Huge Bible museum opens in Washington DC after being blessed with half a billion dollars

The institution, eight years in the making, has been bankrolled by an evangelical entrepreneur who believes the bible is a 'reliable historical document'

The new Museum of the Bible measures 430,000 sq ft (Saul Loeb/AFP) (Saul Loeb)

A massive Bible museum – the $500m (£377m) brainchild of the evangelical Christian president of US arts and craft chain Hobby Lobby – is the latest institution to join a constellation of museums near the National Mall in Washington.

Large crowds filled the 430,000 square-foot Museum of the Bible when it opened to the public on Saturday 18 November, with security guards overseeing long lines of people waiting to enter doors centred between two towering bronze plaques inscribed with Scripture.

The majority of weekend tickets are booked up until mid-December, indicating the high level of public interest in the museum.

“It’s too much to take in,” one visitor said. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

The museum’s administrators have said it will take several days for visitors to examine everything.

It remains to be seen how the museum – located just three blocks from Capitol Hill – will fare in the capital of a nation where Christianity has been reduced to more of a cultural identity than a way of life.

Some Bible scholars have expressed scepticism to the Washington Post that the museum will be able to offer a wide-ranging view of the Bible – a text that has been used to justify slavery as well as encourage forgiveness and humility.

The Bible museum has been eight years in the making, according to the Associated Press, after Hobby Lobby president Steve Green began collecting biblical artifacts. His family’s arts and crafts chain has been a lightning rod for controversy in recent years, convincing the US Supreme Court in 2014 that it deserved a religious exemption from an Obamacare requirement that employers provide their workers with certain types of birth control.

Mr Green, who has called the Bible “a reliable historical document”, has tried to get public schools in Oklahoma City, where Hobby Lobby is headquartered, to offer a Bible course he developed.

In 2014, a school board in Mustang, Oklahoma agreed to beta-test the first year of the Museum of the Bible Curriculum – which focuses on the same lessons as the museum in Washington.

In recent months, Mr Green’s haul of treasures has also sparked controversy. Hobby Lobby had to pay a $3m fine and return artifacts after the Justice Department accused it of buying smuggled antiquities. In a statement, the Oklahoma company emphasised that the museum was a separate entity.

Several artifacts from Mr Green’s family’s collection are present throughout the museum, including Dead Sea Scrolls (though some researchers believe there are forgeries among the collection) and a soundscape of the 10 plagues, enhanced by smog and a glowing red light to symbolise the Nile River in Egypt turning to blood in the Old Testament.

The institution’s original mission statement said the purpose of the museum was to “inspire confidence in the absolute authority of the Bible”.

But leadership has changed its tune since drafting this initial statement, emphasising that the museum is non-sectarian and that its mission now merely is to merely help visitors “engage” with the Bible.

A group of Christian women who had just explored the stone-and-glass interior of the magnificent red brick building said you didn’t need to be a Christian to enjoy what the museum had to offer.

The three main exhibit floors of the museum are organized around the history, narrative and impact of the Bible.

The history section includes Elvis Presley’s personal Bible as well as a first edition of the King James Bible New Testament – the only other known copy belongs to the British Library.

The narrative section, meanwhile, features a recreation of the village of Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown, where guides can be seen dressed up in first-century attire.

The part of the museum displaying the Bible’s impact has a motion ride that flies you through Washington DC to explore biblical references around the city.

“It’s like the ride at Disneyland where you fly over California – but better,” said one excited visitor.

© Washington Post