The 700 Club and the upcoming Noah movie

I was watching the March 28, 2014 broadcast of The 700 Club, the second hour of which airs at noon. They have a morning broadcast hosed Pat Robertson and then a second hour that is hosted another one of their anchors, usually, although Robertson sometimes fills in.

Let us say they did a report on a new movie, Noah, starring Russell Crowe and Emma Watson. They weren't about tarnishing the movie, although their report did note many Christians, who I would describe as  fundamentalists (my word, not theirs), are up in arms over it. I think The 700 Club shared their concerns over it. Which is strange because the movie had not opened yet, so it's not really clear what they're so
upset about.

These morons are complaining about the Noah movie. It sounds like sour grapes. There have been several attempts, if attempts are what you would call them, at making a professional theatric production that also appeals to a biblical faith. But what you see is cheesy, boring screenplays that demonstrate that Christians do not have even one director capable of producing a compelling work of cinema. These are not merely B-movies, they are closer to not being on a list at all. What is so threatening to Christians is not the creative license Aronofsky took for himself, it is that a worthy adaptation of a biblical epic, of blockbuster proportions with A-lit stars has been created, and by an atheist, Jewish director.

Is it true that their have been surmisals into the story? Absolutely. But when one studies the sixth to seventh or so chapter of Noah, they find that very little about Noah the man is made mention of at all. What it does relate is quite an epic tale. Any attempt such as Aronofsky's is going necessitate a lot editorializing because we simply do not have enough to fashion an entire script about.

The Ignorance of the Narrow View of Interpretation

When Christians read the account of the Creation, they are quick to admit that Adam and Eve were the only humans on earth. Almost titillated, they tell how with the divine mission to populate the world, Cain and Seth and all the boys had sex with their sisters and populated the earth.

In this strange Christian infatuation with incest, they wax gleeful when just a few chapters later, the earth is destroyed except just eight individuals, Noah and his family, and this strange union of brothers and sisters marrying one another resumes again.

This mind you comes from the very sensible perception that nothing should be added to the Bible that isn't  there.

Yet somehow they aren't careful enough to notice that there is nothing there reported that brothers and sisters were shacking up with each other.

Beginning in chapter 4 of Genesis, Cain's birth and young life is recounted. Without dwelling on the specifics, most of you being familiar with the story, Cain has a falling out with his brother and brings him into the field and murders him. A dialogue ensues between him and God where he is cast out of the area of Eden and goes to dwell in the east, in the land of Nod.

Genesis 4:25,26 And Adam knew his again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seedinstead of Abel, whom Cain slew. And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.

Now, I studied these chapters dealing with the first family last night to find evidence of where the ensuing human population descended from.

These are my findings:

a. Cain and Abel are the first two of the children borne to Adam and Eve.

b. Cain killed Abel and THEN went into the land of Nod, after God cast him out.

c. It was when going to dwell in Nod, he unites with his wife and they give birth.

d. After Cain is cast out, God gives to Eve another son. Her beloved on is killed, her other son is dispossessed and flees, and now to restore what has been lost, she conceives a son through Adam, and calls him Seth.

e. The mystery is clear: Cain comes to find a willing bride in a distant land. There is nothing anywhere that suggests he had any siblings meaning this could not have been a sister, which Christians grossly with great fantasy proclaim.

My Very Careful Conclusion

It is not even narrowly possible, but purely impossible, for Cain to have taken up with his sister.

Yet this elicits many objections.

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1. What is this settlement in the land of Nod?

2. Why does the Bible not mention such a settlement?

3. Despite how we might feel about incest today, in the pre-Mosaic times, it was not morally wrong.

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This is all rather easily dispersed with when it is acknowledged a most central principle of all the Old  Testament.

The Old Testament is a tale of the Hebraic and Israelitish peoples!

This entails several things:

I. It is very heavily devoted to lineages.

II. It is concerned with origins of the Hebraic ancestral lands, and later its division into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah.

III. It is deeply concerned with its history versus its neighbors, the neighboring peoples, their wars against them, along with their customs and their eventual disposition, some of which were utterly destroyed and  blotted out, others of which were subsumed.

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And especially, because it is presumably on a nation of peoples who can trace their descent from several common ancestors, extensive records of the origins and patriarchs of neighboring countries is almost entirely irrelevant.

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Peculiarity in Cain's and Seth's lineage

Cain --> (false ) Enoch --> Irad --> Mehujael -->  Methusael --> Lamech  -x- 

Seth -->            Enos -->  Cainan --> Mahalaleel -->  Jared --> (true) Enoch --> Methusaleh --> 
                        (true) Lamech -->    Noah

The Lineage of Cain was Devoted to Evil,

while

The Lineage of Seth was Devoted to the Lord

When I studied this original family and eventual disposition I found

the lineage of Cain was stained with murder and the genealogy ends with Lamech. I believe that Cain's line may have been blotted out because of the sin of murder.

Further, these names in the early names all had very deep meaning and were referential and self-referential.

When Cain's son is called Enoch, and Enoch pursues the way of wickedness taught him by his father, Enoch is walking falsely in Enochness, "Enoch" meaning dedication, implying he is walking against dedication. He is not dedicated to God. He is falsely called Enoch, as his nature does not embody Enochness.

God blots this lineage of Cain and restores true 'dedication' through the great-great-great-grandson of the righteous Seth.

Cain's great-great-grandson Methusael is likewise an impostor of Methusaleh, though I'm not sure why the name is twisted or how precisely it affects the meaning. -El is an angelic meaning referring back to Divinity and might be regarded as presumptuous titling, whereas Methusaleh invokes the psaltery Saleh which may be understood as an invocation for the serenity of God to prevail. Methusaleh, then, is a humble man who calls upon the Lord. Methusael is another one of the rotten bunch of Cain.

When Cain's great-great-grandson is named Lamech, it similarly carries a negative connotation.

For it is in the line of Seth, in the person of Lamech, who through righteous rearing of his son Noah, humanity is given a second chance at life.

Contrarily, it is in the tainted line of Cain, Lamech becomes the first practicing polygamist, he murders a man for striking him, to pick up after the murdering heritage of his father Cain, and it is in this same line, that man is destroyed.

Even at the time of Noah, Seth's lineage had departed from the LORD as well, except in the narrow patrilineal descent.

Therefore, true Lamech is the man who would father the earth again, after Adam, or the rebirth of man. False Lamech in contrast to true Lamech, representing rebirth of man, false Lamech represents complete death of man.

In False Lamech, humanity is destroyed. But through true Lamech, man is restored (in Noah).

This early biography of a blessed family, one branch of which relies on the LORD, the other branch of which falls into depravity, is one of how the firstborn of man is often not the chosen of God. It is in the young one, the young Jacob, the young Joseph, or the young Moses who God calls more deeply to Himself.

Likewise, it is the only child who God also takes a tender care for, such as Samuel, Samson, and John the Baptist.

Likewise, it is the runt, the one the others despise that God chooses. One forgets that for a longtime there was enmity between Christ and His brothers, for even we would dispute with one among us who challenges us in the way that Christ did everyone He connected with. It was Joseph whose brothers sought for his death, and it was Jeremiah, who knowing the torment of isolation in dark pits and unjust custody in prison, God reminded that even his brothers had turned against him.

God never had need for the popular one, the noted one, or the favored. God throughout time has always turned man's institutions upside down.

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Is there, in fact, any evidence that the brothers and sisters were screwing around with each other?

I simply return to the original supposition that I agree to be sensible, yet feel is misused here.

The sensibility is that nothing should be added to the Bible that the Bible does not clearly report.

It's application here is obvious: There is nothing in the narrative that suggests an incestuous union, there is however circumstantial evidence to suggest that there were other settlers in Mesopotamia, particularly in the region of Nod, through whom the seed of Cain arises. Further, we find that there are transcendent absolute moral laws that, as we agree with the natural and classical philosophers and economists including Locke and Bastiat, transcend the written law, which law seeks only to reveal and codify. That the law, known both by light of natural revelation, natural reason, and special revelation shows that it is a grotesque abuse of the body to unite it with blood of a degree so close as that which shares parentage, and that Mosaic law notwithstanding, is as grotesque for those in Adamic times as it is for us in times modern.

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Hereby be it acknowledged that the most notorious and suspect doctrine by which fundamentalist Christian apply to origins, is damnable and damned, and is a lawless belief in the permanence of Law, which God  continually expounds as eternal and timeless.

Hereby be it acknowledged that sympathies against artistic representations of biblical accounts are the disgraceful beckonings among some back to an earlier time of censorship and capital punishment against  dissent and is a sentiment not in keeping with the times, and which should be quickly dispersed, before all of Christianity is falsely disregarded, and eventually violently squashed, by those who would regard it in its entirety as a system of censorship and hatred.

Let it further be acknowledged, that if Christians have heretofore not committed within themselves to never return to a Hollywood theater again, despite its reputation preceding it that it is a demonstration of a) a leftist political agenda, b) a normalization of every cowardly act of sexual, physical, and pharmaceutical abuse, and c) as an effective implement which has heretofore been used as a weapon to ridicule Christianity, It is the idea that a Hollywood epic devoted to telling a BIBLICAL story that should be boycotted, rather than ALL of Hollywood as a vile and abominable industry, that the good people of the Christian faith find the MOST RIDICULOUS of ALL. For it is in your very naive attempt to cast aspersions and ridicule on Hollywood, that it is actually on Christianity itself that you bring ridicule on.

If you mean to be a moral crusader and take a stand against the evil in Hollywood, you seem to be a genuine nutcase since you chose to make a stand on the story of Noah, rather than the story of a whore, a drug dealer, or a gangster,of which Hollywood tells in nearly all of its adaptations.

I restrict myself to around one movie a year or less. If you really want to take a stand for morality, then do what I did and stop going altogether and if you must, make it as rarely as possible. For instance, I'll go for a blockbuster like American Hustle. In fact, I won't even go to Christian films because it's from the same sick Hollywood beast. To come full circle, the reason I stopped going to theaters nearly totally was after seeing a movie where a father raped his own daughter. It was finally revealed in the last few seconds of the movie. It was the worst because if it had been shown any earlier in the movie I would have walked out. I resolved at that time to never go back. Since then, I've been only a handful of times and that was not quite ten years ago, so I probably make a movie every 12-18 months, if not two years. So please, if there is any shred of decency in you left, just stop going altogether. Stop being a hypocrite, stop whining about filth in Hollywood and just stop going.