Noah: The Hollywood Version

Alice C. Linsley

Paramount's big-budget film about Noah and the flood came out this week. Go see Darren Aronofsky’s film, featuring Russell Crowe as Noah and Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah. It is a white-knuckle thriller!

Keep in mind that Hollywood's objective is to entertain, not inform, so we can't hold it against Paramount or Aronofsky that the details are all wrong.

The evidence of Scripture, linguistics, climate studies, and DNA studies support the historicity of Noah and a time of flooding, but not in the Black Sea. Noah kept a royal menagerie and had many boats. These had wood frames and were made of reeds (called gofer in Scripture). He lived in the region of Lake Chad; the only place on Earth that claims to be Noah's homeland - Borno - "Land of Noah." Imagine how this movie would be received were Noah portrayed as a Nilo-Saharan!

In Noah's time, the larger lakes of his region reached levels sometimes 330 feet higher than their present levels. Around these bodies of water were spongy marshlands which provided channels for navigation for smaller boats. One such boat, the Dufuna dugout, was made of black mahogany. It was discovered in 1987 in the region of Borno at a depth of 16 feet under clays and sands whose alternating sequence indicated deposition in standing and flowing water. The dugout is 8000 years old.

Here is a diagram of Noah's descendants to the pivotal figure of Abraham.

Biblical Archaeology Review discusses the historicity of the event. In this article Ronald S. Hendel insists that people are looking in the wrong place for Noah's flood. He believes it took place in Mesopotamia, another region prone to flooding. He assumes that E.A. Speiser is correct in his assertion that the story of Atrahasis, the Mesopotamian Noah, forms the basis of the Biblical accounts. However, this 1700 B.C. account comes well after the time of Noah.

I argue here that it Noah's flood place in the region of Lake Chad, a region of lakes, basins and troughs that interconnected in the Mid-Holocene. The entire region was prone to flooding from monsoons off the Indian Ocean. The Gurian Wet Period lasted here for 500 years!

Saharan petroglyphs dating to between 4300 and 2900 BC show boats and cattle. These have been found in the Eastern Central Desert of Egypt and Sudan. Examples of these images are shown below.

Related reading: Noah's Flood: Where and When?; Atrahasis and Noah: Similarities and Differences; The Nile Was 17374.6 Square Miles; When the Sahara Was Wet; Boats and Cows of the Nilo-Saharans; Nilo-Saharan and Saharo-Nubian Populations; Genesis and Climate Change; Climate Cycles Indicate a Dynamic Earth; Newly Discovered Pyramid Predates Noah; Was Earth Repopulated After Noah's Flood?