Resurrecting Noah: A Comedy Sketch

SCENE ONE. The cabin of an ancient barge. Sound of rain and animals. A 600-year-old man in a robe sits by an oil lamp. More rain. He yawns and begins to look at his watch but realizes they haven't been invented yet. A knocking from a gopherwood cabinet across the cabin. Muffled cries. NOAH opens the cabinet to discover DAVE in modern clothes with a time machine strapped to his chest, a box with knobs and blinking lights. DAVE crawls out and frowns.

DAVE. Does it always smell like this?

NOAH. Well, they still do it two-by-two, and not in the woods. Who are you?

DAVE. Call me Dave. By training a Hebraist, by trade a production assistant. Oh, and don't worry, sir. I'm, like, upright in my generation. Well, maybe not so much since I took the TV gig. So you're Noah, right?

NOAH. Have we met?

DAVE. My apologies for barging in on your family trip--or shouldn't I say arking in? Ark! Barge! It's a joke, sir. Sorry for barging in on you and your beautiful family. Just your wife, three boys, and their wives, right? Good! There's a Gilgamesh version, and I thought for a minute this gizmo had sent me there. They're not a reliable as people think, spacetime machines.

NOAH. How did you get in there?

DAVE. Well, like I said, machines aren't perfect. (He taps the box on his chest.) Transporting to a past time was cool, but boring. Most days you just get historic grass growing. The new algorithm locates a legendary event to triangulate to, but it's just AI, right? It did pop me in this cabin with you, sir--amazing when you think about it. Shazam! Noah's ark! But it didn't know about that gopherwood cabinet. I'm just glad there weren't any drawers in it.

NOAH. I don't understand a word you said. Except gopherwood.

DAVE. Right. OK, sir, let's try something simpler. If you'll indulge me for a moment. Let me put my arm around you, sir. Just relax now. I won't bite.

(NOAH complies, DAVE twists a knob, the machine hums, and both men disappear into shimmering light.)

SCENE TWO. A television studio with a live audience. DAVE and NOAH  materialize out of shimmering light in the wings of a show in progress. Rousing music.

HOST. It's time to play DECONSTRUCT THAT PATRIARCH! (The audience chants the last three words). Every week we time-warp another legendary figure live into our studio to face our panel of experts. Today, let's welcome, direct from the apocalyptic flood he gave his name to, the father of all living mankind, or so the story goes. It's Mr. Noah!

(Rousing music and flashing lights, applause, as a blonde gestures NOAH onto a game-show set and DAVE nudges him. When he doesn't respond, they wrestle him onto the stage.)

NOAH. (his voice artificial through a mechanical translator) What the [bleep]?

HOST. A preacher, a rabbi, and a shaman walked into a television show (laughter). But, seriously, let me introduce our panel. Today we have leading creationist Ariel Flodd, historian Moshe Dowd, and the Native American influencer Ophelia Paine. Who'd like to give Mr. Noah his first question.

MOSHE. If you don't mind, Alex, I want to make a small correction. Noah is the gentleman's given name. His father was Lamech, so the correct form of address is Mr. Ben-Lamech.

HOST. If you say so.

MOSHE. Oh, I do! You see, family surnames didn't enter Jewish tradition until--

OPHELIA. Alex, do you mind if I ask Mr. Ben-whoosit an actual question?

HOST. Please do!

OPHELIA. What the [bleep] were you thinking, man?!

NOAH. I beg your pardon, woman?

OPHELIA. So you build a superyacht just for your family. Yeah, animals too, but what about people? A big boat, room for a lot of people. You could dump a couple of aardvarks. Who'd miss them? Neighbors are banging on the door. They're drowning out there, but do you care? You've got yours. Your three sons. You would have nothing but sons, you patriarch!

NOAH. God told me to do it?

OPHELIA. Just obeying orders? Nazi!

ARIEL. That's not fair! God isn't Hitler.

OPHELIA. And you didn't even try to haggle with him, did you, Noah? Abraham and Moses did. They were moral neanderthals, I grant you, but Gandhi compared to you. Can you say genocide, sir?

NOAH. Now I am confused.

ARIEL. Come on Ophelia! He's never heard of those people.

OPHELIA. Well, you have. I'll talk to you. God tells Abraham he's going to nuke Sodom and Gomorrah, and, sure, there were some bad people, but not everybody. That's not how it works. There were kids in Sodom. Hell, babies! Half-good schlepps just getting by. Abraham got it. He haggled. It didn't work, but he tried. Then Moses did save his people by haggling with God about the Golden Calf. The Lord was going to kill them all, but Moses had a spine, unlike this rat. Moses loved his neighbors. "I can't breathe!" Does he care. No! He just bars the door.

ARIEL. It was God's will. He's a hero of faith.

OPHELIA. God's will? Girl, there's always some conman to tell you what God's will is! Believe them and you’re drinking the Kool-Aid. Belief is one thing, trust another. If you trust, you have the courage to disagree. "God's will" is the last refuge of the scoundrel. People like to believe they're chosen. It feels so cozy. They build arks of privilege and damn everybody outside. "Let them breathe water." They won't speak for their neighbors. They're afraid that, if they call out the cruelty of their church's theology, they'll be out there in the flood with the heathens!

ARIEL. Well, you're definitely out there, Ophelia. But, you know, sister, there is such a thing as misplaced sympathy. Real sin exists. A real God, and the people of Noah's day had turned away from him. It's here in the Lord's Word. I'm not making it up: "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Those people your heart bleeds for, those reprobates banging on Noah's door, called destruction onto themselves by worshipping the Devil. Water was a kindness. They deserved fire. Noah was steadfast. He knew the Lord. You may mock him with your Godless situational morality, but I envy and honor him for his faith.

MOSHE. I think you're both missing the point. Noah is a fiction. He doesn't exist.

NOAH. I don't?

MOSHE. No disrespect, sir. Fictional people can be very lifelike and exhibit complex thoughts and feelings. Some of my favorite people are fictional. Take Huckleberry Finn! But the fact is that you are just a narrative permutation of the Flood archetype, specifically the Mesopotamian one that recalls an actual flood in Shuruppak on the Euphrates centuries before you "lived" in Biblical chronology and more centuries before the Hebrew version was written. Our earliest known version appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where your name is Utanapishtim, and a council of gods orders the flood. Otherwise, it's the same story--rainbows, two-by-two animals, the works. You are a Hebrew rhetorical device to explain how an event in legendary history--the Babylonian version--chimes with a single Creator. Apparently, Gilgamesh himself was an early king of Uruk, a real person, so he's the man I'd like to talk to!

HOST. What a programming idea!

(He glances over to DAVE, offstage, who adjusts his time machine and vanishes in shimmering light.)

 ARIEL. I don't understand how you can say Noah is fictional, Moshe. He's standing right there. Clap your hands, Noah. (NOAH claps.) You heard that. He's flesh and blood.

MOSHE. He is material, of course, but any person "brought back" from the past, whether real in the past or not, must necessarily be materialized in the present. This new algorithm of your time machine, supposed to bring back legendary people, simply materializes collective thought-forms of our present-day understanding of those people, such as Noah here. Does the past even exist except as we think of it in the present?

(A shimmer of light in mid-stage resolves into the figure of a brawny BARBARIAN in shorts, DAVE hanging off his back. DAVE lets go and scurries behind a desk as the BARBARIAN draws a huge sword. He resembles a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

HOST. Who is this man, David?

DAVE. Gilgamesh, sir. Sorry, sir. I thought I'd set the dial for next week.

HOST. So you're Gilgamesh. Well. (In loud voice, striding toward the BARBARIAN) It's time to play DECONSTRUCT THAT--

(The BARBARIAN beheads the HOST and brandishes his bloody sword.)

BARBARIAN: I am Conan the Barbarian! Who else here dares to challenge me?

(DAVE vanishes in a shimmer of light. Everyone else runs away screaming.)

FADEOUT