Exhibits feed the public’s hunger for biblical history

Posted: 1/05/07

Exhibits feed the public’s
hunger for biblical history

By Rebecca U. Cho

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A box believed to contain the remains of the son of Simon of Cyrene—the man the Bible says carried Jesus’ cross to his crucifixion—is traveling the United States. Meanwhile, curators are preparing the earliest-known manuscript of the Ten Commandments for display next year in San Diego. At the same time, archaic writings testifying to the status of Scripture throughout centuries lie behind glass in Washington, D.C.

With simultaneous exhibits of biblical artifacts on display or in the works across the nation, the museum world and the general public cannot seem to get enough of the Bible.

“I think the museum world is burgeoning in this area,” said Hershel Shanks, founder of the Biblical Archaeology Society and editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review magazine, which tracks exhibits throughout the country.

An ossuary, or bone box, dating from the Roman period is part of the traveling “From Abraham to Jesus” archaeological exhibit. (RNS photo courtesy of Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology)

The seeming escalation in the number of biblical archaeological exhibits in the United States may be coincidence, but there are several theories.

Shanks said popular interest in Christianity’s foundations, fueled by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, is playing a part in creating a cross-fertilization in interest between the academic and lay worlds.

“Archaeologists are digging things up, scholars are writing and so are the fiction writers,” Shanks said.

Cary Summers, CEO of The Nehemiah Group, a consulting firm that has helped build exhibits in Israel, said public interest in the Holy Land is greater now than in previous years, in part due to a greater curiosity about religion following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Summers collaborated with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on an exhibit touring the United States called “From Abraham to Jesus” that walks visitors through the story of 2,500 years in the Holy Land using a combination of antiquities from biblical times and multimedia special effects.

The success of Dead Sea Scrolls exhibits last year in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Mobile, Ala., convinced him public interest was high and the timing was right to bring the show to the United States, Summers said.

“We’ve certainly hit a hot button,” he said.

Through the traveling exhibit, the ossuary—or burial box—believed to contain the bones of Simon of Cyrene’s son is making its public debut.

The oldest artifacts in the show have been dated to 3250 B.C.—the time of Noah’s Ark, according to Summers. The show is touring 27 U.S. cities and Toronto until December 2008.

In Washington, the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery exhibition “In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000” tracks the progress of the Bible from centuries-old scraps of parchment to the familiar codified form in use today.

A Seattle museum exhibit focuses on the more-than-2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls. Similar exhibits will open next year in Kansas City, Mo., and San Diego.

The scrolls are believed to be the oldest surviving copies of the Old Testament and are considered by many to be the greatest archaeological find of modern times. The writings have been dated between 250 B.C. and 68 B.C.

The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibits indicate a greater willingness of Israeli authorities to allow the artifacts to travel outside Israel, Shanks said.

The exhibits are part of Israeli efforts to raise funds for the scrolls’ conservation, said Risa Levitt Kohn, curator for the San Diego Natural History Museum’s “Dead Sea Scrolls” exhibit.

“Antiquities authorities are primarily interested in (the scrolls’) conservation, and conservation is very expensive,” Kohn said.

Seattle’s Pacific Science Center’s exhibit, “Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls,” drew 14,000 people in its first week, compared to the usual 30,000 visitors to all museum exhibits in the entire month of September. A similar exhibit drew large crowds in Charlotte, N.C., last spring.

In February, a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit will open at Union Station in Kansas City. The San Diego Natural History Museum is set to open a similar exhibit of 24 scrolls, including parts of Psalms, Job and Deuteronomy, in June.

The scrolls exhibits feature other artifacts from Qumran, the small village near the northwest shore of the Dead Sea where a shepherd looking for a stray goat discovered the scrolls in caves in 1947. The Israeli Antiquities Authority, an Israeli government agency, is responsible for releasing the scrolls for public viewings.