…for they have observed Thy word, and keep Thy covenant. (Deuteronomy 33:9)
Despite numerous assertions that he is an Anti-Semite, polarizing Hobby Lobby president Steve Green has donated his collection of ancient Codex Climaci Rescriptus, a 6th to 8th century CE palimpsest whose Greek and Palestinian Aramaic Gospels were overwritten with Syriac, to the Jerusalem Bible Land Museum, which opened on Wednesday.
According to The Times of Israel, the museum is a new traveling exhibition of rare Biblical texts and artifacts spanning two millennia, from lands as disparate and distant as Germany and Iraq, and written in at least a half a dozen languages. The exhibit, entitled “The Book of Books,” compiles over 200 texts with the ambitious aim of presenting the history of the Judeo-Christian document over the course of Western history through its textual heritage. Among the documents on display are fragments of the earliest Greek translation of the Bible — the Septuagint — early New Testament scriptures, vibrant illuminated manuscripts, rare fragments from the Cairo Geniza and pages from the Gutenberg Bible, the first set to print.Curators said instead of sticking to illegible, dusty, leather-bound tomes, they combined curious artifacts and exotic documents — such as prayer amulets engraved on silver rolls, 1,500-year-old Iraqi incantation bowls and elaborately illustrated prayer books — to animate the exhibit.
Green’s collection is thought to be the highlight of the exhibit.
The project was “unlike anything we’ve done before,” said Bible Lands Museum Director Amanda Weiss at the gala kickoff of the exhibition. “It’s a marriage of two cultures, two faiths” which incorporates cutting edge technology to present ancient manuscripts with “a courageous design concept.”
Green said that although the 40,000 biblical antiquities are based far from Jerusalem in Oklahoma, “we hope this exhibit will bring us together and unite us under a book we all love, the scriptures.”
“It is exciting to be right here in Jerusalem where many of these items come from,” he said.
Green, an evangelical Christian, recently revealed he would house what he calls “the world’s oldest Jewish prayer book,” said to date from 840, which he purchased a year ago, in a museum being built to house the collection in Washington D.C.
The 400,000 square foot museum, situated two blocks from the US Capitol building in Washington DC, will also house the exhibit on display in Jerusalem. It is set to open to the public in 2017.
“We’ll be able to tell three different stories,” Green said, “the history of the Bible, the impact of the Bible, and the Bible’s story — what does the Bible say.”
Green and his family had come under fire last month after reports from numerous customers that one of his Hobby Lobby branches was refusing to carry Hanukkah-related items because they do not “cater to you people”. Following immense media pressure the store eventually agreed to sell a few of the Jewish holiday’s products.
For Green, the Book of Books exhibit is only the tip of the iceberg. He said his foundation’s long term ambition is not only the advancement of biblical education through the museum, but “developing a curriculum that we are looking at going into public schools in the US as well as places all across the world.”
The exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum runs through May 2014, at which point it travels to the Vatican and then Seoul, South Korea.
