The Museum of the Bible

The new Museum of the Bible  has officially opened in Washington, D.C. It does not proselytize (openly). It does not apparently teach Creationism. It seems to be fairly open about certain narratives that ended up being, shall we say, in disrepute (slavery, ahem). It attempts, in the words of one of the directors, to make the Bible “cool.”

Nice location, right near where the Smithsonian sits, not far from the Mall, so it takes in the gravitas of a serious museum along with a near hand-holding with government. One might be forgiven for thinking the Green’s (the Hobby Lobby family and chief funders of the museum) are acting within the Dominionist ideology, which states that Christians (meaning evangelical Christians, not those of the baser mainstream denominations, thank you very much) must integrate themselves into government. Can you say, “theocracy”?

There is likely not going to be an exhibit showing visitors how the Green family stole artifacts, and was fined $3 million dollars. It seems they bought some Iraqi cuneiform tablets on the cheap, labeled them as “clay samples” with a worth of a couple hundred dollars, when they were actually worth...well, who knows; unquestionably their value was much more than a couple hundred dollars. Maybe the Green family feels the Eighth Commandment to be too communist. No one, except the Green family, knows if their are other stolen artifacts held in their collection.

Now, there has been some mention that the Green family ended up supporting ISIS through their fraudulent purchasing of stolen artifacts, but that isn’t strictly true. The fraud occurred before ISIS formed. However, these acts of purchasing artifacts through the black market do support the further demolition of archaeological sites.

The Museum of the Bible attempts to show the Bible as one narrative. It doesn’t mention the Koran, doesn’t mention The Book of Mormon, even though those books are dependent on the Christian Bible. It doesn’t treat them at all. The Museum of the Bible pretends that there is one view of the Bible, and that view is that of evangelicals such as the Greens. The Bible to them pretty much stopped at The King James Version. It pretends that the scholarship in the 19th and 20th centuries never happened. It pretends that the Bible is entirely without flaw, that scribes copied “The Bible” perfectly down through the ages. It pretends that we have one original Bible. It avoids the deep questions of what is the “original” Bible? I doubt it treats of translation problems at all (though I have not visited the site and cannot say for certain). It pretends that the Bible is the perfect text that they show within the museum and that evangelicals are the authorities on the Bible.

There is an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although there is a plaque that states that their authenticity has not been verified (yet), there is the implication that these are the real deal: Scholars are just about united in stating that they are forgeries. But worse than that, although the Dead Sea Scrolls can be used to show that the Bible is not the concretized uttered Word of God, evangelicals like to pretend that the Bible is inerrant, and that there are no grey areas of textual divergence.  

It would be nice if there was a public catalog of all the 40,000 items held by the Greens. Are they correctly provenanced? Were they legally purchased? Is the black market of archaeological tablets, scrolls, and the like still being supported by the Greens?

The Museum of the Bible is not about truth, it is about propping up a monument to evangelicals. This is the FOX News of Museums, somewhere people can go who have preconceived notions of the Bible, who do not wish to have those notions challenged, and who can feel good about themselves for belonging to the correct religion, and even the correct subset of that religion.

“There should be no religion above the truth”--motto of the Theosophical Society. You will not find that motto in the Museum of the Bible, nor will you find that sentiment.