Judaism stars in Hobby Lobby’s Bible museum

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WASHINGTON — The opening last Friday of the $500-million Museum of the Bible at times seemed like a pro-Israel gala, featuring a rabbi, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, the Israeli minister of tourism, and the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, celebrated the museum as a signifier of the Jewish claim to Jerusalem. The Bible nurtured Jews through 2,000 years of exile until they were able to “rebuild the original DC — David’s Capital,” he said.

Yariv Levin, the tourism minister, read a letter from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sent “warm greetings from Jerusalem, the eternal and undivided capital of Israel.”

The museum was gifted to the National Mall by one of America’s leading evangelical families, the founders of the Hobby Lobby chain. It celebrates Jews and Judaism as the noble, beloved and even feared antecedents to Christianity, and argues that its best modern expression is in the state of Israel. And it makes the case that the Bible is not merely to be studied but to be believed.

Speaking at the dedication, Steven Green, president of Hobby Lobby and the museum’s chairman of the board, said museum-goers should come away realizing that the Bible “has had a positive impact on their lives in so many different ways and when they leave they will be inspired to open it.”

The deference to Judaism is evident in the museum logo, a B flat on its face resembling the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and the museum store, where Star of David pendants glitter next to crucifixes.

The museum also makes the Bible unmistakably American. One permanent exhibit is dedicated to the biblical underpinnings of the abolition of slavery and of the civil rights movement.

The U.S.-born Dermer picked up on the theme of his native land as a nation whose origins were in the Bible, saying that “those ideas inscribed in your founding documents and etched on your statues are not merely the values of America, they are the values of the Bible.”

Scholarship at the museum is pervasive, but employed a la Cecil B. DeMille: to prove the Bible is not just compelling but true.

A day at the museum — officials say a thorough tour would take 72 hours — may leave visitors smarter about the Bible’s origins, the stated agenda of the museum. But they may also suspect that the goal of this knowledge is not to encourage critique but belief. The approach is closer to seminary than religious studies department.

Designers of the museum, said Executive Director Tony Zeiss, had two overarching criteria: “Will this lift up the Bible, and will it lift up people?” The museum employs scholarship to make that case.

“We engaged leading scholars around the country,” Green, the scion of the family that runs the Hobby Lobby chain, said. But scholarship alone wouldn’t sell it, so like most contemporary museums, there are plenty of experiential exhibits.

“If you put a Bible under a glass case in a language I can’t read, it will only hold my attention for so long,” Green explained.

Judaism as parent suffuses just about every exhibit, including one that media and special guests walked through earlier this week: The Hebrew Bible. It’s an immersive 30-minute stroll through animations and special effects illustrated by supple, handsome animated Hebrews. (The Burning Bush, a riot of bright yellow light in a darkened room, was genuinely thrilling.) That’s more than twice as long as the 12-1/2-minute immersive New Testament experience.

On the fifth floor of this six-floor mammoth comprising much of a Washington block are artifacts contributed by Israel’s Antiquities Authority. The exhibit is permanent, but the Israeli authority will rotate the items about 1,500 at a time.

The debt to Judaism is seen in the Jewish-style food at Manna, the rooftop restaurant run by a couple who wrote “The New Jewish Table” cookbook. (Two kosher items per meal will be available at the restaurant.)

Judaism and its origins in Israel are evident as well in a temporary exhibit, through May, organized by Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum, which served as a consultant to the Washington museum.

The exhibit, which features finds from Khirbet Queiafa, a village dating to the time of King David, begins with a replica of the Tel Dan Stele. The stone table appears to validate the historical accuracy of the battle of Jezreel, where Yoram, king of Israel, and Ahaziah, king of Judah, were killed, as recounted in 2 Kings 9.

The stele is important because it contains the oldest reference to King David, who lived two centuries or so earlier.

“We want to show how this exhibit relates to the time of David,” said MiYoung Im, the museum’s antiquities curator. “We can’t prove where David lived — we can show that he lived.”