Prepare to Believe

Make way for a new Bible Museum in DC. The Green family is shelling out big bucks and relying on the added support of good Christians to realize an $800 million museum devoted exclusively to the Bible in the nation's capital. As Alan Rappeport noted in this article for the New York Times, there appears to be an agenda by the selection of DC to house the Green family's huge collection of ancient Biblical texts and other artifacts. Steven Green an ardent evangelist firmly believes in the Bible as a historically accurate document and judging by his traveling exhibit will offer "re-enactments" to support this belief.

For the last five years, Mr. Green has searched the world for rare Biblical documents and artifacts, spending a purported $30 million on everything from rare papyrus texts of Psalms in Aramaic to first editions of the King James Bible. He was advised by Scott Carroll, an archaeologist and historian, who has since pulled out of the project as he believes that Green sees the museum as "a pulpit of sorts" for evangelizing his own beliefs.

It is easy to see Green using the museum as a bully pulpit in the heart of the nation's capital to promote the Religious Right agenda, especially with members of Congress literally a stone's throw away. He already appears to have some sway with the Supreme Court.

Private museums have sprouted up all over the place promoting religious beliefs. The most famous one to date is the Creation Museum in Kentucky, which assumes a literal interpretation of the Bible, but makes room for dinosaurs even though they are not specifically referred to in the Bible. Green needs to come up with a catchy phrase like Ken Ham did -- "Prepare to Believe" -- as this too seems to be the purpose of the proposed Bible Museum, scheduled to open in 2017.

The worrisome thing behind the Bible Museum is that Mr. Green actually has historical documents that any museum would love to get its hands on, but like a latter day evangelical William Randolph Hearst, Mr. Green has amassed this collection privately and I imagine will tightly control access to those documents. As John Kutsko notes, the Bible means many different things to many different people, and his big worry is that we will see a decidedly Protestant interpretation of the Bible in this museum.

T Rex at the Creation Museum

Biblical studies has become subject to a more "scientific" approach in recent decades with Biblical genealogists, archaeologists, paleontologists and Flood geologists, who devote a great deal of time and energy to the effort of proving events that took place in the Bible. There has been a concerted effort by Biblical paleontologists to place dinosaurs before the geological "flood" line, in an effort to place them within the context of the Bible, losers in the "divine upheavals," which have been used to explain the fossil evidence of the mass extinctions that have taken place.

The aim of museums and traveling exhibits like Passages, which Mr. Green sponsors, is to make the Bible real. Despite the large collection of Jewish Torah scrolls, it is doubtful that there will be any reference to Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed who cautioned readers back in the 12th century to not take the Bible literally.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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