Is Genesis history?

According to Tim Challies, the documentary Is Genesis History? is available to watch for free for a limited time. The documentary includes interviews with scholars Todd Wood, Paul Nelson, Andrew Snelling, Kurt Wise, and others. I haven't watched it, but I thought some people might be interested.

Strachan reviews 1917

Owen Strachan reviews the film 1917: "Keep Your Eyes on the Trees: An Essay on 1917, the Most Profound Film Since Tree of Life".

I also reviewed 1917 back in February.

The mist

1. Just in passing, I'm sure everyone has already heard California has declared a state of emergency and is on mandatory lockdown. The governor mentioned the possibility of martial law, but later issued "clarifying remarks". I guess California is taking Italy's strategy.

2. It's interesting how life imitates art in our coronavirus pandemic. I'm sure examples could be multiplied.

A recent one is the film Five Feet Apart. I've only seen the trailer. The main characters appear to have cystic fibrosis, but that's where the analogy breaks down, because cystic fibrosis isn't infectious. Rather it's a genetic disease. But the social distancing fits.

3. Of course, movies like Contagion and Outbreak are obvious. There's likewise some overlap with the apocalyptic genre in general.

4. I suppose the pandemic has some parallels with Stephen King's The Stand. Thankfully COVID-19 isn't Captain Trips.

5. Perhaps one of the more apt parallels is Stephen King's The Mist.

Basically the film is about a group of strangers stuck together in a supermarket while an impending mist gradually surrounds them and traps them inside.

Man-eating monsters lurk outside in the mist. So people can't venture outside without taking their life into their own hands. Without risking death.

However, as scary as the mist and its monsters are, there are monsters lurking inside with them too: their fellow human beings. Which monsters are worse? Both are bad, but one is in the open, while the other is hidden. The difference between a massive fire-breathing dragon and a slithering snake in the grass.

We can sympathize with their confusions and frustrations at the beginning. No one seems to know or understand what's happening. They're thrust into their predicament after a storm hits the town.

Some immediately take on a "survival at any and all costs" mentality. Others are more selfless at first, but that changes too.

As the story progresses, we begin to sense increasing mistrust and distrust. We begin to see the heightened fear in their eyes.

We feel the growing panic. The fevered paranoia. It breaks out in yelling and screaming and fighting. People take sides. Form factions.

So, in the end, one by one, individuals are picked off. Either by the monsters outside or by the "monsters" inside, as people realize there's no escape. Death - or a worse fate - awaits them all.

6. In short, it's instructive to witness how some people are responding to this pandemic.

It's like they're stuck inside a locked gas chamber with the gas diffusing across the room and inching toward them by degrees. There's nowhere to run, but some people will still claw and scratch one another to savor a few more moments in the corner farthest away from the steadily approaching poison.

It's also somewhat reminiscent of Camus' The Plague as well as Sartre's No Exit.

By contrast, Christians need not fear death. We know this life isn't all there is. Death isn't the end - or worse. There is an exit. There is a door. His name is Jesus: "I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved..." (John 10:9).

Coronavirus vis-à-vis Contagion

1. I enjoyed the movie Contagion. I thought it was generally accurate and realistic. Below is a British physician reviewing the movie in light of what's happening with the coronavirus. I appreciate his humor and I think his review would be educational for many people too. Hence why I'm posting it.

2. As far as where things stand with the coronavirus at present. I haven't paid any attention to Scott Gottlieb until now, so I don't know what he's been saying about the coronavirus in the past, but I largely agree with his recent remarks here. There's a transcript as well.

Parasite review

(No significant spoilers except in the very last paragraph.)

The film Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture. It was the first foreign film to have ever done so. It's a South Korean film.

The premise is a poor and unemployed family consisting of a father, a mother, a teenage son, and a teenage daughter end up conning and weaseling themselves into working for a rich family. The father serves as their limo driver, the mother as their house maid, the son as an English tutor for the rich family's daughter, and the daughter as the rich family's youngest son's art therapist. They forged documents to pretend like they have college degrees and work experiences they don't. The rest of the film unfolds from this setup.

I think one could evaluate the film on at least three different levels: a thriller with some dark comedic elements, a critique of "crazy rich" Asian culture, and social commentary (if not metaphor) about contemporary class warfare. Let's consider each of these.

Parasites

"Workers of the world, unite!"

Ironic to see Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto quoted by rich elitist celebrities who wouldn't be seated anywhere near the second-class bourgeoisie passengers let alone among the proletariats in steerage. No, they'd instead be in the stateroom enjoying the luxurious lifestyle of the 1%. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in the ridiculous progressive activism on display at the Oscars last night.

That said, it's interesting to see the Korean film Parasite receive four (of six) wins - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. The film's writer-director-producer Bong Joon-Ho won all of them. Furthermore it's the first foreign film to win Best Picture. And Parasite is the third film to concurrently win the Oscar for Best Picture and the Palme d'Or (Best Picture at the Cannes film festival). The other two were 1945's The Lost Weekend and 1955's Marty. All in all, quite an accomplishment for S. Korean cinema.

Prior to this, I think the best Asian cinema had done was nearly two decades ago when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won four (out of ten) Oscars (Best Foreign Film, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography).

Today there are plenty of other critically acclaimed Asian movies and shows. Take for instance The Farewell as another recent critically acclaimed film. There are lauded tv sitcoms like Fresh Off the Boat and Kim's Convenience too. I'm sure we could multiply examples.

There are many reasons for the ascendancy of Asian cinema in recent years. However I just want to note it looks to me most the best aspects of Asian cinema have arisen in democratic Asian nations like Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and S. Korea. It's not often one sees (say) communist China produce high quality films. Especially before it embraced a capitalist market economy, albeit state-controlled. Probably Zhang Yimou is one of the few standouts in mainland Chinese film, but even his films have been censored by the Chinese government.

Yet we have moralizing Western elites lecturing average people about the horrors of Trump and conservatives, and the greatness of progressivism and socialism, while they're likewise benefiting from the fruits of a nation where film and the arts have the ground soil in which to flourish. In other words, the same moralizing celebrities wouldn't likely enjoy the life they currently enjoy if they had worked in show business in Cuba, N. Korea, or communist China. Who are the real "parasites" again?

Too bad these progressive Hollywood celebrities didn't take to heart Ricky Gervais' monologue at the Golden Globes last month:

So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God, and [bugger] off, okay?

Update: I finally watched the movie Parasite. I review the film here.

1917

I saw the film 1917 yesterday.

Frankenstein and Blade Runner

I made an earlier post about Frankenstein here.

I'd like to make another observation: the film Blade Runner has significant parallels with the novel Frankenstein. For example:

• Both are about the creature's (Frankenstein, replicants) rebellion against his creator (Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Tyrell). 
• Both cast the creator in the role of a hostile creator. A creator who wants to kill what it created. The creator believes what it created is an abomination.
• Both cast the creature in the role of a moral blank slate (John Locke, Steven Pinker).
• Both show the creature only wanting to live and to love, but due to hostility from its creator, it is forced to fight and even kill humans in order to survive.
• Both stories take their cue from Eden and the Fall in Genesis as well as Milton's Paradise Lost (among other things). Except both swap moral blame between creature and creator, where the creature has done no wrong, while the creator has wronged the creature. Hence the creature believes he rightly rages against his creator. Like Prometheus, the story is something of an antihero story. An atheistic antihero story.
• It's telling Ridley Scott also directed Prometheus (part of the Alien franchise). It's telling because Prometheus has the same themes. Prometheus is an origin story for life (humanity) on Earth. An origin story based on panspermia. There's no God involved, but rather a godlike extraterrestrial species known as the Engineers. The Engineers created humans, yet the Engineeers are hostile toward humans, and created the Alien species in order to wipe out humans.

At least that's my take, but I'm no literary scholar or film critic.

David Fincher films

For better or worse, I think I've seen most of David Fincher's films. Below are my notes or briefs on Fincher's films (in chronological order).

A few preliminary observations and comments before the main event:

1. In general, I wouldn't necessarily recommend Christians watch his films. That might risk cultivating the opposite mindset to Phil 4:8. And there are likely better ways to spend your time. However, if you've already seen his films, then this post might be useful.

2. Philosophically, Fincher's films reek of nihilism. Perhaps anarchism too. At least there seems to be a rebellious "punk" streak.

3. As a director, I think Fincher's film-making reflects superb technical craftsmanship. However, Fincher's films often come across as cold and impersonal.

4. A consistent theme in most of Fincher's films is there's more than meets the eye when we look at people. There may be a surface beauty that's rotten to the core. This in turn reflects a biblical truth: "For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (1 Sam 16:7).

5. These are my interpretations. Others might have better interpretations.

Heroes and anti-heroes

Some thoughts on heroes and villains and storytelling. This involves some literary and film criticism. And there are tons of spoilers about The Dark Knight, Logan, and the much older film Seven. It's a bit of a jumble if not a haphazard mess, and I don't have the time I'd like to have to better organize and finesse it, but I figured it's better raw than not at all.

1. Many people are fascinated with crime stories, film noir, vigilantes, outlaws, and the like.

   Take the hard-boiled private investigator. I think the main attraction of the P.I. is that he has legal authority to investigate and arrest criminals, and he's fighting to solve crime, but he can operate outside the law. He can rough up people in a way the police can't, he can sneak into places the police need a warrant to search, he can fake the evidence for the greater good of getting rid of the bad guy, and so on. He's a just individual, but he isn't beholden to the judicial and legal system.

   Similar things could be said for the vigilante and the outlaw.

   In short, these are stories about a certain type of character - the anti-hero. Characters who are at heart good but who operate on the (legal and/or ethical) fringes of society. In D&D parlance, the police or sheriff would be lawful good characters, while the P.I. or outlaw would be chaotic good characters.

2. A good story needs a good enemy. The antagonist mirrors the protagonist.

The Meg formula

I watched the movie The Meg on Netflix. I thought it was supposed to be campy, which might have made it fun, but it was mostly serious, which made it boring. Then it got worse. Midway through the film I started rooting for the megalodon shark to eat everyone. It was a bad movie, but not bad so it's good (e.g. Plan 9 from Outer Space). Just plain bad.

However, maybe my low opinion of the film is due to being American. By contrast, the movie was a success abroad. It seemed primarily catered to the mainland Chinese. It mainly takes place in a super hi-tech underwater research center off the coast of China. Shanghai as I recall. The main scientist in charge of the lab is Chinese. The main love interest is Chinese. She has a cute little daughter. China and the Chinese are positively depicted for the most part. It looks like The Meg made approximately $145 million domestically. Its production budget was $130 million so it would've been considered a commercial failure (making "only" $15 million) had it only been distributed domestically in the US. However, The Meg made approximately $385 million internationally. So its grand total was a little over $530 million. The largest percentage of any nation in the total looks to be mainland China ($153 million). Overall The Meg did quite well commercially, largely thanks to international audiences. (Source is Box Office Mojo.)

I guess it's no surprise, but many movies now seem to be made primarily with the international market in mind. Often the Asian and especially Chinese market. Another example is the Pacific Rim series of movies. I presume the main reason is because that's where all the money and potential money is. Of course, this makes sense from a business perspective. However, what happens if (say) an American film production's business collides in significant enough ways with American values? Or even undermines American values? Suppose it becomes quite lucrative for an American studio to film and distribute communist Chinese propaganda.

Of course, this has wider implications than the entertainment industry. For instance, consider how tech companies like Google and Apple try to do business in China. In the US, these big tech companies rail against all sorts of social injustices. However, in China, these same companies tolerate human rights violations and other ethical issues as the price of doing business in China. At what point does business stop becoming "just business"? Remember when Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil"?

Two paths, two destinies

Life is like poker. Each of us is dealt a hand. It's then a question of how we'll play our hand. In principle, there are different ways to play the same hand. It's instructive, sometimes inspiring, sometimes sobering, sometimes edifying, sometimes ominous, to see how different people play the hand they were dealt. 

Burt Reynolds was a pop icon. I didn't know that much about Reynolds. You know about some people just through cultural osmosis. 

Deliverance was the only film I saw him in. He made several trashy but highly profitable films. He reportedly did a centerfold for Cosmopolitan. Had many affairs. Unlike Nick Nolte, Reynolds stayed trim, but age and illness hallowed out the Olympian physique. He was said to be more intelligent than the jarhead image he projected on screen. 

If you're an atheist, and you have what Reynolds had going for him, that's a reasonable way to play your hand. Utterly vacuous, but in a godless universe, every choice is equally vacuous. And vacuous hedonism is more rational than vacuous humanism. No doubt Richard Carrier secretly envies the lifestyle of Reynolds, but as a pure undiluted dork, Carrier can never emulate that lifestyle. 

It's interesting to compare how Reynolds played his hand with how Tim Tebow is playing his hand. Perhaps Tebow doesn't have the same rakish looks. Nevertheless, with a bit of tweaking, one can imagine Tebow play his hand the way Reynolds did or Reynolds play his hand the way Tebow does. Both were dealt a similar hand. But look at what they do with it. The contrast is striking. 

Beach preaching

1. There's been an explosion of Christian material on pornography. But from what I've read, there's a lack of clarity in how the issued is delineated. Many of the stock arguments are weak arguments. In fairness, people can sometimes instinctively sense that something is wrong, even though they don't have a readymade arguments at their fingertips. But some sifting is in order. If you use bad arguments, there are people who can see through bad arguments, and that's counterproductive.

Admittedly, I haven't done in-depth study of the issue. It doesn't interest me that much. And there's such a plethora of material on the subject in Christian circles that it's hard to know where to start to derive a representative sample of the arguments. 

Unpopular

This is a good gospel presentation in the form of a half-hour film, featuring James White and Paul Washer:

Riva

http://www.dennyburk.com/riva-a-short-film/

Ark Encounter

i) Ken Ham's new theme park on Noah's ark and the flood instantly garnered a hostile reaction from the atheist community–as well as BioLogos, the flagship of theistic evolution. It's striking how threatened these groups feel by the very existence of Ken Ham's theme park. For them, it's unbearable that that viewpoint should even be in the public domain. 

ii) As I've often remarked, it can be a useful exercise to visualize Biblical descriptions. Stepping into an imaginary time machine to consider what the scene would look like if you could travel back into the past and see it for yourself. 

iii) Genesis gives us a sketchy description of the ark, rather than a blueprint, so any reconstruction will include a fair about of conjecture. It's important for Christians not to equate historical reconstructions with the Biblical record, since there are different ways to fill in the gaps. Many of us have been conditioned by popular reconstructions to think we know what the text is describing, but that could be way off the mark. Consider, for instance, Ben-Uri rhomboidal design for the ark:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/06/what-did-noahs-ark-look-like.html

iv) There's a certain irony in the fact that Ham's model ark was constructed with power tools. If only Noah had a crane! 

I wonder who the technical consultants were for designing Ham's model ark. There are so many judgment calls regarding the exterior and especially the interior. 

v) Depicting animals on the ark may present something of a conundrum for Ham. In YEC, extant species are variations on prediluvian natural kinds. So the animals on the ark don't necessarily resemble any contemporary species. Rather, they are the progenitors of modern species, which may be fairly unrecognizable in relation to the occupants of the ark. 

vi) In the age of video games, CGI, and Virtual Reality, there's a sense in which Ham's physical mockup is rather retro. We can produce computer simulations of the ark. We can produced detailed computer modeling of the ark, inside and out. Take a virtual tour.

In fact, we now have the wherewithal to produce video game representations of creation, the Flood, the Ten Plagues, the visions of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation, or picturesque vignettes in Isaiah–to take few examples. It is possible to create an immersive, audiovisual experience of these literary descriptions. 

That, of course, involves many interpretive judgment calls. But that in itself is an instructive exercise. 

For instance, suppose you did a computer simulation of Revelation. Do you depict the imagery as is, or do you update it according to what you think it stands for? The futuristic counterparts? 

In fact, you don't have to choose. You could do two different video game versions of Revelation: one which preserves the original imagery, and another which gives the viewer an interpretive future projection. 

I think it would be pedagogically informative for geeky Christians to use CGI to produce immersive representations of Biblical narratives, including–or especially–the more surreal descriptions of Scripture. That would also be a great way of getting boys interested in the Bible. 

Prepare to die

13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (Jas 4:13-15).

Anton Yelchin, best known as Chekov in the Star Trek reboots, and the hapless, doomed murder victim in Alpha Dog, was killed in a freak accident at age 27. 

This is a reminder that we can die in a flash. Many enjoy a normal lifespan, but that's just a statistical average. You can die in your prime. He didn't even die from a drug overdose, or cancer, or rock-climbing, or mountain-biking. It was completely unpredictable. 

We should be prepared to die at anytime–because we may. 

The ethics of mature creation

The problem with the mature creation view is that the phenomena that indicate "coherent age" contains information about the past which would not be otherwise present if the past was unreal. Take the example of distant starlight. Holding the mature creation view would indicate that the light from any stellar body beyond about 10,000 light-years away consist of photons created in transit. Therefore, such light is not truly indicative of what is happening in the stellar bodies. But when the light portrays for example a supernova, taking the mature creation view must say that the supernova did not actually happen since the light containing the information about the supernova was created in transit. How is this not deceptive, to indicate an astronomical event which did not actually happen? 

http://puritanreformed.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-problems-with-mature-creation-view.html

i) I think Daniel does a nice job of framing the issue. I find his objection somewhat ironic, for even though I'm more sympathetic to OEC than he is, I am, at the same time, more sympathetic to mature creation than he is. Indeed, I think that mature creation is true to some degree. It's just a question of how much. And once you allow for mature creation, it's not easy to identify a cut-off point that isn't arbitrary.

ii) The charge of deception is the classic charge against mature creation. However, I rarely if ever find any critic discuss the nature of deception. What are the necessary conditions of deception? 

a) Normally, deception is defined as making a false statement with the intention to deceive. However, even a true statement can be deceptive. Take a lawyer who asks a "simple question" to elicit a "simple answer." Giving a true answer will be misleading because it lacks sufficient context. 

Moreover, it's possible for the speaker to make a true statement that he mistakenly believes to be false. 

b) Is a false expectation is a necessary condition? Someone can only be deceived if he expected the truth to be different. 

c) However, the issue of false expectation raises another issue: who bears the onus? is it speaker's duty not to foil the listener's expectation, or listener's duty not to have that expectation in the first place? 

It's hard to state a universal principle. If a listener has a reasonable expectation, then perhaps there's a the prima facie onus on the speaker not to foil the listener's expectation. 

Yet that's overdrawn. Even reasonable expectations can be wrong. We're fallible. So it would be extreme to say it's unethical to ever contradict a reasonable expectation.

If, however, the listener has an unreasonable expectation, then it's his fault, and not the speaker's, if the speaker foils his expectation. 

d) Put another way, the truth can be deceptive if the listener has a false expectation. But if his expectation was unreasonable, then he only has himself to blame. 

Did the speaker deceive you? Or did you deceive yourself by entertaining a false expectation? 

So one consideration when considering the ethics of deception is a justified or unjustified expectation. Was the speaker a deceiver, or was the listener self-deceived? 

iv) Take parents who adopt a newborn. They don't tell him that he's adopted. And they don't tell him he's not adopted, either. They just don't say.

They don't tell him when he's a child because they fear that would foster a sense of insecurity and rejection. They don't tell him when he's an adolescent because that's an emotionally unstable period of life. There never seems to be the right time to tell him. 

So he grows up believing these were his biological parents. Is that deceptive? If so, is that unethical? 

v) Does everyone have the same expectations about anything? Is there such a thing as a uniform human expectation? If not, then isn't deception or self-deception inevitable? Isn't a communicator bound to deceive some people some of the time?

Unless everybody has the same expectations, it doesn't seem possible to avoid deceiving some people. There's no intention to deceive. Rather, deception is the ineluctable side-effect of native listeners. 

a) For instance, there are literal-minded people who never get satire. They always read it straight. Did the satirist deceive them? Is satire unethical because some people take it seriously?

b) Likewise, there are naive people who are easily surprised by things that don't surprise cynical people. Is it the speaker's duty to avoid confusing naive people? Or is it the listener's duty not to be so naive? 

c) What about optical illusions? In a sense, they're only illusory if you don't recognize that they are optical illusions. But does every observer have that level of sophistication? Aren't some observers fooled by optical illusions?

Or take an audiovisual illusion–like seeing lightning before you hear thunder. We understand that because we know that lightwaves travel faster than soundwaves. Even though it's the same event, it seems to be separated in time. The effect is observer-relative. Depends on whether you witness the storm overhead or at a distance. But a prescientific observer doesn't have that interpretive framework. 

Scientific theories like Relativity and quantum mechanics have counterintuitive implications for time and space. They contradict common sense expectations. Take the twin paradox, Schrödinger's cat, or quantum nonlocality. Would it be unethical for God to make a world like that?

vi) At the risk of belaboring my stock illustration, a period movie set "contains information" about past nonevents. These include period stage props. Antique replicas. 

Even if the movie is based on a true story, there will be fictional details to fill in the gaps. Perhaps the director builds a set of Dodge City, based on historical photographs. But all he has are pictures of the facade. Even though the interior may be an accurate reconstruction of 19C saloons, that's not what the Long Branch Saloon really looked like inside. If you went back in time, that's not what you'd see. 

Likewise, here will be extras playing bit characters who never existed. Moreover, Dodge City never existed at the location of the movie set. And the 19C town doesn't exist in the here and now. 

vii) Now, Daniel might raise the obvious objection that when we watch a movie set in the Old West, we know this isn't really the past. Rather, it's an artistic recreation of the past. So it's not deceptive. Not dishonest. 

But that depends on the viewer. Does a young child who watches a Western know that? 

Patterns of Evidence

http://andynaselli.com/an-excellent-documentary-on-exodus

In the Director's chair

From time to time, Hollywood directors film parts of the Bible. Usually the Gospels, or Genesis, Exodus, Judges, and 1-2 Samuel. These cinematic adaptions of Scripture are widely variable in quality (not to mention orthodoxy). Sometimes they're visually impressive. Sometimes campy, subversive, or banal. Needless to say, most Hollywood directors aren't orthodox Christians, so they're not concerned with accuracy. 

That said, it's actually a useful exercise for a Christian to put himself in the director's chair when reading the Bible. By that I mean, a director who films the Bible has to visualize what the narrative is describing. He must make judgment calls on how it happened. 

If we take the Bible seriously, as we should, then it's good to mentally visualize Biblical narratives. If you were a Christian director, what would you show? When you read the narrative, what do you see in your mind's eye? Part of interpretating Scripture and honoring the historicity of Scripture is to have a realistic picture of what the narrative describes. Let's take some examples:

i) One question scholars debate is whether Gen 1:1 is an introduction to the creation week, or part of day one. If the former, then the primeval sea preexists creation. But I think 1:1 is part of day one. 

ii) How would you depict the Spirit of God hovering over the waters? One possibility is a dove. Obviously, you cann't see anything or show anything absent a light source.

Another possibility, drawn from other parts of the Pentateuch, is to depict the Spirit of God as the Shekinah hovering above the waters. In OT, the Shekinah has the appearance of a plasma cloud. Luminous. Technicolored (like a rainbow). That would enable the viewer to see the primordial ocean, illuminated by the Shekinah.  

The separation of light and darkness refers to the origin of the diurnal cycle. So you could show first light, dawn, morning light, noonday light, afternoon light, and dusk. And fading from day into night would separate each day from the next. You'd show the beginning of each new day by first light or dawn. That would distinguish and transition from one scene to the next.

iii) On day two you'd shift from showing the primordial ocean to showing the sky. Illuminated clouds. The horizon line between sky and sea. 

iv) On day three you'd show the land rising out of the sea. Like volcanic islands. Ascending mountain ranges. Valleys. Coastlines. Lakes and rivers. 

You'd then show, like time-lapse photography, the barren earth erupting in foliage. 

v) Day four might be a flashback to day one, catching up to days two and three. If days one-through-three show lighted objects, day four shows the light sources. The perspective would shift from a downward view of the illuminated earth to an upward view of the luminaries. You could also show moonlight on lakes and seas. Day four would fade out with a view of the star-studded night sky. 

vi) Day five might show fish materializing in the sea, lakes, and rivers–as well as birds materializing. One might show matter organizing into fish and birds. Show atoms forming molecules, forming cells, forming bodies. From the inside out, in ascending scales of complexity and magnitude. Rather like Ezekiel's description in Ezk 37. 

vii) Day six would repeat the process for land animals. 

viii) When we come to the creation of man, day six in Gen 1 shades into Gen 2. Gen 2 is basically a localized expansion of day six in Gen 1. That also means the seventh day would come after the events of Gen 2. 

To some extent, Gen 2 is a microcosm of Gen 1. God plants a garden. God makes plants and animals for the garden. You'd show the same type of process you did in general creation week. 

ix) You could depict Eden as a river valley or river plain. It would be sheltered by steep hills on either side. There'd be verdant foliage on the river banks. 

x) In view of various angelophanies in Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch, it would be logical to depict the Creator in 2:7 as the Angel of the Lord. Adam might materialize as the theophanic angel passed his hand over the ground. Dust particles rising from the ground and arranging themselves a body–like a sand man. He'd animate Adam the way Jesus breathed on the disciples (Jn 20:22). 

Likewise, he'd take flesh from Adam and reconfigure that into Eve. We have other examples of metamorphosis in the Pentateuch, like Aaron's budding rod. 

xi) Day 7 would show the completed creation. 

xii) As I've discussed before, the name for the tempter in Gen 3 is probably a pun. The word can mean "snake," "diviner," or "shining one." Based on the varied connotations of the word, as well as Pentateuchal angelophanies, I think the tempter is a fallen angel. 

That would also explain why Adam and Eve aren't surprised by this visitor. They are used to angels. 

xiii) Let's shift to Exodus. If you were a director, how would you depict the "burning bush" episode? In context, I think the "burning bush" is an observational description of how it appeared to Moses at a distance (presumably at night). But I doubt the bush itself was on fire. 

Rather, the luminosity came from the angel, inside or behind the bush. From a distance, it looked like a bush was on fire, but as Moses drew closer, it becomes evident that the angel is the light source. You see the fire through the bush. Like a candle in a jack-o'-lantern. The bush is not consumed because it's not physical firelight. Rather, it's a radiant angel. 

In Scripture, angels can take on different aspects. Sometimes they look like ordinary men. Sometimes they are luminous. And in the case of the seraphim/cherubim, they have inhuman features. You also have the cherubic "flaming sword" in Gen 3:24. Exod 3:2-3 is a fire theophany or fire angelophany. 

This also relates to the "pillar of smoke and fire" in the desert. It's like a preternatural firenado. A natural firenado is an ephemeral, directionless physical phenomenon. But the pillar of fire is stable and directional. That's probably an accurate way of showing the pillar of cloud and fire. 

In theology, there's a technical distinction between natural, preternatural, and supernatural. A preternatural phenomenon is natural insofar as it employs a physical medium, but it's unnatural or supernatural insofar as it is miraculous. 

xiv) To take a few more examples, if you were filming Balaam's donkey, what would you show? Recent cinematic adaptions of The Chronicles of Narnia have shown how CGI can depict talking animals. Another possibility is telepathic communication, although that would be auditory rather than visual. 

But as I've recently discussed, given the fact that Balaam was a seer, this may have been a vision. 

xv) What about Joshua's Long Day? Due to the poetic nature of the description, it's hard to pin down the precise cause. The main thing is to depict the physical effect of Joshua's Long Day. An analogy would be the miracle of the "sun dial" (a la Ahaz, Isaiah). 

xvi) To take a final example, what about Lot's wife? Consider the pyroclastic flow that instantly fossilized the victims of Pompeii and Herculaneum.  

xvii) In filming the flood, you'd have to decide whether to depict a global or local flood. If global, you'd show rising seas. Coastal flooding, which continues to moving inland and upland to overtake the hills until the mountains are submerged. 

If a local flood, you could depict torrential rain downing trees. Rivers become clogged with debris, causing them to back up–submerging a huge floodplain. Yes, water can move upstream if it has no outlet.