National Bible Museum to Open With 1000 Torahs
Steve Green, the president of crafts store chain Hobby Lobby, loves the Bible. How much? Somewhere in the realm of 30 million dollars.
A devoted Pentecostal Christian, Green wants to use his family’s sizeable fortune to create a 300,000 square foot National Bible Museum that brings to life the history of his favorite book. Green’s already impressive private collection contains 30,000 items and is valued between $20 million to $40 million.
Scott Carroll, a former history professor who specialized in biblical manuscripts at the “Christ-centered” Cornerstone University, will serve as executive director, with a stated goal of creating “the Smithsonian of biblical antiquities.” And while the location has yet to be decided Dallas, which is on the Bible Belt, is at the top of the list.
According to a recent article in The New York Times, sacred Jewish texts are getting caught up in the mix. Green’s collection contains over 1000 Torahs, including several that survived the Holocaust and one that dates to the Spanish Inquisition.
Just how the all-Christian team behind the National Bible Museum plans to present their significant cache of Judaica, is not yet known.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO