Visiting the Museum of the Bible founded by Hobby Lobby’s president

The Museum of the Bible attempts to bring Biblical events to life for visitors.Museum of the Bible

• The Museum of the Bible admitted this week that it showcased fake Dead Sea Scrolls in its massive collection. 
• The $500 million private Museum of the Bible opened last November, filled with artifacts and recreations of Biblical stories.
• Hobby Lobby’s president — who paid $3 million in a case involving smuggling artifacts in 2017 — is one of the driving forces behind the museum.
• The museum has been plagued by questions about how it will balance religion and facts.

A new scandal is plaguing the Museum of the Bible. 

On Monday, the $500 million private museum admitted that third-party testing of what had been displayed as fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls revealed the artifacts were fake and likely modern forgeries. Five fragments have been removed from the museum as a result. 

The Museum of the Bible opened in November 2017 in Washington, DC. 

Even prior to its opening, the private museum had been plagued by questions regarding how it would balance religious messages and historical facts.

Things were further complicated when news broke in July 2017 that the museum chairman and Hobby Lobby president Steve Green had been involved in smuggling ancient Iraqi artifacts into the United States. The museum has also faced backlash on certain exhibits, such as the decision to display the Confederate flag and pro-slavery texts in an attempt to understand the Bible’s role in the Civil War. 

Here’s everything you need to know about the controversial museum:

“As many people as we can educate about this book, the better,” Green told the Washington Post in 2014. “I think seeing the biblical foundations of our nation — for our legislators to see that, that a lot of that was biblically based, that we have religious freedoms today, which are a biblical concept, it can’t hurt being there.”

Source: The Washington Post