Sola Scriptura: In the beginning. Ch.2

EXT. RIVER BANK – AFTERNOON

Adam awakens to his side being poked with a stick. He jumps when he sees the poker. It is a wild yet beautiful woman. They recoil like children. Adam arises in growing realization. Their eyes are locked as the woman eases toward him. She chances a smirk at his now blunt happiness. He initiates by pointing her to the surroundings, and she repeats as he calls out their names.

ADAM
Earth…

WOMAN
Earth?

ADAM
Water.

WOMAN
W-water.

ADAM
Sky…

WOMAN
S-sky.

ADAM
Beautiful.

WOMAN
…Beautiful.

Adam’s finger is now on his old rib inside her and they share affectionate looks.

ADAM
This one shall be called Woman for she was taken out of man.

EXT. EDEN – TIME VARIES

Narration carries over a series of shots showing their daily utopian life. Adam makes a shelter under the shade of the trees. All sorts of animals come and play with Adam and his wife. They are tame. Monkey never leaves their side. He amuses them with his stunts. The man and woman eat from the trees of the garden. They offer up their choicest fruits to the white-robed man who sits by the Tree of Life.

NARRATION
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

EXT. THE MIDST OF GARDEN – TWILIGHT

Adam and the woman are harvesting fruit. She stares at the Forbidden Tree through a clearing. Its eeriness draws her near. A sly serpentine creature walks from behind her.

WOMAN
How can such splendor be so forbidden?

SERPENT
But what did God say? Is it true you shall not eat of every tree in the garden?

WOMAN
(as to herself)
We may eat of the trees of the garden, but of the tree in the midst of the garden God said, you shall not eat nor touch it, lest ye be dead.

SERPENT
Die? You, whom God made lords of the earth? Far be it from you to die from the fruit of your dominion.

WOMAN
Lords of the earth?

SERPENT
No, you surely won’t die, for God knows and fears what would become of his prize. Like gods you will be, knowing wisdom’s discretion, knowing and not needing what’s now his possession.

WOMAN
(whisper)
Like gods?

She looks at the glory of the fruit all the more. Adam looks up and sees his wife missing. He goes about calling for her, and sees her at the Tree of knowledge of good and evil.

ADAM
Woman?
(charging)
Woman!

WOMAN
Look, Adam.
(beat)
This is a glorious fruit.

ADAM
-For death! Its glory is treacherous and evil’s its root. Come away!

WOMAN
(too calm)
If this is death, we have the Tree of life. But this is wisdom and power to turn night to day.

ADAM
Let day remain and so the night! What lies in darkness hates the light!

Adam looks intently at his beautiful wife while she stares at the fruit. She touches it. Adam clinches his hands to his face. She proceeds to eat it. Adam paces back and forth whispering:

ADAM
What is life without love?

The meaning of this phrase fades from his love for God to his love for his wife. He eats it for her and holds her. They eat their fill as the first dead leaf falls nearby. They hear the crack of twigs, and to their new shame they scurry up fig leaf branches for cover. Monkey jumps on them from the trees above and scratches Adam. The animals are no longer tame like before. She is horrified at the sight of blood as is Adam. With her in Adam’s arms, they are deflected from the area.

WOMAN
What’s happening?

ADAM
(annoyed)
The Lord has departed from us.

WOMAN
We must reach the Tree of life!

They duck and run near to the tree of Life against a growing wind. They near the Tree of life, but when they reach a flaming sword swishes down between their grasp and the fruit. It strikes the ground with a flash. They fall before a majestic winged guardian. Three others, wielding fiery swords, form ranks around the Tree. They are the Cherubim. Adam and the woman dash for cover, seeking to be hid in the bushes. A great thunderous wind announces the sound of the Lord walking near. He is not as a man’s appearance, but elemental and distant.

GOD
Where are you, Adam?

ADAM
(hesitating)
I, I hid myself at the sound of my Lord drawing nigh. I hid for I was naked and afraid.

GOD
Aye, but where are you? It is not with me. Who told you that you were naked and exposed? What dirt have you to hide? Some horrid fruit juice of a tree you were denied?

Adam sinks to the ground in tears and his wife follows after him in apologetic embrace.

ADAM
It was the woman that my Lord gave to be with me. She gave me of the tree, and I ate.

GOD
(to woman)
What is this you have done?

WOMAN
It is true, the serpent beguiled me and I did eat.

The serpent is thrown into the open from its hiding place with a hiss of pain. The Lord speaks and the thunder resounds.

GOD
Would you destroy every good thing on account of your misery? Be silent! Bow before the Lord of hosts!

The serpent’s legs are removed and his face hits the ground with a thud.

GOD (cont’d)
God is not mocked nor can He be deceived. Behold, all things are naked before the Lord. Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, above every beast. On your belly you shall go on eating dust all the days of your wretched life. Know assuredly that I will put hostility between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; you will bruise His heel, and he shall bruise your head…

The serpent hides in the earth. God stands by the Tree of life with only the guardian. They both weep.

GOD (cont’d)
My son, my son! Why have you forsaken me? Have I not loved you more than these?

Amid vicious animals, a lion lurks nearby looking hungry. The serpent peers with bright beady eyes through a dark hollow.

GOD (cont’d)
Does it thrill you now to know evil?
(distant)
Being desirous you were tempted. Being tempted you conceived and given birth to sinful seed; I therefore multiply her pain for the lovechild of her desire’s gain; in sorrow bear your children hence, for sin is your firstborn and misery’s his birthright. Desire then your husband, and be ye his domain.
(sorrowful)
…The man has harked to vain desire in choosing death o’er goodly spire. Forever more a downward turn to wanton ambition and haughty folly wholly not spurned. They have loved themselves more than me. Oh, fie! Fie! Tis a bitter taste most foul! Cursed is the ground on his account! In sorrow he shall eat of it all the days of his life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth and he shall eat the herb of the field by the sweat of his brow till he returns to the ground, for out of it he was taken. Dust you are, and to dust you shall return!

CUT TO FADE IN

EXT. EARTH – TIME VARIES

NARRATION
Now it came about when men began to multiply on the face of the earth that the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great and evil was in their hearts continually.

GOD
My spirit shall not always plead with man, for he is truly erring flesh.

NARRATION
And the Lord numbered the days of man’s destruction a hundred and twenty years, for he was sorry that he ever made them; and the Lord grieved…

In a heavenly garden where the Cherubim protect the white Tree of Life, God sits under its shade weeping down to earth, making the worlds first rainfall. His tears fall into a hurricane. A worldwide flood proceeds to destroy the earth: rain from above and springs from beneath. The hostile people kill each other to reach higher ground. A great earthquake shakes them into the depths of the earth. Out of the depths shoots a massive spring. It builds into a grand tsunami for the rest of the globe’s destruction.

NARRATION (cont’d)
But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord…

Noah watches through the window of a gigantic wooden vessel. Inside, his family tends to all the animals of the ark. There are seven of each clean animal and two of each unclean.

NARRATION (cont’d)
So the Lord made a covenant with the sons of Noah that there shall never again be a flood to destroy the earth…

A rainbow beams in the clearing sky as they exit the ark on Mt. Ararat.

NARRATION (cont’d)
And the Lord blessed Noah and his sons saying; be fruitful: multiply and fill the earth. But man desired a single name for himself lest he be scattered abroad...

Nimrod, king of Shinar, builds a mighty tower by a multitude of people.

NARRATION (cont’d)
So the Lord confused their language thus the Lord scattered man: the house of Japheth to the northern coastlands, the Shemites to the eastern hills and woodlands, and the house of Ham to the wild lands southward toward Mizraim.

The people divide into language groups and go their separate ways.

NARRATION (cont’d)
Generations begat generations, and the sons of man forgot the Lord their God and served other gods. So out of the east near the river Euphrates the Lord God, a jealous God, raised the man Abram from his father’s house and his gods...

DS - the enormous land and its giant inhabitants in its fortified cities builds up to its comparison toward a solitary man from the east.

NARRATION (cont’d)
Abram son of Terah came to the land of Canaan westward towards the Great Sea where the Lord called his name Abraham and made a covenant with him. And the Lord declared unto him that he should beget a great and holy nation, blessed by God and as numerous as the stars in heaven and the sands of the shores, and that through his seed the Lord would bless all the nations of the earth.

FADE OUT

Screenplay by: Tim Seaton