From history to technology, Museum of the Bible is as impressive as Disneyland
By Mike Haynes
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Forty-foot-high bronze columns of type
copied from the 1455 Gutenberg
Bible
flank the main entrance of the Museum
of the Bible, three blocks from the U.S.
Capitol in Washington, D.C.
(Photo by Mike Haynes)
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As a kid,
one of my dreams was to go to Disneyland. I still haven’t made it to Anaheim,
although I’ve been to the Florida version as a grownup.
After my wife, Kathy, and I had been in the new Museum of
the Bible in Washington, D.C., for less than an hour the week before last, I
told her I was in Disneyland. Kathy was impressed, too, with the $500 million
attraction that opened Nov. 17, but she was satisfied with one full day
exploring the four main floors of displays, videos, touch screens and ancient
artifacts.
Two days
weren’t quite enough for me.
Not
everyone will be as enraptured as I was to see a page from the Gutenberg Bible,
which is the “Holy Grail” for someone interested in not only the Bible, but the
invention of printing. But the MOTB has a page from that historic book, printed
in Mainz,
Germany, in 1455. Johannes Gutenberg’s Catholic Bible in Latin is
considered the first book printed with movable type in the western world, and
it created a communications revolution.
The museum
entrance is flanked by two 40-foot-high replicas of columns of type from
Gutenberg’s Bible. The 118 brass panels that form the columns give the building
quite a grand entrance.
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The lobby of the Museum of the Bible in
Washington, D.C., is topped by
a 140-foot LED
screen that rotates various visual effects.
(Photo by Mike
Haynes)
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I also am
one of the few who are fascinated with the first King James Bible, printed in
1611 after England’s James I decided to approve a new Bible to replace the
Geneva version, which he thought was too biased toward the Puritans. But the
MOTB displays two of those 407-year-old Bibles, along with books that James
wrote himself, such as his personal translation of the Psalms, printed six
years after his 1625 death.
As
impressive as the museum’s biblical collection is, it also is a technological
wonder. A video table shows in real time what words from the scriptures are
being searched for in various countries around the world. At one moment on Jan.
8, “love” was the most-searched word in Cambodia and “sin” was the
third-most-searched in Zimbabwe.
Although
just in the testing phase, “digital guides” – handheld tablets – can take you
through the museum on a customized tour. When fully operational, the guides
will store your high-priority exhibits and activities and steer you to them.
Built-in GPS shows your location in the building within a few inches, and
tapping on the map produces audio describing what’s in front of you.
Most impressive visually is a
140-foot LED screen that covers the lobby ceiling. Its color-drenched images
constantly rotate from cathedral ceilings to stained glass to garden scenes.
The museum
is a renovated food refrigeration facility built almost 100 years ago. Its
430,000 square feet cover eight stories, four of them major exhibit areas. The
museum’s content focuses on the Bible’s impact on society, its narrative and
its history.
The impact
floor includes a 3,200-pound copy of the Liberty Bell that was lowered into the
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James I of Great Britain not only sponsored the
King James version of
the Bible, but he published
some of his own biblical writing, including “The
Psalms of King David, Translated byKing James.”
This version was published in
1631, six years
after his death. It is part of the Green Collection
at the
Museum of the Bible. (Photo by Mike Haynes)
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The
narrative floor has a recreated Nazareth village, including a first century
synagogue replica, the New Testament Theater and, our favorite, the “Hebrew
Bible Experience.” For 45 minutes, visitors walk from theater to theater and
room to room, experiencing a blazing bush emerging from the dark, a trek
through stylized walls of simulated Red Sea water and an emotional retelling of
the first Passover.
The history
floor features not only scores of notable Bibles but Dead Sea Scroll fragments,
videos by “Drive Thru History” TV host Dave Stotts and “illumiNatons,” a
circular area with shelves of Bibles translated into hundreds of languages –
and spaces for many more languages still to be translated.
All that
and more, plus a restaurant and a kids’ play area – and extensive research and
education programs that already have been going for a few years.
rd Psalm
in Greek on Egyptian papyrus, probably from the years 225 to 325 A.D.; a 1400s
Torah from Spain written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic; a copy of John Newton’s
song, “Amazing Grace,” in the Choctaw language.
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This page of a papyrus manuscript
includes the 23rd Psalm in Greek.
Part of the Museum of the Bible collection,
it was found in Egypt and
probably dates
from 225 to 325 A.D. (Photo by Mike Haynes)
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I was
surprised by this Vincent van Gogh quote in the “Art and the Bible” section: “I
cannot tell you how much I sometimes long for the Bible. I read it daily, but I
would really like to know it by heart…”
Maybe the
most moving moment for Kathy and me was the finale of the museum’s first
theatrical production in its World Stage Theater. It was “Amazing Grace: The
Musical,” tracing Newton’s early life as a slave trader and his dramatic
turnaround to oppose the immoral practice. Tears flowed as the audience joined
the biracial cast in that amazing song.
The musical
now embarks on a national tour that will include stops in Ruidoso, New Mexico,
April 4 and Wichita Falls April 17. I recommend it heartily. As I do this
treasure of a museum.
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This “digital guide” can take visitors around the
Museum of the Bible
in Washington, D.C.
The touch screen uses precise GPS to show guests
what
displays they are near and even to guide
them to preferred exhibits. (Photo by
Mike Haynes)
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The impact floor of the Museum of the Bible in
Washington, D.C., includes an exhibit showing
how the Bible has affected men and women
who are
incarcerated in prisons and jails.
(Photo by Mike Haynes)
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