Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park. By James Bielo

2018; Oxford University Press; Volume: 86; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jaarel/lfy037

1477-4585

Crispin Paine,

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies

Well stop! Great God, stop still and listen My God walked down by the briny sea Beheld the evil of the sinful man; Declared that he would destroy the land He spoke to Noah; Noah stopped He said: “Noah, I want you to build an ark I want you to build it big and strong Build it three hundred cubits along Thirty high and fifty wide ‘Cause it’s got to stand that rain and tide.” Well, after God told him what to do Noah began to cut and hew The ringing of the saw cried “Judgement.” The ringing of the hammer cried “Sinner repent.” A hundred years, he hammered and sawed Building the Ark by the Grace of God After the foundation was laid He hewed the timber and the Ark was made Now the ark is made again, in Kentucky, and its making is examined by anthropologist James Bielo. Frankie Laine’s 1954 “Rain, Rain, Rain” was one of the first records I bought. Noah’s Ark has had a central place in Western popular culture at least since, around 1800, redundant miners in the German/Czech borderlands took to toymaking. As Bielo points out in this splendid study, Ark Encounter, today Noah and his Ark continue to pop up in all manner of media. For creationists, though, Noah and his Ark have a much more serious meaning than is usual in popular culture.