Museum to feature treasure trove of biblical artifacts

c. 2011 USA Today

WASHINGTON (RNS) A new multimillion-dollar, high-tech, interactive
museum of the Bible was announced Thursday amid 130 artifacts of the
Good Book at a private exhibition at the Vatican Embassy.

The exhibit was a sample of Jewish, Roman Catholic and Protestant
treasures from the future museum's 10,000 manuscripts and texts, one of
the world's largest biblical collections.

Some were as old as pages of the gospel in the Aramaic of Jesus'
time; as political as the only Bible edition ever authorized by the U.S.
Congress; as treasured as first editions of the majestic King James
Version (KJV), displayed near the king's own seal.

These will form the basis for "a public museum designed to engage
people in the history and the impact of the Bible," said museum sponsor
Steve Green, an evangelical businessman and owner of the Oklahoma
City-based craft chain Hobby Lobby.

The Green family has amassed the world's largest collection of
ancient biblical manuscripts and texts including his favorite: the 1782
Aitken Bible authorized by Congress.

While the location, architecture and even the museum's name are
still in the works, 300 highlights of the Green Collection will go on
tour beginning at the Oklahoma Museum of Art on May 16. The traveling
exhibit, called Passages, will move to the Vatican in October and New
York City by Christmas.

The announcement was made at the Vatican Embassy to highlight
Catholic contributions to the best-loved English text, the 400-year-old
KJV, which draws about 80 percent of its majestic language from an
earlier translation by a Catholic priest.

Meanwhile, scholars at 30 universities worldwide are burrowing into
rare texts from the collection and pioneering technology that enables
them to bring out the ancient words in the most faded and printed-over
manuscripts, said Scott Carroll, director of the collection and research
professor of manuscript studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Carroll's primary focus has been finding and authenticating ancient
manuscripts that can deepen -- or alter -- "our understanding of the
word of God. The Bible didn't come from the sky as tablets handed to
Moses on Mount Sinai and then wind up in a hotel desk drawer," Carroll
said.

"The Bible is not in a lockbox. It changes across time," he said,
pointing to the earliest known manuscript fragment of Genesis, a section
of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a Jewish Torah (the five books of Moses) from
the time of the Spanish Inquisition, and more.

Passages will also address the dramatic struggles behind the texts,
as translations are a matter of life, death and eternal fate to
believers. The illustrated frontispiece of one King James Version shows
the king flanked by people who would be burned at the stake within 10
years.

"Translating a Bible is a soap opera of moving political and
spiritual parts," Carroll said.

There are already U.S. museums centered on the Bible. The Creation
Museum in Petersburg, Ky., was established by conservative evangelicals
to walk people through a literal reading of the Bible. The same group is
launching a Noah's Ark theme park, set to open in 2014 in northern
Kentucky.

And the Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan was established by the
American Bible Society, which has a Christian evangelizing mission.

Green and Carroll say their museum, opening by 2016, has no
theological agenda.

"Think of the great new science museums that take you inside how
things work, or the Folger Library's public and scholarly center for
Shakespeare," Carroll said. "This will be our approach to the Bible.
It's a museum, not a ministry."

Highlights of the Green Collection include:

-- The Codex Climaci Rescriptus, one of the world's earliest
surviving Bibles. Using a new technology developed by the Green
Collection in collaboration with Oxford University, scholars have
uncovered the earliest surviving New Testament written in Palestinian
Aramaic -- the language used in Jesus' household -- found on recycled
parchment.

-- One of the largest collections of cuneiform clay tablets in the
Western Hemisphere.

-- The second-largest private collection of Dead Sea Scrolls, all of
which are unpublished and likely to substantially contribute to an
understanding of the earliest surviving texts in the Bible.

-- The world's largest private collection of Jewish scrolls,
spanning more than 700 years of history, dating to the Spanish
Inquisition.

-- Previously unpublished biblical and classical papyri, including
surviving texts dating to the time of the now-lost Library of
Alexandria.

-- The earliest-known, near-complete translation of the Psalms to
(Middle) English.

-- A number of the earliest printed texts, including a large portion
of the Gutenberg Bible and the world's only complete Block Bible in
private hands.

-- Early tracts and Bibles of Martin Luther, including a
little-known letter written the night before Luther's excommunication.

-- Numerous items illustrating the contribution of Jews and
Catholics to the King James translation of the Bible and other
historical effects.