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David Trobisch, NT scholar, directs collections for Museum of the Bible: People

David Trobisch, a New Testament scholar and former Heidelberg Univer­sity professor, acts as a roving ambassador to academia and top-rate museums. He’s employed by the Green family of Okla­homa City—the plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby case.

The family financed the Museum of the Bible, set to open in 2017 near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It will showcase biblical artifacts from the 40,000-piece Green collection, one of the largest in private hands. The Greens hired Trobisch earlier this year as director of the collection. He does not run the museum, but in addition to enlarging, curating, and cataloging the trove, he participates in deciding which items will go into the museum, and how.

Trobisch, 56, splits his time between Germany, where his wife, son, and two grandchildren live, and a home in Spring­field, Missouri. He’s part of the Evan­gelical Lutheran Church in America and grew up speaking four languages in Cameroon, where his parents worked as Lutheran missionaries.