Review: Noah Primeval

Screenwriter Brian Godawa (To End All Wars, starring Kiefer Sutherland) retells the Noah story around a profound biblical theme: the cosmic war between the Seed of the Woman and the Seed of the Serpent.  This is not Sunday Schooley Noah.  It is a flesh and blood Noah placed squarely in the Mesopotamian background of the Ancient Near East.

I am not going to rehearse the plot of the book, which wouldn’t be fair to you.  Rather, I want to give you a taste of the “Divine Council” style setting and warfare you can expect.

With the Apostle Jude, Godawa sees the beney ha-elohim (the sons of God) as heavenly beings (not angels; that is an entirely different term) who mated with humans and created monstrosities.  He is also drawing heavily upon the book of Enoch (as, of course, did the Apostle Jude).

And the “gods” of Sumer are the Fallen Watchers.  It’s interesting to see (and also anticipate) how they will manifest themselves in each culture.

The book succeeded. I was somewhat hesitant about bible fan fiction, but this was quite good.  I really did enjoy it.  There was one area of Methuselah’s back story that I wasn’t too clear on, but it didn’t distract from the rest of the book.  I am certainly diving into the rest of the series.

Godawa did a good job in capturing the “feel” of ancient Mesopotamia, which is something of an untapped resource in literature (it seems everybody today is a vampire of a teenager chilling with Greek gods).

Also, check out the artwork for his series.  That is a feast in itself.

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