Bible exhibit a labor of love for its curators_40504

Posted: 4/02/04

Bible exhibit a labor of love for its curators

By Yvonne Betowt

Religion News Service

PHOENIX, Ariz. (RNS)–As a young man in college, Joel Lampe says he “lost” the faith taught him by his father, Craig Lampe, a noted authority on old and rare Bibles.

The younger Lampe tried to find God by studying other faiths, including Judaism and Islam. He even lived in India for six months to examine Hinduism before realizing it wasn't for him.

“I could poke a thousand holes in the Resurrection, the Catholic Church, Islam and every other religious denomination,” said Joel Lampe, one of the two curators of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Forbidden Book exhibit, a traveling exhibit that began last September in Dallas

“I couldn't defend my faith. I had to find it.”

In 1990 Lampe went to Israel to study the Dead Sea Scrolls and visit historical biblical sites. As he saw sites he had only read about in the Bible, Lampe began the see Scripture in a different light.

He realized they were more than just words of wisdom passed down through the ages. They were words written by real people about real events.

A couple of years later, he said, he began studying the lives of William Tyndale, John Rogers, Thomas Cranmer and John Wycliffe–biblical publishing pioneers who were persecuted or killed for challenging the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

He also said he learned from his academic study of Jesus' disciples that many of them experienced horrific deaths “and none even flinched.”

“These were 11 guys who went 11 different directions (after the Ascension) and never saw each other again. They all told the same story and refused to deny what they saw. There had to be something to what they believed,” he said.

Lampe, who lives in Phoenix, said he decided Christianity actually held the truth for him. About two years ago, he and his father's long-time friend and colleague, Lee Biondi, a noted curator of ancient manuscripts and Bibles, decided to put together a religion-related exhibit that would appeal to the masses.

It would be an exhibit allowing an up-close view of the ancient biblical artifacts and historic Bibles such as the Gutenberg Bible (1455), the English Wycliffite Bible (circa 1329-1384), the first Tyndale New Testament (1526), Luther's Reformation German Bible (1536), and the King James Bible (1611), and several others of historical significance. The exhibit also includes the Lunar Bible, a two-inch square microfilm of the Bible taken on the Apollo 14 moon mission in 1971.

Biondi began calling owners of the religious relics to ask permission to include them in his exhibit. At the same time, he made arrangements to have the Dead Sea Scrolls fragments which had been brought to Murfreesboro, Tenn., last year be part of the exhibit.

“It is a group of like-minded people who were not only willing to let us borrow their pieces, but were very eager to share the story (of the Bible),” Biondi said of those lending pieces for the exhibit.

“We wanted to tell the entire story of the Bible, from the very beginning to today. Most of the pieces are privately owned, and most of the owners are very religious but wanted to remain anonymous,” he said.

Biondi is a renowned curator of art exhibits throughout the world. He said to his knowledge this is the only exhibit featuring a complete history of the Bible. The exhibit includes several 5,000-year-old pictographic clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia.

“It's all still amazing to me when I see people react to it,” said Biondi. “I see it fresh through the eyes of the people who see it for the first time.”

“In many exhibits of this type, only wealthy people are usually invited to view it,” Biondi said. “But we wanted to make it available to anyone who is interested in it.”