Museum of the Bible opening Saturday

[DaisyD]

I'd be wearing my "Nevertheless she persisted" racer back tank who's purchase donated to Planned Parenthood (if I could afford to travel across the country). It's easy enough to troll the fundies without mentioning FJ to them. 

[HarryPotterFan]

6 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

We really do need to cover all the bases. 

 Hmm, what else offends fundies? (Lots of things)

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

everything from Israel has a higher sticker price), and how not to offend anyone (the museum has already been criticized for “not enough Jesus.”)

 For real?

59 minutes ago, samurai_sarah said:

I love all those ideas, but FJ compels me to issue a friendly reminder:

Whatever you do, don't drag FJ into it, please.  Please? Obviously, no one can tell you what to do in your own time and report back, but please, please, please don't claim to be an FJ representative.

 

Don't worry, I'd never do that  

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

Me in a halter top would not be pretty, but I'd be more than happy to read Darwin or sport a Obama hat.

Ooh. I have a shirt that has the Jesus fish, but it says "Darwin" inside and has legs. I think I'd be denied admission.

[samurai_sarah]

2 minutes ago, HarryPotterFan said:

(snip)

Don't worry, I'd never do that  

(snip)

Didn't think you would. But hey, the power of FJ compels me to issue reminders and such!

 

ETA: If I don't, they make me dress up in a dinosaur costume with a wee hat!

(But: Seriously, please don't mention FJ in your undercover activities!)

[VelociRapture]

10 hours ago, Ali said:

@VelociRapture Do you want to go? 

You could not pay me enough to convince me to go to this. 

[formergothardite]

I want to go and with the most sincerity ask about the documents that discuss hat wearing dinosaurs eating godly folks. When they say there isn't any, I will look offended and ask if they are calling the Ark Encounter a lie. 

[onekidanddone]

13 hours ago, samurai_sarah said:

I love all those ideas, but FJ compels me to issue a friendly reminder:

Whatever you do, don't drag FJ into it, please.  Please? Obviously, no one can tell you what to do in your own time and report back, but please, please, please don't claim to be an FJ representative.

 

Oh bless Rufus I'd never do that for so many reasons. FJ is my private world, and other than my husband I don't talk about it with anybody. .  I'm also way to introverted to call any attention to myself in any fashion.

16 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

It seems like any field trips will require a large purse, since visitors enter and exit via the gift shop, which has some pricey things for sale: "Inside the Museum of the Bible gift shop: Crucifix necklaces, fuzzy pens and a $125,000 ruby-encrusted pomegranate"

  Reveal hidden contents

They had seen the ancient texts, the reproduction of the Gutenberg press, the Jesus of Nazareth immersive experience, and now the visitors to Washington’s new Museum of the Bible were entering another room full of cultural artifacts — not the type studied by religious scholars, but the kind prized by those with many a religious friend on their Christmas list.

“Oh, Betty,” cried a woman beside a wall of Biblical-themed tree ornaments, “Have you seen these?”

Behold, dear faithful, the gift shop: Museum of the Bible hats, Museum of the Bible blinged-out keychains, Museum of the Bible frankincense and myrrh body wash.

There are bibles for sale, too, but it’s safe to assume that the crowd who pre-reserved tickets for the Museum’s opening weekend already have the Holy Book at home. Which is why there is another wall covered in books about the Holy Book. Amy Sauerwein couldn’t decide between “A Visual Guide to Bible Events” or “The Journey from Texts to Translations.”

“Do you think my mom will forgive me if I spend more than $100?” the 33-year-old asked. She was the youngest person on her Saturday morning tour bus coming from Montgomery County, Md., where she works as a school janitor. She decided to take both books off the shelf, then continued weaving through the racks of branded T-shirts, cuff links, fuzzy pens, winter coats, baby bibs — all opportunities to become a walking advertisement for the 430,000-square-foot nonprofit museum.

That’s, in part, the point of the gift shop: to send guests home with something that encourages them to remember and talk about their experience with other potential visitors (and donors). In privately funded museums such as this one, though, the success of the gift shop is even more crucial to an institution’s future, said Julie Steiner, board president of the Museum Store Association.

“While grants and endowments pay for specific projects or educational initiatives, retail revenue is the unglamorous component of a museum’s income,” Steiner said. “It pays the electric bills, the security force, the salaries of the museum staff.”

According to the association, the average museum gift shop brings in $637,000 in sales per year and is 1,000 square feet. The gift shop in the Museum of the Bible is more than three times that size. It is the first thing visitors see when they enter and the last thing they pass before they leave. The museum itself is the brainchild of retail juggernaut Steve Green, of the Hobby Lobby empire. But museum executive director Tony Zeiss said the gift shop’s dark wood shelving and glass walls were inspired by another retail establishment: Abercrombie & Fitch, where museum president Cary Summers used to be an executive.

“But I don’t want to get him into copyright trouble,” Zeiss said.

Now the dark wood shelves are filled with opportunities to fund those electric bills, all handpicked by a woman who used to run retail operations for Universal Studios, Nickelodeon and Six Flags. Finding more than 2,000 biblically themed items for this much holier gift shop was a similar task, buyer Eileen Strotz said. She had to figure out what customers wanted to buy (cross-shaped anything), where the items would come from (everything from Israel has a higher sticker price), and how not to offend anyone (the museum has already been criticized for “not enough Jesus.”)

She stocked a $1,250 leather foot stool in the shape of a rhinoceros because it goes with the Noah’s Ark theme. She stocked a $125,000 ruby-encrusted pomegranate made from something called “Jerusalem stone,” and ensured it was kept in a locked glass box. She stocked four shelves of custom-made sculptures and Waterford crystal crosses, which is what one visitor was looking at when she loudly gasped.

“It’s just like my vision!” Tawana Moore, a Baptist minister from the District exclaimed. She had recently seen in her mind a glass cross just like the one on the shelf, with the words “Pursuing intimacy with God” floating beside it.

She picked up the cross and looked for the price: $59. So, she wouldn’t be buying her vision today.

Each time a visitor found something they liked, a search would ensue to find the small sticker listing its price. One woman said a $5,000 necklace “made for a fantastic Christmas gift.” Another guest whispered to his wife, “$25 for a T-shirt?”

“Look!” a woman named Patsy Perge said as she showed her friend a $15 coffee tumbler covered in glitter and the first lines of the Book of Genesis. The 27-year-old wanted something to remind her of this museum, where she had walked through an exhibit on the Old Testament and thought about how forgiving and patient God can be.

“I fall short all the time,” Perge said. “I’m constantly sinning and trying to be my own God, when I know that really, it’s God who is in control.”

Maybe it will help if she sips coffee from this mug on her way to her job as a nanny in Bowie, Md. Either way, she really loves glitter, she said.

All the items with Bible quotes were crowd-pleasers, as were the overtly Christian items, like a necklace made of nails in the shape of a cross, meant to symbolize the nails of Jesus’ crucifixion. A shelf of menorahs prompted more than one visitor to ask: “What’s this?”

A Bible in which all the verses and parables were drawn like comic strips was nearly out of stock by the afternoon of opening day. Strotz would add it to her list of which items she would need more of for all the visitors to come — the school buses, the church groups, the people who would keep the bills paid and the lights on and ensure that of all the museums in Washington, there would be one dedicated to “the greatest story ever told.”

A piece of that story was what attracted Lance and Katie Bauslaugh, Baptists from Dallas, to open a box containing a large decorative scroll printed with one of their favorite parts of the Bible, the Book of Esther. Esther, they explained, was a queen who risked her life to stand up for her religion and save her people.

They pored over the words, which they knew by heart, and Katie rolled up the scroll to return it to the shelf. She didn’t check the price. Were they not interested in buying it?

“We’re not really ‘things’ people,” she said.

Maybe I'm being dense, but why would someone need a special "bible edition" of Scrabble? (there's a picture in the article) Does it have a special board, or is it only the box that is different?

There are no letters which could spell a defrauding word?

[HereticHick]

17 hours ago, Dandruff said:

1.  Show up wearing only fig leaves.

2.  Loudly proclaim to all within earshot that you're receiving a vision from the Lord.

3.  Plant yourself in the expensive section of the gift shop and ask shoppers for a donation to your ministry.

So Derick's next mission trip will be to the Museum of the Bible gift shop?

[onekidanddone]

1 minute ago, HereticHick said:

So Derick's next mission trip will be to the Museum of the Bible gift shop?

I see his next Go Fund Me in my crystal ball.  "Please give so I can buy the ruby encrusted pomegranate".  

[quiversR4hunting]

I just turned on iHeart while reading this thread- first song - Livin' On a Prayer  .... Get the vapors and Rufus Bless Bon Jovi!!

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Oh bless Rufus I'd never do that for so many reasons. FJ is my private world, and other than my husband I don't talk about it with anybody. .  I'm also way to introverted to call any attention to myself in any fashion.

You and me both. My BFF is the only one who knows about my FJ time. I don't speak of it to anyone else.

[Mela99]

So is Ken Ham involved in this one too? I wonder who he'll blame if it's a flop like his ark.

[GreyhoundFan]

17 hours ago, HarryPotterFan said:

For real?

Yes, the WaPo published an article last month about it.  An excerpt:

Quote

...

Jesus is also curiously not central to the museum’s presentation of the biblical story. Visitors walk through a multiroom saga of the Old Testament, and they can visit a re-creation of a 1st-century village in Galilee where actors will tell them what the villagers think of this controversial preacher Jesus. They can watch a movie about John the Baptist. But the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is almost absent.

...

 

[HarryPotterFan]

5 hours ago, formergothardite said:

I want to go and with the most sincerity ask about the documents that discuss hat wearing dinosaurs eating godly folks. When they say there isn't any, I will look offended and ask if they are calling the Ark Encounter a lie. 

May Rufus lay it on your heart to actually go through with this.

5 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Oh bless Rufus I'd never do that for so many reasons. FJ is my private world, and other than my husband I don't talk about it with anybody. .  I'm also way to introverted to call any attention to myself in any fashion.

There are no letters which could spell a defrauding word?

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Yes, the WaPo published an article last month about it.  An excerpt:

 

But...but...Jesus isn't in the Old Testament. And the museum is clearly geared toward Evangelicals...are these the same people who cry about the War on Christmas? Such precious little snowflakes.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo published a comparison between the MotB and the Creation Museum/Ark in KY: "The ark vs. the covenant: The dramatic contrast between the Creation Museum and the Museum of the Bible"

Spoiler

In Kentucky’s Creation Museum, visitors (who have already paid a $30 admission fee) come face to face with an advertisement for the nearby Ark Encounter, a full-scale replica of Noah’s vessel completed last year.

The mechanized patriarch warns an onlooking mannequin: “Judgment is coming, my friend. Why don’t you come along? You’ll be safe in the ark.”

In this display, the Creation Museum reveals its approach to the wider world, even relishing the doom awaiting those who disagree with its young-Earth chronology, without which (it claims) the reliability of the Bible collapses like so many dominoes. Its posture — despite resembling the kind of Christianity that upholds Roy Moore at any cost and that our current president has effectively exploited — is not consistent with historic evangelicalism. It is more accurately described as a resurgence of early 20th-century fundamentalism, from which evangelicalism has sought to distance itself since the 1950s.

But if the ark, which resembles a fundamentalist approach, represents escape from a doomed world, the covenant between God and all creation that followed the flood entailed both accountability and critical embrace.

This notion of covenant and the historic evangelicalism that goes with it are well illustrated not in the Creation Museum, but in the Museum of the Bible. The new attraction, centrally nestled near the Mall in Washington, welcomed its first official visitors this weekend. And although the institution may simply be trying to avoid the property taxes incurred by Washington’s for-profit museums, it is worth noting that unlike at the Creation Museum, admission to the Museum of the Bible is free.

While we toured the museum on opening day, as Christians trained in anthropology and art history, we were skeptical. The Museum of the Bible confronted us with living actors, whimsically bringing the Bible to life. We weren’t entirely comfortable with this risky curatorial decision, but the contrast between the mechanized Bible characters at the Creation Museum and the flesh-and-blood actors at the Museum of the Bible was instructive nonetheless.

The Museum of the Bible offers far more than replicas of Nazareth: room after room of maps, history, texts and documents. Concerns about the provenance of the biblical artifacts prompted our initial questions. We spent much of the day with curators, asked hard questions and received answers.

Where the provenance is in question or cannot be sufficiently documented yet, the museum adds disclosures and qualifications to the displays, according to Seth Pollinger, director of museum content. We were told that provenance issues will be thoroughly published, and while this does not answer all our questions, this is a promise we expect them to keep.

The museum also more fully addressed cultural and racial concerns surrounding the stories and histories it portrayed. Fundamentalism, as manifested by the Creation Museum, is happy to give a moment to questions of racial justice; it pins the blame for racism on godless evolutionists, Darwin chief among them. But evangelicalism, as reflected by the Museum of the Bible, unfurls this parenthetical aside into a magnificent, sprawling display.

In one installation, Sequoyah, a Cherokee Bible translator, appropriately dominates the entire American continent from which his descendants were evicted. The exhibit confesses the use of the Bible to both condemn and recuse slaveholding. But nearby is a copy of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, alluding to God’s judgment when the covenant with creation is unkept.

The waves of these reforming impulses ripple through the display alongside manuscripts of the first translation of the Bible by a woman (Julia E. Smith in 1876) or Walter Rauschenbusch’s “A Theology for the Social Gospel” (1917). It culminates in the towering faces of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. Just around the corner, a display attends to more recent concerns such as mass incarceration, recognition that dismissive reviews of the museum seem to have unfortunately overlooked.

A copy of “The Fundamentals” essay series from the 1910s in one exhibit seems to warn us that fundamentalism is an episode within the wider story of evangelicalism, one to which it is frequently tempted to return.

The fundamentalist-resembling Creation Museum was at aggressive odds with its neighbor museums, such as the birthplace of American paleontology at the Big Bone Lick State Historic Site, whose chronology testifies to human habitation in North America long before the Creation Museum believes the world even existed.

But the evangelical-like Museum of the Bible, by contrast, included a Baroque meditation on the theme of Ecclesiastes that pairs perfectly with — and matches the curatorial standards of — the Vermeer exhibition of the National Gallery of Art a short walk away. In addition, the abstract ruminations of Makoto Fujimura’s “The Four Gospels” were nicely complemented by the “What Absence is Made Of” exhibition at the nearby Hirshhorn Museum. And there was also a sobering correspondence between Ai Weiwei’s Hirshhorn show dedicated to political prisoners and the activists outside the Museum of the Bible who called attention to persecution of Christians in China today.

The Museum of the Bible may not reach the exacting standards of the brilliant several year-run of the Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan, but at moments, it comes close.

While we are not calling it a curatorial triumph, as professors at a historically evangelical institution, we recognize in the Museum of the Bible the evangelical context in which we teach.

Part of our education involves coaxing students from a fundamentalist “ark” mentality into more evangelical “covenant sensibilities.”

At Wheaton College, someone who believes in a literal six-day creation will be presented with evidence for the actual age of the universe, and a student skittish about diversity will be challenged to come to grips with the reality of racism. This intellectual growth offers not competition with, but a complement to a student’s Christian faith. But as the Museum of the Bible reminds us, while some East Coast schools are unearthing a history of complicity with slavery, we at Wheaton are digging into our abolitionist heritage — not to excuse racism, but to offer tools with which to resist it.

The ark of fundamentalism is satisfied with preservation, remaining within its comfortable confines. But like Noah’s dove, evangelicalism bursts from these strictures in pursuit of any olive branches it can find, troubling the waters with penetrating questions about justice and beauty that our former Wheaton colleague Larycia Hawkins (who emphasized solidarity with marginalized people such as American Muslims) once asked alongside us.

Fundamentalism anticipates God’s judgment with perverted delight, whereas evangelicalism’s covenant mentality pleads for God to show mercy and expands outward in ripples of influence beyond itself. This is well illustrated in the Museum of the Bible’s exhibit on the song “Amazing Grace,” which rippled from its 18th-century evangelical origins into the very styles of music born from the slaves that John Newton, its author, once bought and sold.

Current analyses of American culture still tend to lump the distinct fundamentalist and evangelical streams of American Christianity into the obfuscating category of “evangelical.”

But conveniently enough, these two spirits have now manifested themselves in separate museums hundreds of miles apart in every sense, sparing any further excuse for this easy conflation.

The embattled ark mentality of the Creation Museum and the engaging covenant approach of the Museum of the Bible finally help us see the historic difference between fundamentalists and evangelicals. We are therefore puzzled that visitors who caustically dismiss this new museum in Washington seem to have accidentally found themselves in Kentucky instead.

I think the author's evangelical zeal is a bit much, but it's an interesting comparison -- fundie vs. evangelical.

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

You and me both. My BFF is the only one who knows about my FJ time. I don't speak of it to anyone else.

I'm mistaken. Other people who know. One is my shrink, so that really doesn't count One is a friend who came over and I hadn't closed the browser window, but we are each other's vault. 

[onekidanddone]

3 hours ago, Mela99 said:

So is Ken Ham involved in this one too? I wonder who he'll blame if it's a flop like his ark.

Obama and Hill/Bill Clinton 

[HereticHick]

17 hours ago, Mela99 said:

So is Ken Ham involved in this one too? I wonder who he'll blame if it's a flop like his ark.

Perhaps he will blame all us liberal brown people here in the fetid swamp of Washington DC, and he will claim it should have been located someplace in "real" America.

I will bet they are clamoring for President Trump (or at least VP Pence) to make an appearance at the Museum.

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, HereticHick said:

Perhaps he will blame all us liberal brown people here in the fetid swamp of Washington DC, and he will claim it should have been located someplace in "real" America.

I will bet they are clamoring for President Trump (or at least VP Pence) to make an appearance at the Museum.

All the NFL players and other athletes who are taking a knee for justice, yup all their fault. Trump will visit and tweet how he is going to shift funding from The Smithsonian to Bible World  @HereticHick I love your location. 

ETA: I have family coming in from out of town this weekend. My cousin is a very conservative observant Jew, his wife liberal and Jewish, their first born is transgender who is rather lefty.  I have no idea what the younger kid's politics are, but I suspect they are just like the dad's. 

If I know my cousin, he is going to try to  pick on engage me in conversation about Trump. Maybe  I should just take him down to the Bible-pa-looza.

Edited November 21, 2017 by onekidanddone
added more thoughts and fixed some of the gender pronouns

[keen23]

Slate has an interesting review of the museum, and how it acknowledges that the Bible isn't "the cartoon Bible, eternal and infallible"

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/11/the_messy_scripture_on_display_at_the_museum_of_the_bible.html

[HarryPotterFan]

9 hours ago, HereticHick said:

Perhaps he will blame all us liberal brown people here in the fetid swamp of Washington DC, and he will claim it should have been located someplace in "real" America.

I will bet they are clamoring for President Trump (or at least VP Pence) to make an appearance at the Museum.

And us Jews, we've always been a go-to scapegoat.

[legalbeagle]

Okay, I WENT TO THE BIBLE MUSEUM, Y'ALL. 

Overall impression (for those interested in the TL;DR version): the museum is generally tasteful and well done, although its agenda (to promote the Bible as the Word of God) is still pretty clear. 

Tiny note on my own personal background -- I grew up Catholic, converted to evangelical Christianity in high school, got my BA from an evangelical college (where I took many Bible classes and also studied history), became a liberal Christian in my mid-to-late 20s while attending law school, and officially deconverted from Christianity in my early 30s. So, I'm pretty knowledgable about the evangelical talking points re: Christianity and the Bible, and even though I'm no longer religious, I still find religion (particularly Christianity) fascinating.

Now, onward to the museum!

I went with my husband and toddler son. We wanted to do some low-level trolling, so my husband wore a science t-shirt, my son wore a robot t-shirt, and I wore my "Nevertheless, She Persisted" t-shirt. 

We had passes to enter the museum and also special passes for a special "New Testament" exhibit. We went to the NT exhibit first and it was a huge disappointment. It was just a cartoon video telling the story of Jesus, including his death and resurrection and Mary Magdalene finding the empty tomb and Doubting Thomas doubting, and Saul's conversion and efforts to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. It definitely put me off; I was hoping for something historical.

However, there was also a whole section of first century Nazareth where living actors told us about living in the first century. One man even told us about this man named Jesus who was driven out of the village, and they tried to kill him, but somehow he survived! (WHO IS THIS MAN???) Another living actor showed us some tools they used to build houses. He asked me where I was from and I said DC. He looked at me somewhat blankly and I said, "Here, Washington, DC." He said, "Oh! You mean the West? Across the great sea? We've had many visitors from there lately." Yeah, yeah, ok, I get it, you're committing to the bit that we're in first century Nazareth. Then he asked me what my t-shirt meant. I said, "Oh, it's something from my home in the West across the great sea." My husband was silently laughing his ass off. 

They had a Lori-Alexander-approved gem:

Spoiler

There was also an exhibit on the number of languages the Bible has been translated into. They had statistics about which languages have an entire Bible, which only have portions, which only have a NT, etc. This definitely felt like part of the "agenda" of the museum -- it was clear that they promoted a goal of having the Bible translated into every language.

The exhibit on the history of the Bible was the most interesting section. They acknowledged that there are creation myths in many Middle Eastern religions, not just the Judeo-Christian text. They also discussed the many different ways the Bible has been translated (including, for example, translating English versions from the Vulgate, which was a translation from the original Greek and Hebrew, and how the KJV relied heavily on previous English translations). I was, quite frankly, surprised at these admissions -- I had thought they'd try to ignore a lot of that history in favor of an infallible translation handed down from the first century. Some of what they discussed was also quite fascinating, such as how both the German and English translations of the Bible "created" the language grammar rules we still follow today. Plus, they had quite a few versions of Bibles on display that were absolutely beautiful.

Don't tell the Activist Mommy, but...

Spoiler

At this point, my son pulled his arm out of his shirt up through the neck hole and defrauded the other guests of the Bible Museum:

Spoiler

There were some beautiful Bibles to look at. Here are a few:

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

What's interesting in the history of the Bible section is that they also put up these banners everywhere with quotes from the Bible about how perfect the word of God is. I thought it was an odd choice, considering the fact that they acknowledge that, say, the creation story is taken from other religious traditions and that the early English translations of the Bible were imperfect. (The first version of the KJV was so filled with errors that they had to put out a corrected version a few years later, for example!) Anyway, a few of the banners:

Spoiler

We then moved on to the Bible in American History. Did you know the Founding Fathers were deeply influenced by the Bible? DID YOU???? The Declaration of Independence refers to our "Creator," after all!

Spoiler

They also displayed a Thomas Jefferson Bible; for those unfamiliar, Thomas Jefferson rejected the deity of Christ and his miracles and focused only on Jesus's moral teachings. Now I find Thomas Jefferson's religious views to be complicated and interesting. The Bible museum kind of glosses over all of this and instead emphasizes that Jefferson really thought Jesus was a really, really, really great guy:

Spoiler

(And this is one of the reasons why it was clear to me that the museum was pushing a pro-Christianity agenda!)

They also talked a fair bit about slavery in America and how pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups both used the Bible to promote their agendas. For example, they had a slave's Bible that omitted passages about slavery and emphasized passages about obedience.  

Spoiler

They also discussed how the Bible influenced the civil rights movement and the suffragettes. There was also quite a bit about our good friend Billy Graham. Not to mention a little shout out to the Scopes monkey trial! 

Spoiler

Next, we went to the exhibit on the influence of the Bible on the international world. We were starting to move a bit more quickly at this point due to my cranky toddler, so I wish I'd had more time to spend here. They talked about some "controversies" such as Galileo. They also had these cool comic books (though I'll admit, I missed the context of these):

Spoiler

And don't forget the Bible's influence on high fashion!

Spoiler

After this, we headed down to the children's section. It was actually pretty fun; there was a clear Christian agenda here (i.e., the games were of a religious nature, like, "Daniel was thrown into the lion's pit; throw this ball into the mouth of the hungry lion so Daniel can survive the night without being eaten!") but my son had a blast playing with all the animals from Noah's Ark! There was also a jungle gym structure for bigger kids.

The atrium was lovely; on the ceiling, it had these stained glass images that shifted and changed:

Spoiler

A FJ'er also asked about accessibility for persons with disabilities. We had no issues navigating the museum with our stroller; there were ramps leading into the museum and elevators to take us to the different floors. Each exhibition had a set of glass doors that needed to be opened to enter, but there were wheelchair buttons to push to make the doors automatically open. (We found one that did not work, but didn't have issues with the rest.) The women's restroom also had 2 handicapped stalls, plus there was a family bathroom that would be big enough for someone with a disability to navigate. 

My husband changed my son's diaper and pointed out there weren't changing tables in the men's room; however, there also weren't changing tables in the women's room, but there was in the family restroom. 

We had the option after the Bible in America exhibit to take a survey about some thoughts about the Bible and America and we were both given the option to choose our non-religious affiliation. They also asked for our gender and gave the options of "male, female, other." However, a few of the questions were open-ended (such as "if you could describe the influence the Bible has had on America in one word, what would it be?), and if you started typing words, it would come up with positive words, such as "wo - rthy" when you really wanted to type "wo - rthless."  (This is just an example; neither the husband or I typed those things. I can't actually recall the words we typed in but we both had the program try to substitute "positive" words for us.)

Also, quick plug in favor of the museum restaurant. It was SO GOOD. So good that I didn't even care that paying the outrageous $15-per-meal prices were going to supporting the Bible museum and Hobby Lobby. IT. WAS. DELICIOUS. The restaurant is supposedly serving authentic first century Middle Eastern cuisine. My husband had pumpkin falafel, and I had something with lamb meatballs and chickpeas and tahini grits. For the less adventurous eaters, there was mac and cheese (my son gives it two thumbs up) and hummus and pita. Deeeeelicious. 

Was it worth spending half a day checking it out? Definitely yes. There were a few exhibits I didn't get to see closely, and a few others that were only accessible if we paid for them (which, nope), but most everything we saw with our free admission was pretty interesting. Would I go back? Probably not. I can only look at so many copies of the Bible in a language I don't read before it gets a bit redundant.  But I'm not sorry that I went; it was, for the most part, a pretty entertaining day. 

Sorry for the low-quality pics; I took them on my phone and a lot of them were rushed so they came out fuzzy. Blame my kid for running away from me every three seconds!

If anyone has a specific question, I'll try to answer it. Hopefully this review is helpful for any of you who were curious!

(Also, I'm trying to edit this because an extra pic keeps showing up at the bottom; if I can't fix it, maybe a mod can?)

 

Spoiler

 

[SilverBeach]

Mr. SB doesn't even know about FJ, he knows I have a forum I spend time on. I don't really know how to explain this place. My DD knows all about FJ as she shares my fundy fascination.

[PennySycamore]

@legalbeagle,  thanks for taking one for the team!

I love the shirts you, DH and your son wore.  Your little boy reminds me of my grandson who was visiting for Thanksgiving.

[HarryPotterFan]

@legalbeagle Thanks for telling us about your trip to the museum! It's definitely interesting they admitted that there are other creation stories and that the KJV isn't the infallible direct word of Gd. It's a bit weird for me to see they have Torah scrolls  and an old siddur there, considering their emphasis on Christianity. 

The Bible Museum came up during Thanksgiving dinner conversation. One cousin wants to go, pretend to be manaquin, and jump out and scream at random people. Another wants to pretend to be a street preacher outside he museum, but hand out tracts on the talmud.

[HereticHick]

Thanks so much for the review.  Did you see any identifiable fundies among the visitors? (large families in denim frumpers? Or orthodox Jews? Or anabaptists?)

 

Also, in addition to the early scandal of stolen artifacts likely bought from ISIS-supporters, there is the problem of forgeries--

 

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/museum-of-the-bible-dead-sea-scrolls-forgeries-history-archaeology/

Forgeries May Hide in Museum of the Bible's Dead Sea Scrolls

With the museum’s support, scholars are racing to understand the disputed Biblical texts.

[although an exhibit devoted to forgeries would be really interesting!]