A massive Bible museum with around $500m opened recently Washington DC this week. It is the brainchild of the evangelical Christian president of US arts and craft chain Hobby Lobby. The Bible museum has been eight years in the making, according to the Associated Press, after Hobby Lobby president Steve Green began collecting biblical artifacts. His family’s arts and crafts chain has been a lightning rod for controversy in recent years, convincing the US Supreme Court in 2014 that it deserved a religious exemption from an Obamacare requirement that employers provide their workers with certain types of birth control.
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The massive Museum of the Bible, has three main exhibit floors, lecture and meeting space, restaurants and a rooftop garden, a ballroom and a 472-seat theater with wraparound projection walls. The museum is located three blocks from the Capitol and was largely funded by the owners of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain. The company president, Steve Green, says the museum is nonsectarian. Religion scholars and others will be combing the exhibits to see if that claim bears out.
Admission is free, although donations are requested. Here are some details about what to expect –
At the first floor there is children’s area, which highlights acts of courage depicted in the Bible and has a high-tech feature that projects a watery surface with marine life below. Children can walk across the image, creating the illusion of walking on water.
Then there is theater which will open with the show “Amazing Grace,” a musical that played briefly on Broadway about John Newton, a slave trader and Anglican priest who wrote the Christian hymn of the show’s title and denounced the slave trade.
There is a complete collection of art and arte crafts that dedicate to the Jesus. An extensive exhibit aims to recreate what Nazareth looked like during the time of Jesus, including a mikveh, or ritual bath, and a courtyard depicting village life. People in period costume will guide visitors through the section.
Apart from the traditional art crafts, the Museum also hosts some modern exhibits. It highlight how the Bible has influenced people in ways they may not realize. On television screens, videos will play pop music songs with an explanation of the Bible verse that inspired the lyrics. Another section has high fashion inspired by Scripture.
And there is also the fun game ‘Find the verse’ A motion simulator called “Washington Revelations” creates the sensation of flying over the nation’s capital to see Bible inscriptions and references in buildings and monuments throughout the city.
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