My wife and I spent an afternoon in Washington, D.C. this summer at the Museum of the Bible. If you have not been, it is definitely worth the visit.

The Museum of the Bible, in Washington, D.C., opened November 17, 2017

Situated just a few blocks southwest from the U.S. Capitol, the Museum of the Bible can easily take a full afternoon, or even a full day (as that is my wife’s pace) to explore everything. Or you could just go to watch people.

The afternoon we were there, I saw a group of Amish families, speaking Pennsylvania Dutch with a bunch of baby strollers in tow. There were, of course, white Anglo-Saxon Americans, like myself, but plenty of African Americans, and African visitors from across the ocean…. and even a few Southeast Asians. What a mix!

The idea of having a Museum of the Bible was ambitious, and it had a rough start. The Green family, founders of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts store chain, carried the vision of the Museum of the Bible to reality. But along the way, the Greens ended up acquiring certain artifacts to place in the museum that had questionable provenance. This has happened with other museums of various types, as sometimes inexperienced museum collectors do not always know who to trust when you try to collect artifacts for a collection. In the case of the Museum of the Bible, some objects had to be returned to their rightful owners. As it turned out, all of the supposed Dead Sea Scrolls that the Museum had acquired were discovered to be fakes.

The good news is that the Museum of the Bible has since learned its lesson, setting more careful standards for antiquities acquisitions. Also, the Museum has managed to address concerns that it might be effectively captured by particular Protestant evangelical interests.  The Museum has worked hard to include scholarship from Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish sources to round out the interpretation of the Museum’s displays. The Vatican Library in Rome has given the Museum of the Bible some things to display, and I learned a lot about the history of Jews in colonial America. The Museum of the Bible appears to have a good mix of standard museum fair, with objects and written signage for adults and older students to read and see, along with immersive activities for kids and families.

Hey, there is even a display with Elvis Presley’s Bible! Elvis was known for being the king of “rock-n-roll” music, but he also recorded Gospel music, too. The Museum of the Bible rotates items in and out of its collection for public viewing, but you can also see it online, along with a history of how the Museum acquired Elvis’ Bible.

Here are just a few of the other things I saw that caught my eye, from the display about the history of the King James Bible. Back when the King James Bible was first printed, there was a discrepancy regarding how to interpret, much less print, Ruth 3:15. The ESV translation reads it like this:

And he said, “Bring the garment you are wearing and hold it out.” So she held it, and he measured out six measures of barley and put it on her. Then she went into the city.

But the King James scholars behind the KJV translation were befuddled by some confusion between the various Hebrew manuscripts available to them in order to produce the English translation. Did “she,” meaning Ruth go back into the city, as the ESV has it above, or should it be “he,” as in Boaz, who “went back into the city?”  Different printers varied in their printings of 1611:

The “she” in the last line of the printing, on the bottom, is a little hard to make out as the English printers of the day would often print the so-called “long s” at the beginning of the word much like the letter “f”. You can see the same practice in the word “mea-sures” broken across two lines in this verse, where it looks like “mea-fures”.  See this video on “The 7 Forgotten Letters of the Alphabet” for an explanation.

There were also a number of Bible printings of the King James Version over the years that had some glaring errors in them.  One printing, nicknamed the “Killer” Bible, from the 1795 printing by R. Bowyer and J. Fittler of London, accidentally misspelled the word “filled” in Mark 7:27 as “killed.” This printing has Jesus saying, “Let the children first be killed.” Oooops! The Museum of the Bible has a copy of this Bible on display (zoom into the photograph to see the error at the top of the left hand page, in the right hand column):

The Killer Bible.

Now here is something I have always wanted to see for myself. In 1631, the printer Robert Barker of London printed a Bible with a terribly embarrassing error in one of the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20:14, “Thou shall commit adultery.”  The printer left out the word “not.” Now, that is a big OOOOPS!  They call it the “Wicked Bible.” It is a collectors edition now, as most copies of that printing were either corrected or destroyed. But the Museum of the Bible has their own rare copy!

The Wicked Bible

If there was one thing I was disappointed with, it was that the displays often had a lot of facsimiles instead of the real documents on display.  A perfect example is a fragment from the Oxyrhynchus collection discovered in Egypt in the late 19th century of the so-called Gospel of Mary. The Oxyrhynchus collection is from an ancient garbage dump in Egypt where many of the unearthed fragments are still being analyzed over a century later.

The Gospel of Mary.

The Gospel of Mary is not found in our canonical Bibles, but it was a popular text among the Gnostic Christians, particularly in the 3rd century.  In the Gospel of Mary, Mary Magdalene was featured has having a unique relationship with Jesus, whereby Jesus is said to have revealed things to Mary that Jesus did not reveal to the twelve male disciples/apostles. Some of what Jesus supposedly revealed secretly to Mary is strange, to say the least. A number of Gnostic Christian groups during the early church era had the rough equivalent of female presbyters in their churches (along with male presbyters), as opposed to the male-only presbyteriate in the orthodox communities. The display for the Gospel of Mary was quite informative, even though the fragment on the display was only a facsimile and not the real thing.

Was the Gospel of Mary facsimile on display simply because the Museum of the Bible does not possess the real thing? This was not clear to me. The Museum of the Bible seems like it is on good enough footing now that it might be able to acquire other artifacts for display without having to resort to so many facsimiles. Let us hope this happens!

Overall, there is a lot to explore at the Museum of the Bible. It is perfect for families and large groups to visit. In a day and age when biblical illiteracy is at an all time high, it is great that Americans and visitors to America have the Museum of the Bible available where the history and influence of the Bible on Western (and world) civilization can be surveyed.  Go visit the Museum of the Bible!!

The Museum of the Bible, in Washington, D.C., opens November 17, 2017

The Museum of the Bible opens in Washington, D.C. on November 17, 2017. The Green family, founders of the nationwide chain of Hobby Lobby arts and crafts stores, envision this museum to tell the story of the Bible. Here will be displayed an impressive collection of Bible artifacts, using the latest technology,  in a completely new and compelling way.

But why a $500 million “Museum of the Bible?” Like many other cultural observers, the Greens are concerned that Americans are suffering from historical amnesia about the Bible. Despite its cultural importance, biblical illiteracy is extremely low among Americans today, even for many professing Christians. Hopefully, a museum dedicated to educating people about the Bible might help stem back, or even reverse, this trend.

However, folks should know that the museum has its critics, and what they are saying. When the Green family began years ago to travel the world and collect a few Bible artifacts, from antiquity, they really did not know what they were doing. As critical scholars Candida Moss and Joel Baden write in their book, Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby, the Greens eventually had to settle a court dispute by paying a hefty fine and returning thousands of artifacts that had been illegally obtained from their rightful owners.

The Greens have promised that they have learned from these mistakes, but a number of critics still have other issues with the museum. The Museum of the Bible is located just a few blocks from the Washington Mall, raising concerns that the Greens are engaging in a new tactic in the “culture wars,” by casting out their vision of America as a “Christian nation.” The Museum of the Bible is purely a private venture, with no government sponsor. But having a 430,000 square foot exhibition so close to the nation’s public Smithsonian collection of museums, will probably confuse some visitors.

Some of those firmly in the evangelical camp have their own suspicions, from a completely different angle. In a recent Christianity Today magazine review of the museum’s exhibits, we learn that a potential, wealthy donor was dismayed that the Museum of the Bible will not have a “decision” room available, whereby museum visitors nearing the end of the exhibits, might commit their lives to Christ, with counselors standing-by. Because of the absence of such a room, the prospective donor rescinded his offer for support.

Or, as a recent Washington Post article put it, the Museum of the Bible has a whole lot about the Bible, “but not a lot of Jesus.” Steve Green, the chair of the museum, responds that direct evangelism is “not [the Museum’s] role. Its role is to present facts and let people make their own decisions.” The Greens have one primary goal for presenting the Bible to America: Just try reading it!

In addition, evangelical Christians across other parts of the world, may have their own concerns: Is the Bible being captured by Americans, at the exclusion of other cultures, and thus diminishing a more global appreciation of the Bible? Over time, the experience of visitors will largely provide answers to such difficult questions.

However, despite what critics say, the fact remains that the Bible has played an incredibly influential role in the history of America. From the New England Puritan attempts to build a “Bible commonwealth,” in the early Atlantic colonies, to the trauma of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the Bible has remained at the center of private and public American life. From Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms, and on college campuses, to the eccentric uses of the Bible by Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Bible is right there in the thick of the American experience.

Unlike the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter in Kentucky, that promotes a view of the Bible that causes controversy within the evangelical Christian movement, the Museum of the Bible promises to promote a more nonsectarian approach to the Bible, which should garner wider support. No matter how well the museum is received by visitors, the display promises to be excellent in quality, engaging and inspiring to those who deeply love the sacred text, and a memorable experience.

If you do not believe me, watch the 3-minute promotion video below (a Biblical prophet, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gutenberg Bible and Luther’s revolution, the Sistine Chapel, the beginnings of modern science, Wesley’s stormy journey across the Atlantic with the Moravians, the American Revolution, Lincoln and the Civil War, emancipation of slavery and Martin Luther King Jr…. breathtaking). If you go to Washington sometime, and stop by to see the museum, drop a comment here on the Veracity blog, and tell us what you think!