves, he tells Ila, “I’m glad it starts again with you. Perhaps we will learn to be kind”. Ila facilitates Noah’s reconciliation with the rest of the family by helping Noah see that he has failed neither God nor his family. Rather, she argues, God chose him because he would look deeply at the reality of humanity and still choose mercy. The film ends with a ritual blessing of the two infant daughters as heirs to the lineage of Seth, called to care for creation.

3. Making a Story One’s Own, Relevant to One’s Times

In each of these four tellings, the core elements of the underlying story remain—Noah saves a handful of survivors from a widespread flood event—but other story elements differ considerably.18 And the emphasis placed on one aspect or another of the story varies. Narrative choices—decisions about what to include, add, exclude, and emphasize—work to bring each telling in line with cultural commitments and to deliver a culturally relevant message. In other words, distinctive narrative choices make each telling consistent with its cultural context.

3.1. Genesis

Genesis 1–11 combines two ancient literary sources from early Israelite culture (Hendel 2013).19 Scholars call these sources the Priestly (P) and the Yahwist (J) sources.20 P, for example, gives us the first creation account in Genesis 1:1–2:3, in which an all-powerful God creates cosmic order from primordial chaos over the course of six days, while J provides the second creation account in Genesis 2:4ff., in which a more personal God fashions the human from the soil and walks in the Garden in the cool evening breeze. The flood narrative of Genesis 6–9 intermingles elements of both P and J sources. To the extent the flood narrative suggests a God who is returning all of creation to its watery, chaotic origins, this is the P account: what God created, he now de-creates. To the extent God is portrayed as an emotional being, heartbroken that things have gone wrong, we have a J tradition: this God is the personal God known by the people in the Garden.21 “P’s is a world—and a narrative—of clarity, order, and nested hierarchy. J’s is a world of emotions, ambiguity, and ethical complexity”, Ronald Hendel writes. “P portrays a transcendental God, a cosmic deity, while J portrays a deity with the human traits of regret, anger, compassion, and delight. These are different conceptions of reality and different conceptions of God and humans” (Hendel 2013, p. 23). The overall Genesis flood narrative, in its redacted form, suggests (from the P perspective) a just response from God given the evil actions of humankind and (from the J perspective) a painful misalignment between God’s intention in creating humankind and the unrelenting violence of the human heart. In the first case, the rules are clear enough and the punishment is deserved accordingly. In the second case, we have a touching tale of God’s disillusionment with his creation, his decision to start again, and his coming to a certain gracious peace with humanity’s violent nature.

That the Genesis flood narrative combines the P and J accounts reflects a narrative choice to include both stories that were circulating among the early Israelite people. In other words, Genesis does not take sides among factions of its own community. It does, however, distinguish the Israelite community from the surrounding cultures and their differing conceptions of reality, God, and humans. Historical context illuminates these narrative choices. The P and J sources were brought together in the book of Genesis during or after the Babylonian Exile that followed the destruction of the First Temple in 586 bce.22 As it existed during the period of the First Temple (from the 10th to 6th c. bce), Judaism was a monotheistic tradition that struggled to resist the practices of the surrounding and intermingled polytheistic cultures. Elements of the creation and flood narratives of the P and J sources can be traced to earlier written and oral traditions in the broader (non-Israelite and polytheistic) Mediterranean cultural milieu, including the Gilgamesh epic (Dalley 2000; Hendel 2013; Norsker 2015). The creation accounts in Genesis 1:1–2:3 and Genesis 2:4ff. can both be seen as monotheistic polemics against competing polytheistic beliefs (Anderson 2017; Hyers 1982; Lynch 2014; Schmid 2011).23 In the aftermath of Temple destruction and in the context of captivity, one can appreciate the choice to draw together the members of one’s own community—even if the subgroups associated with the P and J sources followed varying narrative traditions of creation and deluge—and to affirm them as distinct from one’s neighbors. The overall effect of the narrative choices in the early chapters of Genesis reflects the need to unite two storytelling traditions within the monotheistic Israelite community (at least as it had taken shape by the 6th c. bce), in contradistinction to the broader region’s polytheistic context.24

3.2. The Qur’an

According to Islamic tradition, the angel Gabriel revealed passages of the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad beginning in 610 ce. These revelations continued for 23 years, until the Prophet’s death in 632 ce. Passages of the Qur’an were not revealed sequentially, from front to back of the book we now know as the Qur’an.25 Rather, the passages reflect Muhammad’s immediate context at the time of revelation. From 610 to 622, Muhammad lived in Mecca. The earlier revelations, the Meccan suras, emphasize three basic beliefs: the unity of God, the prophethood of Muhammad, and the Day of Judgment. Muhammad’s message was not popular in Mecca, and in 622 Muhammad fled the city and took up residence in Medina, where he quickly established his political leadership. The later revelations, the Medinan suras, address legal matters (i.e., marriage, finance, and international relations) and comment extensively on Jewish and Christian communities as well as ‘hypocrites’, those who professed Islam but who were actively subverting the community.26 All the passages revealed during Muhammad’s lifetime were gathered into a single text by leaders of the early Islamic community in the decades after his death (Haleem 2010).27

The narrative choices made in the Qur’anic passages about Noah—all of which were revealed during the Meccan period—make abundant sense when viewed in the Meccan context of their revelation. Key features of the Genesis version of the story are missing here.28 The ark, the animals, and even the flood itself, with its punishment by drowning, seem almost beside the point.29 The Qur’anic Noah does not warn of a coming flood; he warns repeatedly of the Day of Judgment.30 Noah, as prophet or warner, preached the same message to his people that Muhammad was offering his Meccan neighbors: that there was only one God, that the prophet (Noah in the one case, Muhammad in the other) was the messenger of God, and that there would be a Day of Judgment. This is the consistent message of the Meccan revelations in the Qur’an, whether Noah is featured or not (Haleem 2006; Segovia 2015).

In Mecca, Muhammad’s call to monotheism was strongly resisted. The Kaaba, located in Mecca, was a pre-Islamic pilgrimage site. During Muhammad’s lifetime, it housed hundreds of gods. An annual pilgrimage season drew people to Mecca from across Arabia to worship their gods. In other words, the Kaaba was both a religious and economic asset (Armstrong 2000).31 As they called people to worship the one true God, Muhammad and his small group of followers were ridiculed and assailed. They fled Mecca not merely because they had been invited to Medina but because they were likely to be killed in Mecca. How fitting, then, that the narrative include Noah’s limited success in calling people to repentance—even failing to save one of his own sons from the flood—and for the narrative to highlight that Noah and his small band of believers were saved by a merciful God.32

3.3. Ark Encounter Theme Park

If the Qur’an emphasized Noah’s role as a warner—with the flood, the animals, and the ark itself a seeming afterthought—Ark Encounter’s focus is solidly on the ark. The facility, with 75,000 square feet of exhibit space on three levels, is large enough to house interpretive exhibits that cover wide-ranging material, including the ethnic diversity of Noah’s family, the presence of dinosaurs on the ark, biblically informed interpretations of climate science, and historically plausible technological approaches to waste and odor management. The world of the ark—its people, its animals, and its historical and technological plausibility—are portrayed to visitors in an immersive and entertaining format.33 The apparent primary objective is to legitimize creationism, specifically the young-earth creationism of the fundamentalist Christian ministry Answers in Genesis.34

The overarching context of the theme park is the current cultural debate between scientific evolution and young-earth creationism. The late 19th and early 20th century controversies regarding the ontological validity of evolution here see their present-day manifestation. The repeated arguments at Ark Encounter about kinds versus species acknowledge that God can bring about a diversity of species from a single kind; one bear kind on the ark, for example, can become all the bear species we know today.35 These arguments, overall, are subtle attempts to make credible a synthesis of fundamentalist interpretations of biblical events and current scientific perspectives. Ark Encounter does not convey an irresolvable conflict between science and religion.36 The informational displays do not appeal to supernatural miracles, nor do they demand rigid adherence to the biblical account blind to other possible sources of knowledge. The exhibits at Ark Encounter strive to appropriate science, not reject it. Visitors are enjoined to ascribe to a scientifically justified biblical worldview rather than a biblically negligent mainstream scientific worldview. Informational materials at the theme park frequently cite biblical verses, but they also present biblical literalism as thoroughly scientific, citing studies done by Ark Encounter researchers. And the auditorium at Ark Encounter hosts speakers who tout their PhD credentials from respected institutions of higher education.

Through its representation of the relative merits of creationist versus mainstream science at the Ark Encounter theme park, Answers in Genesis strives to appropriate the mantle of science to attain cultural legitimacy for its fundamentalist worldview.37 Another tactic in this effort to gain cultural legitimacy—and the social power that comes with it—for their understanding of biblical literalism is evident in Ark Encounter’s strong criticism of ark-themed toys and children’s books. The whimsical fancy of treating the biblical flood narrative as a sanitized fairy tale undermines the essential claim that the flood happened in history exactly as recorded in the scripture.

Ark Encounter addresses the challenge posed by playful tellings of the flood narrative both by accentuating the realism of their own animal depictions and by shaming the childlike appeal of toy arks, cartoon animals, and children’s books. According to Mark Payne (2018, p. 85), the animals at Ark Encounter disrupt “the linkage between Noah’s ark and child mindedness”. Payne (ibid.) describes the remarkable care with which animal bodies are portrayed at Ark Encounter:

Their hair, skin, and fur has a palpable plausibility, their poses are life-like, and the animals are installed in wooden cages with simulations of the sounds they would have made during the journey. A video display shows the work of making the animal bodies, with a particularly interesting testimony from one of the artists about the creation and installation of their eyes as what gives the final sense of veracity to the feeling of life they convey.

In the context of the encompassing realism of the Ark Encounter experience, an assemblage of toy arks and cartoon animals alongside displays of children’s books in one bay of the Ark Encounter exhibition area is visually jarring. These playful portrayals of the biblical story are castigated as undermining the truthfulness of Scripture. A sign makes explicit the message: “If I can convince you that the Flood was not real, then I can convince you that Heaven and Hell are not real”. Irrespective of any challenge from mainstream science, then, a real threat to biblical literalism and fundamentalist Christianity is the pervasive cultural view of the flood narrative as fairy tale or mere myth.

3.4. Darren Aronofsky’s Noah

Amidst concerns that he had strayed from the biblical text in Noah, Aronofsky said his film was the “the least Biblical Biblical film ever made” (Friend 2014). Resisting cultural pressures to tell a story tightly constrained by the text of Genesis, Aronofsky asserted his creative license as a filmmaker to reimagine the story. Not immediately apparent to Christian and secular audiences was the film’s deep grounding in millennia of Jewish reflection on Noah’s story. As they developed the film, Aronofsky and his co-writer, Ari Handel, read extensively in extracanonical Jewish texts, Rabbinic midrash, and Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism. Many elements of the film unfamiliar to Christian and secular audiences are drawn from these sources; “what initially seems controversial about Aronofsky’s Noah on closer inspection reveals a deep engagement with theological and interpretive issues that have long been associated with the biblical flood story” (Burnette-Bletsch and Morgan 2017, p. 3). For example, the Watchers (albeit not their rock giant form) are well attested in 1 Enoch, the book of Jubilees, and Genesis Apocryphon (Collins 2017). Rabbinic tradition frequently questioned Noah’s righteousness and his sanity (Lilly 2017). Kabbalistic mystical tradition is evident in the portrayals of tzohar (the mineral mined by Tubal-Cain’s men and used on the ark to provide light and fire), the small white flowers that burst from the ground into full bloom, and the overarching symbolism of light (such as the luminescent bodies of Adam and Eve in Eden and the glowing snakeskin used as a religious relic) (Lilly 2017).38

Also consistent with the tradition of Jewish midrash, of which the film Noah is a modern example, is Aronofsky’s interpretation of the flood story in light of the entire Hebrew Bible. The fires raining down on the enemy encampment as Noah looks on recall the fires that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Noah’s willingness to murder his two granddaughters is an intertextual allusion to Abraham’s call to sacrifice his son Isaac. And the character of Ila is symbolic of all the outsider women who play an outsized role in Jewish history. Consider the scene, near the end of the film, in which Ila is speaking to Noah outside the cave to which he has retreated after everyone has disembarked. Throughout the film, Noah, Tubal-Cain, and the Watchers have all commented on how silent the Creator has become. Methuselah tells Noah, considering Noah’s difficulty interpreting his dreams and visions, that the Creator chose him for a reason and that he must trust that the Creator speaks in ways that he can understand. Ila reminds Noah of this, then helps him reinterpret his sense of having failed both the Creator and his family. She tells Noah that the Creator chose him because the Creator knew that Noah would look at the wickedness of humankind, without turning away, and still choose mercy. Ila’s intervention reunites Noah with his family.

Aronofsky’s treatment of environmental themes in his film reflects contemporary political divides, longstanding traditions of biblical interpretation, and audience expectations for a human story. The contrast drawn between the line of Seth (Noah’s family) and the line of Cain (Tubal-Cain’s nation) with respect to their relationship to the land reflects the cultural context of the modern United States, in which conservation and environmental protection are no longer bipartisan issues but are sites of bitter political conflict. Aronofsky’s portrayal of these two perspectives also reflects longstanding challenges in biblical interpretation, as ethicists have tried to reconcile the “have dominion” language of Genesis 1 with the “till it and watch it” rhetoric of Genesis 2 (Morgan 2017). Animals are central to the film, both in the visual spectacle and in the care taken to save all species. That said, by having the animals sleep through their captivity on the boat,39 Aronofsky has made narrative choices that effectively sidestep managerial distractions of fitting the animals on the boat, waste management, caretaking, interspecies conflict, etc. that tend to dominate modern secular tellings of the flood narrative.40 Thereby, he is able to focus on the human drama of the story, which film audiences would expect.

Aronofsky’s overall message is a call to actively choose caretaking, mercy, and love, despite the pervasive human tendencies to evil, violence, and revenge. Aronofsky portrays this in the care given to the animals by Noah’s family, which is ritualized in the blessing involving the snakeskin relic, as well as in Ham’s decision to save his father’s life, even after having conspired to murder him. But the primary narrative choice used to carry this message is Aronofsky’s decision to have the Creator be silent in his film and to have Noah instead embody the narrative arc of the divine figure of the flood narrative, who goes from being willing to destroy everything to blessing a new start, even though human imperfection remains. The film portrays this divine character arc in scripture as Noah’s transformation in the film from being rigidly fixed on judgment to letting mercy flow from an acknowledgement of his love. In his poem written in 7th grade, Aronofsky wrote that “evil is hard to end” and “peace is hard to begin”.41 In Noah, Aronofksy makes it clear that good and bad are in all of us; as such, our choices matter. According to Zwick (2017, p. 144), Aronofsky “offers a cinematic free will defense: the human being is not totally subordinated under God’s purpose and command, but in the last instance is only responsible to his/her own conscience”.

4. The Telling We Need Now: An Ancient Myth for a Contemporary Crisis

The preceding discussion, highlighting just four tellings, only touches the surface of the rich depths of reflection on the biblical flood myth over the last two millennia. Untold numbers of storytellers—with their own challenges in mind—have wrestled with this ancient tale of survival from existential threat and crafted their own versions of the story.42 In this section, I turn our attention to the climate crisis and draw insights for engaging with the Noah’s ark story today. This is an exercise of the religious imagination. Narrative choices shape how we perceive our world and—especially since we are still in the middle of the story, with the waters rising and no one yet on the boat—they bring into sight possible futures and guide our actions in the present. Based on our cultural context and the challenges raised by climate change, what version of the story might we tell now? The tellings above stayed close to the biblical account, with Noah as the central character. There are other possibilities.

4.1. God, People, and Nature in the Four Tellings

All tellings of the flood narrative make choices about divinity, humanity, and the living world. The preceding discussion interpreted each of the four tellings within its cultural context. Here, I read across the four tellings, putting them in dialogue with one another, to bring a focus to their various portrayals of God, humanity, and the natural world.

The Genesis account portrays God with aspects of the order-making, all-powerful P deity, the one who created the world in six days and is acting to de-create it by the flood, as well as aspects of the J tradition deity, the one who fashioned humankind out of mud and who walked in the Garden in the cool breezes of the evening, the one who is grieved at the evil in human hearts. The God of the Qur’an is merciful, sending prophets and texts to provide guidance and giving repeated opportunities for people to turn from their idols and worship him, but also mindful of human choices for good or evil and willing to act with justice on the Day of Judgment. The God of Ark Encounter established the world and created humankind in the divine image. He is someone for us to worship and believe in by trusting in the truthfulness of the biblical text. Aronofsky’s God is silent for extended periods of time, but then makes his desires known through miraculous events, dreams, and visions. One must work hard to interpret his wishes, but he expects something of us and, despite his lengthy silences, he is forgiving and merciful to those who willingly sacrifice themselves for others, as evidenced by the redemption of the Watchers after they defend the ark from Tubal-Cain’s attack.43

Just as the four tellings highlight different aspects of divinity, they also make subtly different assessments of humankind. Though we are capable of being obedient to God, the primary attribute of humankind in the Genesis flood narrative is our evil and violent nature. Those who resist their evil impulses are deemed righteous in God’s sight. In the Qur’an, people are portrayed as predominantly ungrateful and unrepentant, prone to create idols, though some believe in God’s messengers and worship the one God. The educational emphasis and narrative framing of the Ark Encounter theme park experience defines most people in the 21st century culture wars as prone to hubris and error in adopting the mainstream scientific worldview and casting off the authority of the Bible. That said, Ark Encounter says little about the people off the ark in Noah’s time, but the people on the ark are portrayed as smart, cultured, cosmopolitan, and technologically adept. Aronofsky’s people, profoundly shaped by their culture and upbringing, are capable of both violence and restraint, containing both good and evil; the essential human task is to learn to choose the good rather than evil, to turn from our violent impulses and learn to be kind.

In Genesis, the natural world—the cosmos and all the life that fills it—is declared good by the Creator. The world, tended properly, is intended to sustain flourishing populations of all creatures. The flood narrative emphasizes keeping all the pieces of creation, without distinction. The natural world is, at best, an afterthought in the Qur’an, which draws on the Noah story not to document a one-time event of God restarting creation at some point in the past, but to convey an ongoing, ever-present story about believing in the Prophet and worshiping the one God.44 Since most references to the flood in the Qur’an depict it as localized, there is no need to emphasize an ark containing all the animals.45 The animals of Ark Encounter are not species but kinds, from which God is fully capable of bringing about all the various species he wishes. The kinds are to be preserved, but extinction is natural and not to be worried about. The natural world in Aronofsky’s account is prone to degradation under the rapacious greed of humankind. The animals are innocent—living as they did in the Garden—and vulnerable to extinction, which is a permanent loss to be lamented.

4.2. What Insights Do These Four Tellings Evoke?

If one reads the discussions of the four tellings above with the climate crisis in mind, each suggests possibilities for narrative elements that might be incorporated into a new telling of the myth for this time of climate crisis. For example, Genesis 6–9 reveals a strategic choice to draw distinct narrative traditions (P and J) together under one sacred story so as to unify a community under threat. The relevant communities today might be the “Six Americas” defined by the Yale Program on Climate-Change Communication.46 Under this social psychological model, people are grouped into six categories based on their attitudes toward climate change: dismissive, doubtful, disengaged, cautious, concerned, and alarmed. An alternative model draws on developmental psychology to define distinct groups of people and their understandings of climate change by stages of development: traditional, modern, postmodern, and integral.47 For example, a person holding a modern worldview views the problem of climate change primarily through the lens of science, technology, government policies, and market failures, whereas someone with a postmodern worldview is more attentive to values, injustices, and inequities. Just as the redactor of Genesis 6–9 combined the P and J traditions, storytellers today might ponder how to weave together the various ways of understanding climate change into a narrative that can draw more of us together as we face this global challenge.

The Qur’anic account emphasizes Noah’s persistent efforts to warn others to turn from their existing practices, so that they might avoid painful consequences. This resonates with the long history of repeated communication of scientific evidence of climatic changes and associated pleas for action. A retelling of the Noah’s ark story today could incorporate elements that allude to 18th century theories about human sinfulness causing global climate change (Barnett 2015) as well as the long history of scientific evidence, including Arrhenius’s warnings in the late 19th century, decades of readings from the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, the writings and advocacy of James Hansen and Al Gore, the rise of the term Anthropocene, and the repeated reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Just as the Qur’anic Noah is portrayed as having tried various tactics to convey his message, with varying responses from his audience, this telling of the Noah’s ark story could highlight the various communicative approaches and diverse audience responses.

The insights gained from these four tellings need not all point to elements to include or replicate. We might also watch for elements to exclude or adapt. There is precedent for this in the tellings themselves. The Qur’anic account, for example, left one son to be drowned on a high hill. In this light, we might reconsider the overall message of the Qur’anic telling: to turn to the one God and trust in his messenger. An analogy can be drawn to the centrality of Science (capitalized to show the analogy to God) and the authority of scientists (i.e., messengers) in much climate-change discourse. And here the analogy slips, as Science is dethroned and disaggregated into its parts, now represented by the children. While the sciences are essential—most of the children should be on the boat—what other values might be articulated in a new telling, such that one might set aside some aspect of scientific knowledge—one son—so that other values can be properly considered?

As with the Qur’anic account, Ark Encounter’s telling of the flood narrative—especially its focus on the scientific plausibility of its account—also invites reflection on an overemphasis on science to the exclusion of other concerns. How might a new telling invite an audience to ponder other aspects, including issues of economic power and dominance? Also related to the role of science in these tellings, Ark Encounter foregrounds a cultural conflict between two different worldviews, with both claiming the authority of science in the modern world. To dramatize this cultural context, a new telling of the flood narrative could include ‘false’ prophets.

Ark Encounter is also an ark-centric retelling of the flood narrative. In this, it is closely aligned with a focus on technological fixes for the climate crisis, such as we see in geoengineering proposals. A storyteller who wants to foreground geoengineering options for the contemporary climate crisis might study the narrative choices made by Ark Encounter in foregrounding the plausibility of the biblical story. Others, who find a narrow focus on geoengineering elides other important factors, might reflect on the broader flood narrative, when the physical ark itself is not the sole center of attention.

A central theme in Aronofsky’s film is the tension between justice and mercy. Climate justice is a phrase frequently mentioned in ethical reflections on the geographical, ethnic, and intergenerational inequities of climate-change impacts. Aronofsky’s film opens up a space to ponder how mercy might be enacted as well. Aronofsky’s film includes elements of the Hebrew scriptures well beyond the text of Genesis 6–9. For example, recall Aronofsky’s allusion to the fires raining down on Sodom and Gomorrah as Noah looks on the enemy encampment. Or the Abraham-and-Isaac moment when he seems about to kill his granddaughters. Retellings of the Noah story during a time of climate crisis might make a similar move and draw on the hospitality narratives of Genesis, both with Abraham (Genesis 18) and with Joseph (Genesis 43:15ff.), to suggest a merciful care for climate refugees.

Aronofsky’s film also suggests we must learn to trust that God will speak to us in ways we can understand. Perhaps some of this comes from generational transfer of cultural knowledge, as we see Noah teach his sons how to live lightly on the earth. Perhaps some of this comes in dreams and visions, sometimes needing the help of a mystic-hermit to help bring them about and suggest an interpretation. But note as well the intervention of Ila. At the end of the film, Noah’s belief that he has failed both God and his family is challenged by Ila, who re-interprets for him a healing story that transforms the way he perceives his world and reunites him with his family. Ila’s portrayal in this film challenges us to ponder our response to Greta Thunberg’s activism. How might a new telling of the flood narrative show people being transformed by Greta’s words, rather than merely expressing gratitude and hope that the younger generation might fix the problems they have inherited from others?

5. A Concluding Note on Race

I have offered these reflections as an exercise of the religious imagination. As an exercise, we have gathered our equipment (the four tellings), learned how to use them (placing each in context), stretched our muscles (by reading God, humanity, and nature across the four tellings), and performed some training drills (drawing insights from the tellings for our contemporary climate crisis). Now, it is time to put these skills to work in the real contest. To that end, I offer these final reflections on race in the Noah’s ark story.48

Ark building, according to Mark Payne, is an act of “relationality with a precarious future”; it draws our attention to “everything that is at stake when we decide that there had better be an ark for something that ought to go inside it” (Payne 2018, p. 74). The precarity of our situation, amid an unfolding climate crisis, has great potential for violence. The rhetoric of climate ‘emergency’ can be used to authorize actions we would know were unethical in less pressing circumstances. Writing of indigenous perspectives on the climate crisis, Potawatomi scholar-activist Kyle Whyte (2017, 2020) has argued it might be too late for indigenous justice. If we are to act as quickly as needed to avert the worst effects of climate change, those who are in positions of power to act can only do so in ways that continue long histories of settler colonialism and indigenous oppression. If we resolve to do it differently, entering the long process of relationship-building that is needed if we are to go forward more justly, we will be overtaken by rising temperatures and climate chaos.

There is an abundance of violence in the flood narrative. And the narrative has been used—perhaps even created—to perpetuate violent systems of power and domination. Just as one can imagine a powerful group of men in a patriarchal culture crafting a creation myth that subordinates women to men, then arguing that that is just the way it is, just as God intended, some readers have posited that the early Israelites may have sought to justify their conquest of the Promised Land by inserting a curse into the end of the Noah story. After the flood, after the landfall, after the drunken stupor, Noah wakes and curses Canaan, the son of Ham, saying that he would be dominated by his brothers. Later in the biblical narrative, then, as Israel colonizes an already inhabited land, the tremendous violence of killing the indigenous Canaanite inhabitants looks foreordained, just as God intended. Or so the story has been crafted to insinuate by the people in power, who wrote the story later and canonized it into their scriptures.

The Exodus story of liberation from slavery and entry into the Promised Land has, of course, been reinscribed on the North American continent. Osage scholar Robert Allen Warrior (1996) argues that the work of liberation is not over, that the Native Americans and First Nations peoples of the continent interpret their history—and ongoing present—through the eyes of the Canaanites. But consider what Darren Aronofsky has already done. In his telling of the flood myth, Ham—much less Canaan—is not cursed.49 He walks off across the landscape, hoping we will learn to become kinder, and Noah weeps at the brokenness of their relationship.50

One can imagine tellings where the characters walk away, metaphorically siding with those not on the boat. One can imagine tellings that refuse to accept the preservation of only a privileged few. One can imagine tellings that do not replicate a settler-colonialist state. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, describing his forthcoming book with Julian Yates, writes: “The project (Noah’s Arkive: Towards an Ecology of Refuge) re-examines the master myth for the narration of climate change and argues against the attenuated versions we tend to repeat whenever we imagine a future of rising seas and drowned peoples, uncovering instead a rich and millennia-long counter history in which Noah’s resignation to an ark of exclusion and limited preservation is questioned, rethought, rebuked, rebuilt”.51 One can imagine a telling of the Noah’s ark story in which 30% of the North American continent’s land and water resources are set aside by 2030, with extensive involvement of indigenous peoples in their ongoing care and management.

If nothing else, our exploration of Noah’s ark here must have freed us from thinking we need to rigidly adhere to narrative choices made in the past as we craft our new tellings. Thomas King (2005), in a discussion of creation myths, clarifies the ethical import of alternative tellings. In his essay, King narrates two creation stories: the story of Adam and Eve from Genesis 2–3 and an indigenous Earth Diver story about the Woman Who Fell From the Sky. In the indigenous story, a woman named Charm falls from the sky, and the water animals below create a dry land for her to live on. He highlights important differences between the two stories, then summarizes: “So here are our choices: a world in which creation is a solitary, individual act or a world in which creation is a shared activity; a world that begins in harmony and slides toward chaos or a world that begins in chaos and moves toward harmony; a world marked by competition or a world determined by co-operation” (ibid pp. 24–25). He doesn’t ask his readers to choose between the two worldviews, but rather to look at the Genesis story again, having heard the story about Charm. “What if the creation story in Genesis had featured a flawed deity who was understanding and sympathetic rather than autocratic and rigid?” (ibid p. 27). He concludes by telling his readers to do “what you will” with the story about Charm. “Tell it to friends. Turn it into a television movie. Forget it. But don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You’ve heard it now” (ibid p. 29).

“The literature of imagination”, argues Ursula Le Guin, “even when tragic, is reassuring, not necessarily in the sense of offering nostalgic comfort, but because it offers a world large enough to contain alternatives and, therefore, offers hope”.52 New tellings of the flood narrative must include diverse voices and be told by diverse voices. The telling of the flood narrative we need now must address endangered species and offer some vision of how to live amidst the ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction. And it must show us learning much more quickly to balance judgment (and justice) with mercy. More than just a few must be saved. This is a challenge, writes George Handley (2018), for all of us working in the environmental humanities: to tell a narrative that acknowledges “our complicity in the world’s destruction while providing grounds for a sobered and renewed hope” (ibid p. 618); “it is not enough for humankind to develop passion for the more-than-human world; we must also reinvigorate faith in humanity” (ibid p. 617).