Destination: Museum Of The Bible
Clemente Lisi
3 min read ⭑
There is no other book in human history to have had a bigger impact on world culture and society as the Bible. The anthology — a compilation of texts originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek — has been translated into thousands of languages.
The Museum of the Bible, located in Washington, D.C., is a building dedicated to the Holy Book. Opened in 2017, the museum is housed in a six-story, 430,000-square-foot building overlooking the U.S. Capitol. It is an amazing edifice from the outside and even more spectacular inside.
Co-founded by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green with $500 million of his own money, the museum has endured several controversies since its opening in 2017.
Two of them surrounded five Dead Sea Scroll fragments once on display that were found to be fakes and a New Testament manuscript was later deemed to have been stolen.
Last year, a book called Does Scripture Speak for Itself? The Museum of the Bible and the Politics of Interpretation argued that the museum is part of a century-old project of “white evangelical institution-building.”
While that premise can be debated, the museum is all the same time fascinating for Christians of all denominations and even for people who identify with another faith tradition. The museum — in addition to highlighting Hebrew texts and the time Jesus lived — also integrates how the Bible and Christianity have influenced American culture and society from the early 1600s to the present.
Museum of the Bible
The average visitor to the museum will be unaware of the aforementioned controversies unless they come across a news story or the aforementioned book. What the visitor will see are elaborate galleries and something for people of all ages. The Bible can often be a daunting book, and this museum does a good job connecting it to the everyday lives of people.
The fourth floor, for example, is dedicated to the historical exploration of the Bible. This section includes 600 rare artifacts that mark the “path from oral traditions and handwritten scrolls to universal access around the world,” according to the museum’s website.
In fact, the museum is, at times, more about Christianity in America than the Bible itself. That can be seen in the exhibits highlighting how the holy book influenced mass media, music and fashion. There is also extensive space devoted to the Bible and its influence on the abolition movement and the civil rights era.
A yearlong exhibit that opened this past January is dedicated to the relationship between Scripture and science. The museum’s website says the exhibit “explores the Bible’s role in the historical relationship between science and religion. Many today believe that religious faith and the natural sciences are very separate subjects. Indeed, many consider the Bible to be an obstacle to scientific progress. Yet, for centuries, faith and the study of nature were very much entangled. At times, biblical beliefs helped encourage people to study the world. They even influenced the rise of science as we know it today.”
The exhibit features astronomer Galileo Galilei’s handwritten observational notes and a microfilm Bible that traveled to the moon on Apollo 14’s lunar module in 1971. It runs through January 2024.
“The ‘Scripture and Science’ exhibition will challenge the myth that the natural sciences and religious faith are fundamentally at odds,” said Anthony Schmidt, director of collections and curation at Museum of the Bible. “From cosmology to biology, this exhibit invites people to discover how the Bible and biblical theology have been entangled with scientific inquiry, sometimes in surprising ways.”
For more information about the museum’s holiday offerings, permanent exhibits, group tours and hours, visit museumofthebible.org.
Clemente Lisi is the executive editor at Religion Unplugged. He is the author of The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event and previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.
This article is republished from Religion Unplugged under a Creative Commons license.