Righteousness: A Comparison Of Noah And The Holy Bible

The movie Noah, directed by Darren Aronofsky, was adapted from Holy Bible. Both Holy Bible and the movie Noah focus on offering a meaning to God’s will for the occurrence of the flood. However, as the Bible offers a clear message of human righteousness with a clear reward and punishment system, the film challenges the criteria of God 's judgement about human’s worthiness set in the book. In the book, it is God that makes the decision based on righteousness, yet in the movie, Noah is given the choice to decide on what goodness means.

Firstly, God’s choice of Noah is clearly based on righteousness in the book, yet not in the film. To understand this difference, we must identify the definition of righteousness. In the book, God describes the badness

Consequently, if Noah is not righteous, he should die in the flood. In the book, God has stated clearly “(…) you shall come to into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.” (6:18-19). Additionally, God guides Noah’s family, including 4 human couples, to breed the earth: “On the very same day Noah with his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons entered the ark” (7:13). In the film however, only one of Noah’s sons has a wife who is identified as not being able to reproduce “She will never have children.” Throughout unfavorable signs, Noah perceived it as though God never intended to let humankind contaminate the earth again, because presence of human’s unrighteousness would destroy the paradise He was trying to establish. The fact that Noah has to die imply that he is not righteous and that righteousness is the means of deciding who gets to belong to life after the

God’s lack of presence throughout the length of the film in contrast with the incessant guidance of Him in the book had created more ambivalence about who has the authority to choose the criteria of judgement. On the ambiguity of goodness, Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather, exclaims: “Good is good. Good is wicked. How am I supposed to know what is right?” Furthermore, though the lively depiction in the movie shows us how greedy a person can be, it also exposes the goodness that is obscurely present in human’s mind. For instance, deep down in Noah’s wife selfish wish of finding wives for his sons against God’s supposed will is an altruistic desire for her sons’ happiness in the life after the flood. God’s lack of presence means that He did not want to superimpose anything on Noah, thus Noah is the one who directly make all the decisions, and Noah chooses to let human race live, as it is later pointed out “The choice was put in your hand because He put it there. He asked you to decide if we were worth saving. And you chose mercy. You chose love.” In the book, everything was planned out for Noah because God loves his righteousness. Whereas in the movie, Noah is the one who decides on criteria on which humanity is judged upon. The criteria Noah used is love and mercy, hence challenges righteousness as the only ideal set in the