I promised to review this one-off programme, The Ark shown on BBC1 on Monday 30 March 2015.
Is it not the way of things... pen and paper to hand, my TV began to experience massive glitches and 'freezing' of both vision and sound!! (Something to do with weather) and I missed huge chunks of the film.
So, I can only offer a VERY brief observation of what I managed to see.
The first is the TV blurb itself, which inadvertently warned of the programme's coming problems!
It said: "Epic one-off drama telling the story of Noah: a man who risks everything to save the people he loves. A retelling of the classic tale, fusing elements from the Bible and Qur'an."
There you have it in a nutshell. Typical BBC hatred for the genuine biblical message and an insult to genuine Christians.
1. It did not tell the story of Noah – it gave a very skewed novel-writer's approach to the biblical facts.
2. Noah did not "risk everything" – he faithfully obeyed God and knew he would not lose anything, but would gain God's care, help and rewards.
3. It was NOT his aim to save those he loved – Noah did what he did out of obedience to God! That he also saved his family was just a bonus.
4. Calling it a "classic tale" is another way of calling it a myth, which it was, and is, not.
5. And fusing Bible and Qur'an is a major insult to Christians and God. Mohammed plagiarised huge parts of the Old Testament/Torah so as to mix it with his odd ideas of what life is and Who God is. And he got it all wrong! Where the Qur'an agrees with the Old Testament there can be no argument. But, where it says something different from the Old Testament, the Qur'an has got it wrong. Simple as that. In other words we cannot 'fuse' Bible and Qur'an!
General View:
The opening scene was incorrect, because it shows broken rocks, jagged hills and desert. These were probably not seen before the Flood. Also, there must have been vast forests nearby – how else could Noah obtain huge quantities of wood needed for the construction!
Noah is shown to have four sons, with one dying in a nearby city. He only had three sons.
His sons and their wives were shown shying away from building an Ark. There is nothing biblically to suggest this familial disagreement! Nor is there any foundation for the way one son argued against his father.
The view of the city seems fair, as in Noah's day people were out of control, as they were in the days of Sodom.
NOBODY got onto the Ark, except for Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives. The idea that a large group of people from the city finally came and joined him must be Qur'anic, because this activity did not take place!
The coming of the animals to the Ark was only hinted at, and the period of the Flood was almost non-existent in the film.
In short, the film portrayed human failings rather than the heroic and determined love for God by Noah. It did not show the very real event or how Noah dealt with it, with any relevance.
As usual, then, the BBC got it wrong (I believe deliberately so)! Perhaps they wanted just to annoy Christians, or to dismiss their claims, by mixing it and diluting it with Islam. This was not appreciated and was wrong.
For a Biblical commentary see Genesis 6, Genesis 7, and Genesis 8.