One might rightly wonder why Abraham is worried about a commandment that is not, chronologically speaking, given until much later, when Moses receives the ten commandments on Mt. Sinai. The rabbis, though, have a specific idea of Abraham’s relationship to Torah; in rabbinic literature—and for Philo as well as in Jubilees—Torah already exists for Abraham, and thus he is expected to follow it completely. Abraham’s sensitivity to Torah observance is, on one level, a contemporizing of the biblical text for the rabbis, but on another, it functions as character development for the limited characterization of Abraham in the Torah. This midrash, among many others related to Abraham, gives the midrashic Abraham a greater sense of interiority—he thinks, worries, cares for his father, etc.—at least more so than the biblical Abraham. The combined effect makes him more human, and perhaps more imitable for the contemporaneous generation.

From these examples, we can see how midrash as an interpretive method is primarily oriented to the world “in front of” the text, to echo the previously mentioned sentiments of Bruns. Stern, too, has expressly reiterated this position: “Midrash has been celebrated for seeing meaning ‘in front’ of the text, in the intertextual play between verses, in the deferral of a single absolute meaning in favor of a multiplicity of provision and possible meanings.”²¹ This contrast between an interpretive method oriented towards the meaning “in front of” the text is made even more apparent when juxtaposed to allegoric interpretations, or those, according to Stern, “said to posit the existence of a reference or meaning ‘behind’ the text as a kind of static metaphysical presence.”²²

2. Allegory
As a mode of biblical interpretation, allegory posits the true meaning of the text is something other than its plain sense (peshat). It bears the same spirit as midrash in that it attempts to contemporize the meaning of the text, but unlike midrash, it assumes a specific cultural milieu wherein the peshat of the text is irrelevant or at lease opaque for the interpreter.

The work of the early Jewish interpreter Philo of Alexandria provides a lucid example of allegoric interpretation. A Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of the first century CE, Philo’s hermeneutical method assumes two ways of understanding a text. The plain meaning, which “circulates widely and which everyone can recognize,” and the figurative meaning, which “requires study, reflection, investigation, and the assistance of the sorts of special insight possessed by unique individuals.”²³ Philo’s commentary activity is not primarily exegetical in nature; it is interested in interpreting the Hebrew Bible as moral philosophy and exposing the hyponoia—the underlying meaning that emerges after thought and reflection—of the text.

An example of allegoric interpretation should help to clarify the hermeneutics of this mode. Philo has great difficulty with the literal reading of the creation of Eve from the rib of Adam (Gen 2:21). In his work Legum Allegoriae, Philo goes on at great length about how utterly preposterous it would be to think an anatomical rib would be removed from Adam to create Eve: “The literal statement conveyed in these words is a fabulous one; for how can anyone believe that a woman was made of a rib of a man, or, in short, that any human being was made out of another?”²⁴ Instead, he interprets “rib” as Adam’s non-physical mind (not his anatomical brain). That is, Eve receives Adam’s intelligence, not his rib. He offers this solution with both a practical justification—the mind is not physically attached and thus is easily removed and transferred—and a philosophical one—that the mind and intelligence transcend the physical body and its limitations, a clear marker of the Platonic influence on Philo’s thought.

Having rehearsed the background and methods of the two primary methods of Jewish interpretation utilized by Aronofsky in Noah and mother!, I can now examine how Aronofsky applies these techniques to his own films.

 

That the film Noah is somehow a modern midrash on the biblical text is not a new idea. The identification of midrashic antecedents in the film was quite popular fodder for think pieces after the movie’s release,²⁵ and the incorporation of these traditions was openly acknowledged by Ari Handel, the movie’s co-creator.²⁶ The list of instances is remarkably expansive: Noah’s vegetarianism,²⁷ his agrarian lifestyle and success as a farmer,²⁸ his interaction with the descendants of Cain and their subsequent attempts to enter the ark,²⁹ Noah’s care for the animals on the ark,³⁰ and the (t)zohar-light, to name just a few.³¹ What is clear from the impressively long list of midrashim incorporated in Aronofsky’s work is that the filmmaker is certainly aware of the larger rabbinic corpus surrounding the work, and especially the haggadic midrashim (midrash related to biblical narrative). The most obvious motivating factor behind such efforts is their ability to lend authorization to Aronofsky’s own narrative expansion: he can expand and reinterpret the biblical story of Noah because so many before him have done so too.

This authorization provides Aronofsky the leeway to pursue what he believes is the underlying question of the biblical Noah story: why Noah was spared by God. This question of divine selection is, of course, not new; it was treated at great length by the rabbis, not only for Noah,³² but for virtually every other patriarch.³³ At the heart of the issue for the rabbis and for Aronofsky is the question of Noah’s (or anyone’s) merit.

Two aspects of Aronofsky’s resolution provide an interesting take on the problem. First, the film is careful to depict a gradual decline in the character of Noah from protagonist—even chiding his son for picking a flower without cause—to antagonist—allowing a young girl, Na’el, to die in the forest and threatening to kill his own grandchildren.³⁴ In this way, it takes up the midrashic exposition of Noah’s character. When Noah is compared to his generation (Gen 6:9), he is righteous, but when he is on the ark with his family, his righteousness is much less pronounced, if it exists at all. Second, Aronofsky also leaves unresolved the veracity of God’s calling of Noah. Because God is never seen in the film, the implication may be that Noah suffers from mental illness with delusions of grandeur: he imagined the whole thing. Or, if we are to believe Noah’s visions and that he is truly called by God, by the end of the film Noah is unable to bear the weight of his chosenness, and thus God is wrong—either in his choice of Noah or his creation of humanity.

 

The film mother! ostensibly tells the story of a brooding artist who, in his obsessive pursuit of fame and adoration, ruins the life of his wife, child, and everything he touches. The film begins with a burned house and a man, Him, placing a crystal on a mantel, causing the home magically to be restored. A woman, Mother, wakes from a peaceful rest. Soon after, an interloping man with a wound in his side arrives and is invited to stay in the home by Him; the man’s wife arrives shortly thereafter, followed by their two sons—one of whom has fratricidal tendencies. A wake ensues after the death of one son at the hand of the other, followed by a kitchen accident that floods the home and leads to the eviction of the house guests.

After the house guests leave, Mother conceives, Him writes the baby a poem, and the poem becomes so wildly popular that the house eventually fills to capacity with the overzealous. In the last third of the film, the house conditions rapidly deteriorate in chaos and violence, in the midst of which Mother bears her child only to have it murdered in a frenzy of adulation. Him begs Mother to forgive the crowd, but she flees to the basement and starts a fire that destroys the home and everything in it, save Him and a horrifically burned Mother. The movie ends as it began, with a woman emerging from the ashes (Mother 2.0, or 3.0, or 59789.0, we cannot be sure) and awakening from her sleep.

If mother! were a text, the peshat would be virtually incomprehensible. The non-linear plot, the nameless characters without backstory, the uneven pacing, all have the combined effect of utterly defying cinematic convention. As Richard Brody described the film: “There’s a special kind of movie that invites questions from viewers and answers of the sort that Aronofsky offered, W.T.F. movies in which the drama itself is utterly unclear.”³⁵ This incomprehensibility, the “W.T.F.”-ness of a text—written, visual, or otherwise—is characteristic of allegory, and indeed, Aronofsky intended it to be understood as such. In an interview with Collider, Aronofsky commented: “The structure of the film was the Bible, using that as a way of discussing how humans have lived here on Earth. . . . I started off with the themes, the allegory; I sort of wanted to tell the story of Mother Nature from her point of view.”³⁶

Not unlike the equivalence manuals circulating the Hellenistic world in the first century (Adam = Natural Reason, Eve = The Senses, etc.),³⁷ a similar manual could be provided for mother! Aronofsky acknowledged, for instance, that the crystal in the beginning of the film was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge,³⁸ but other equivalencies are not difficult for the thoughtful viewer with even a basic knowledge of one of the most famous stories in the world: Him = God, Mother = Mother Nature, the house = Eden, Man = Adam, Man’s wound = place where the rib was removed, Woman = Eve, and so on. On his construction of the allegory, Aronofsky responded: “Lightning struck for me as a writer when I realized my initial intentions of creating this allegory in a very Luis Bunuel [sic] type of way . . . taking a piece of a world and confining it to a space and making it a conversation about society, lined up with a personal human story, and I figured out how to structure it with a biblical core, and was able to write so quickly.”³⁹ The most obvious point of departure for Aronofsky’s vision is in the film’s perspective: he tells the story of humanity, not from the perspective of the chosen people or their God, but from the perspective of Mother Nature. Beyond that, the film is simply an allegorical interpretation of the biblical and human narrative and an environmental indictment of humankind.

 

There can be little doubt that both Noah and mother! attempt to engage in two forms of ancient Jewish biblical interpretation—midrash and allegory. Were the films not evidence enough, the filmmaker has gone on record in multiple interviews confirming as much. It is certainly clear that Aronofsky is interested in engaging with the interpretive models he has inherited. Decidedly less clear, though, is whether Aronofsky grasps the mechanisms fueling the works he is so eager to incorporate. Three aspects in particular stand out as deficiencies in Aronofsky’s use of Jewish biblical interpretation.

The first disconformity between Aronofsky’s work and early biblical interpretation pertains to the question of discomfort. In my earlier discussion of midrash, David Stern described the “prenatural sensitivity” of the rabbis “to the least ‘bump’ in the scriptural text . . . a mere hint at something unseemly in the way of behavior.”⁴⁰ Their attention to these details, however, was not to exploit these unseemly behaviors in the text, but rather, to smooth out the edges, to create unity where there is disunity. Aronofsky, on the other hand, seems by all accounts to be motivated by the opposite. As a director, he seems to indulge intentionally in and dwell on viscerally graphic violence and images in a way that few other filmmakers dare. The most interesting example of this inclination is not from Noah or mother!, but from Black Swan, a film for which he received an Academy Award nomination. In his 2014 interview with Aronofsky, Tad Friend relays the following story:

When “Black Swan” was tested, [Aronofsky] told me, “Fox used the scores to attack me with notes. They wanted me to cut the bird-legs thing”—the freaky moment when Natalie Portman’s legs become swan legs and then snap backward—“and the gore of Winona Ryder stabbing herself in the face. It was the best stuff in the film!” Aronofsky refused to make the suggested cuts, and argued with Claudia Lewis, the president of production at Fox Searchlight Pictures.⁴¹

Whereas the rabbis endeavored to harmonize disjunctive features in the text, Aronofsky apparently relishes opportunities to create them for his audience; he intentionally and deliberately interrupts the moviegoing experience. This is confirmed by a second story later in the same interview:

In March of last year, Aronofsky screened his rough cut of “Noah” for Paramount and its funding partner, New Regency Productions. It was two hours and forty-six minutes long, filled with half-realized effects, and had only twenty minutes of music. Clint Mansell [the film’s composer] urged [Aronofsky] to include additional “temp music,” borrowed from other films, to help sell the experience. “Darren said absolutely not,” Mansell told me. “He’s more comfortable with other people feeling uncomfortable with the film than with him feeling uncomfortable with it.”

I remain wholly unconvinced that Aronofsky’s uncompromising artistic vision for his films could ever fully square with the rabbinic vision of the relationship between written and oral Torah. First, for the rabbis, the two halves combine perfectly and seamlessly to create a single whole. The divinely given whole is the gift, not their own vision for how that gift should be presented.

Second, Aronofsky seems uninterested in attending to the unity of the biblical text in the rabbinic imagination or to the diversity of rabbinic interpretation as a genre. His engagement with the midrashim related to the biblical Noah story avoids any notion of literary connections to rabbinic material outside of Genesis. This isolationist reading of select midrashim connected to a particular biblical story is incongruent with rabbinic methods, for rabbinic literature is, as Shaye Cohen argues, “linked by [the rabbis’] common education, vocabulary, values, and culture, [and] the rabbis clearly constitute a unified group. Rabbinic literature is a remarkably homogeneous corpus.”⁴² At the same time, however, this unity does not suggest a homogeneity in style or thought. Indeed, Cohen continues: “these facts do not mean that rabbinic literature really is seamless or that all rabbis of antiquity thought and behaved in identical fashion. . . . Every generation of rabbis had its own interests.”⁴³ If we were to rely solely on Aronofsky’s use of midrash, we might believe that the sole purpose of rabbinic midrash was expansive narrative exegesis. Such a belief, however, would be ignoring not only the rabbinic motivation for doing so (i.e. their attention to details in the text, noted above), but also a wealth of other material: the rabbinic parables, halakhic (related to legal material) midrash, and a large volume of other rabbinic output. Similarly, his notion of allegory is limited to formulaic allegorical equivalencies: this biblical character = this movie character, and so on. If there is a larger philosophical purpose to his work—some vague notion of environmentalism notwithstanding—it is difficult to discern.

Finally, and most importantly, there is the obfuscation of the God character in Aronofsky’s work. While it is a matter of debate whether one can distill a consistent “theology” of midrash or early allegoric interpretations of the Bible,⁴⁴ no biblical reader, ancient or modern, has ever picked up the Hebrew Bible and thought: “I don’t think it’s a very religious story.”⁴⁵ While I suppose some arguments could be made about modern notions of religion and the development of ancient Israelite religious institutions, this, I would argue, misses the point of Aronofsky’s inability to see these stories as “religious.” What he claims here, and what both Noah and mother! boldly assert, is that the God character is superfluous, or even detrimental to the story. Yet the lack of cohesion in the rabbinic characterization(s) of God and the general sense of ineffability of the deity’s majesty is certainly not owing to the deity’s lack of importance. Quite the opposite. If the rabbis were unable to theologize consistently about the deity, it is because God is everywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Aronofsky’s movies are appropriately titled: mother! and Noah. He is blind to the character of God in the stories, and that blindness manifests itself as absence and/or hallucination in Noah and in the terrorizing narcissism in the character of Him in mother! What Aronofsky cannot understand about the biblical narrative and the ancient interpreters who wrestled with it is that the text and its interpretations are never solely human actors, but rather about the God who acts through humans. If Aronofsky were to make an accurate movie about any part of the Bible and incorporate any ancient interpretations of the biblical text, only one title would suffice: God.

To be sure, and as evidence by their nearly $120 million combined domestic gross, the success of these two films is not contingent on Aronofsky’s ability to or interest in remaining loyal to the mechanics of ancient Jewish modes of biblical interpretation. Put simply, audiences likely do not care how good an ancient exegete Aronfsky is or is not. Yet the three above-mentioned failings of Aronofsky’s work do indicate that there is much at stake in his interpretive work, and all the more so when he represents his work as the successor of such rich and complex traditions.

Thus, I am inclined to agree with Stern when he says that he “would prefer to restrict the use of the word ‘midrash’ to the ancient biblical interpretations of the Rabbis.”⁴⁶ If I were to offer to expand on Stern’s preference, I would extend his desire to differentiate works of classical midrash from neo-midrash to the genre of “allegory,” too. While Aronofsky may owe much to the creators of the traditions with which he engages, he is no darshan or allegorist, in the classical senses of those words—at least not until he can embrace their subject matter and diversity in their multiple forms and singular concern.

Eric Jarrard, a Harvard doctoral candidate in Hebrew Bible, researches both memory studies and the Hebrew Bible and biblical themes in contemporary popular culture. His dissertation is titled “ ‘Remember This Day on Which You Came out of Egypt’: The Exodus Motif in Biblical Memory,” and he has a forthcoming article in Biblical Reception, “Now You’re in the Sunken Place: Constructed Monsters in Daniel 7 and Get Out.”