Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Religious Music & Entertainment
How do we define “wickedness” in biblical films?

How do we define “wickedness” in biblical films?

Last updated on: February 27, 2014 at 7:15 am by Peter T. Chattaway

How do we define “wickedness” in biblical films? 2014-02-27T07:15:38-08:00 Peter T. Chattaway

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

If there was one theme linking the trailer and the TV spot for Noah that came out two days ago, it was “wickedness”.

Previous ads showed Methuselah telling Noah that mankind has earned the wrath of God because mankind has “corrupted this world and filled it with violence” — but yesterday’s ads pushed the language in an even more explicitly biblical direction.

The title card that opens the new trailer states: “At a time when wickedness was great in the world… so too was the response.” And the narrator in the new TV spot declares that the film takes place at a time when “wickedness ruled the hearts of men”.

This echoes the beginning of the biblical Noah story, which states: “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”

But what exactly did that wickedness consist of?

Believe it or not, the Book of Genesis does not tell us. So filmmakers and others who dramatize this story have to fill in the gaps somewhat. And when they fill in those gaps, they can go in one of two directions: They can make the “wickedness” of Noah’s day something so extreme, from our current cultural vantage point, that the Flood seems justified and we feel reassured that God wouldn’t have a similar punishment in mind for us. Or they can make the “wickedness” of Noah’s day something that resonates with our own real-world situation, thereby perhaps reminding us that what we are doing now is worthy of judgment too, but God is restraining himself.

You can see examples of the first approach, I think, in movies like The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966), in which the Noah section of the movie begins with dark, foreboding images of pagan idolatry and human sacrifice. And you can see examples of the second approach in movies like Green Pastures (1936), a modernized take on the Old Testament in which God sends the Flood partly because people are skipping church to drink, gamble, play music and hang out with their lovers.

And then there are films that straddle the two approaches, like Noah’s Ark (1928). This film, rather than start with the story of Noah per se, begins with images of slavery and idolatry — taken from the stories of the Tower of Babel and the Golden Calf, respectively — and it then jumps ahead to the present day to show stock brokers gathering in their skyscrapers and obsessing over their ticker tapes. This film, then, zeroes in on the capitalistic lust for money and power. (Note, incidentally, that this film — which states in a title card that the world is “rush[ing] onwards towards desruction” — came out one year before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.)

It remains to be seen what sort of approach Darren Aronofsky’s Noah will take. There has been much speculation, based on an early draft of the script, that his film will focus on mankind’s destruction of the environment, which would certainly speak to modern political concerns — but even in that early draft, mankind’s violence against nature is ultimately rooted in, and connected to, mankind’s violence against other people, which has been a problem for pretty much all of human history.

But whatever approach Aronofsky takes, we should keep in mind that every adaptation of the Noah story has had to take some creative license here. And what leaps to our minds as the sort of “wickedness” that would merit divine retribution isn’t necessarily what the biblical authors had in mind.

Consider, for example, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The destruction of those two cities has been linked to the Flood of Noah’s day in a number of ways, from the apocalyptic prophecy that Jesus delivers in Luke 17, to the passage in II Peter 2 that cites Noah and Lot as examples of righteous men, to the TV-movie Noah’s Ark (1999) which, rather bizarrely, places the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah before the Flood rather than hundreds of years after it.

But why, exactly, were Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed?

Most people nowadays focus on the fact that a mob in one of those cities tried to gang-rape the two angels that visited Lot, and they extrapolate from this to suppose that Sodom and its neighbouring cities were rife with sexual sin.* But on the one occasion that God himself spells out what, exactly, the people of Sodom did to merit their destruction (in Ezekiel 16), he places the emphasis on something else:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

Similarly, in Isaiah 1, the prophet addresses the rulers of Jerusalem as though they were the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah and says that they have chased after bribes while neglecting the city’s widows and orphans, among other things.

So, as with Sodom and Gomorrah, so with the civilization of Noah’s day. It is essential to the story that the people who are on the receiving end of God’s punishment are wicked, on some level. But how that wickedness is dramatized will vary from film to film, just as different biblical texts emphasize different signs of that wickedness.

And if a filmmaker should use the story to address the social ills of today, well, there’s a biblical precedent for that, too.

We can certainly debate how the film addresses those social concerns, or even whether it emphasizes the right social concerns — but let’s wait until we have seen the film to see just what those concerns are and what sort of balance the film strikes between them. A film with a narrow political agenda would not be a particularly good thing, but neither, I think, would a film in which the wickedness of Noah’s day seems so remote from our own world that the story has nothing to say to us.

–

* There is a precedent for this in Jude 7, which says the people in Sodom and Gomorrah gave themselves up to “fornication” and went after “strange flesh”. But note how Jude says this right after he refers to the angels who abandoned their proper place in heaven, and a few verses before he quotes the Book of Enoch, which cites the mating of humans and angels as a key reason for the Flood. Once again, the text makes an implicit link between the Flood (which followed the mating of humans and angels) and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (which followed the attempted gang-rape of two angels by a group of humans).

Blog

bible in the beginning

Previous Post

February 26, 2014

The Arts & Faith Top 25 Divine Comedies

Next Post

February 27, 2014 Noah -- the biblical advisor speaks! (And new photos.)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Anglican Planet Articles BC Christian News BC Report Bible Movies Bible Review Blog Books & Culture Campus Times CBC Radio Christianity Today ChristianWeek Essays Faith Today Festival Cinemas Guide Film Journals Georgia Straight Interviews MB Herald National Catholic Register Salvationist Today's Christian Two Chairs Ubyssey Uncategorized Vancouver Courier Vancouver Sun

Select a Month August 2025 April 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 May 2024 February 2024 December 2023 May 2023 March 2023 November 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 April 2012 January 2012 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 November 2003 October 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 March 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 September 2001 August 2001 July 2001 June 2001 April 2001 March 2001 February 2001 December 2000 November 2000 October 2000 September 2000 August 2000 July 2000 June 2000 May 2000 April 2000 March 2000 January 2000 October 1999 August 1999 May 1999 April 1999 February 1999 January 1999 December 1998 November 1998 October 1998 August 1998 July 1998 June 1998 April 1998 March 1998 January 1998 November 1997 September 1997 July 1997 June 1997 April 1997 March 1997 February 1997 January 1997 December 1996 October 1996 September 1996 June 1996 March 1996 February 1996 January 1996 April 1995 November 1994 September 1994 September 1991

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

The heavens declare God's glory without speech or words. Which psalm proclaims creation's silent testimony?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Psalm 19 Psalm 104 Psalm 8 Psalm 148