So I checked in with the Washington Post this morning to catch up on the Franken situation and was hit with this one: Museum of the Bible, built by Hobby Lobby owner, opens in DC. The holy hell? Museum of the Bible? Built by the owner of the dastardly Hobby Lobby, perhaps best known for the lawsuit over abortion insurance provisions and Steve Green’s $3 million fine for smuggling artifacts out of Iraq? Yeah, this is the world we live in.
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Presidents have had an interesting relationship with the Bible. For instance, Jefferson took a blade to one of his. Not a sword but a penknife in order to create a version of the Gospels he could make sense of. He wanted to glean the moral lessons of the Gospels while redacting the miracles of which he was doubtful.
Jefferson believed that in order to glean the most from the New Testament, Jesus’s moral teachings needed to be separated from the miracles in the Gospels that he found suspect. He ordered six volumes — in English, French, Latin and Greek — and took a blade to their thin pages, rearranging Jesus’s teachings in chronological order and cutting out what he saw as embellishments that he didn’t believe. He felt those core teachings provided “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”
Jefferson pasted his preserved passages on blank sheets of paper and sent the scrapbook off to a book binder. In 1820, when Jefferson was 77 years old, the small, red volume of roughly 80 pages was complete.
John Quincy Adams, president of The American Bible Society, took his Oath of Office without the book. Adams was, by any definition, a liberal Protestant. He was a member of All Souls Unitarian Church in DC and his contributions to that building can be seen to this day. Lincoln poured over his copy as he wrestled with slavery. Kennedy was a Catholic, with that sect’s complicated relationship to the book. And then there was Carter, our first “born again” president, who heavily relied on the Bible to inform his actions.
All of which leads us to the new Museum of the Bible in DC, opening today. The thing is freaking huge, expensive as all hell, and packed full of the whiz banging-est technology available. According to one writer, it rivals the best of the Smithsonian offerings including the new African American Museum. Steve Green had a vision, and a mission, to build a museum for the believer and non believer alike.
On Friday, that vision will be realized when the 430,000-square-foot (39,948-square-meter) Museum of the Bible three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. The $500 million museum includes pieces from the family’s collection from the Dead Sea Scrolls, towering bronze gates inscribed with text from the Gutenberg Bible and a soundscape of the 10 plagues, enhanced by smog and a glowing red light to symbolize the Nile turned to blood.
And then there’s this: D.C.’s new Bible museum says it wants to avoid politics. But its opening gala is at the Trump hotel. So you tell me.
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