Green Collection

Updated on Dec 19, 2023

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Inaugurated March 31, 2011

Genre Biblical manuscripts and related artifacts Location(s) Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Patron(s) Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby

The Green Collection is the one of the world's largest private collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts, made up of more than 40,000 biblical antiquities assembled by the Green family, founders of national retail chain Hobby Lobby.

The collection will be displayed in the $400 million Museum of the Bible scheduled to open in 2017 in Washington, D.C.

Background

The collection is named for the Green family, founders and leaders of Hobby Lobby, the world’s largest privately owned arts and crafts retailer. The collection was assembled beginning in November 2009 by its original director, ancient/medieval manuscript specialist Scott Carroll, in cooperation with Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby and the collection's benefactor.

Highlights

The capstone of The Green Collection is the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, known as Uncial 0250 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering); which is a palimpsest whose underwriting includes pages from a Greek uncial manuscript of the New Testament, as well as pages from a Christian Palestinian Aramaic uncial manuscript of the Old and New Testament. Paleographically the Greek section has been assigned to the 8th century (or 7th century), and the Christian Palestinian Aramaic section to the 6th century.

Other items in The Green Collection include:

The second-largest private collection of Dead Sea Scrolls, all of which are unpublished

The world’s largest private collection of Jewish scrolls, including Torahs that survived the Spanish Inquisition, scrolls confiscated by the Nazis and recovered in concentration camps and others from across the globe

One of the world’s largest holdings of unpublished biblical and classical papyri, including texts that date back to the lost Library of Alexandria

Rare illuminated manuscripts and previously unknown biblical texts and commentaries

The earliest-known, near-complete translation of the Psalms in Middle English, including the Canticles and commentary predating Wycliffe’s translation

An undocumented copy of Wycliffe’s New Testament in Middle English

Some of the earliest printed texts, including a large portion of the Gutenberg Bible and the world’s only complete Block Bible in private hands

Early tracts and Bibles belonging to Martin Luther, including a little-known letter written the night before his excommunication

An undocumented fragment of the Tyndale New Testament, published while he awaited execution

Numerous items illustrating the contribution of Jews and Catholics to the King James translation of the Bible and other historical artifacts

Provenance

In 2015 questions were raised about the provenance of some articles in the collection when The Daily Beast ran a story about two or three hundred cuneiform tablets purchased form an Israeli antiquities dealer and confiscated by U.S. Customs when they were being shipped to the Green collection storage facility in Oklahoma City in 2011. As of 2015, the tablets remained impounded as a legal dispute regarding the possible illegal purchase of antiquities removed from a conflict zone (Mesopotamia) proceeds.

Book of Books

On October 23, 2013, a special exhibition drawn from the Green collection, Book of Books, opened at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. It will be in Jerusalem until May 24, 2014. It then will become part of the permanent exhibition in the new museum.

Verbum Domini Exhibit

Select items from Passages, The Green Collection and items on loan from other private collections around the world were displayed in St. Peter's Square, Vatican City, for Lent and Easter 2012, highlighting the Jewish and Christian contributions to the formation and preservation of the Bible. American Bible Society and the Vatican Library supported this endeavor.

"Passages"

Passages, a traveling exhibition featuring select items from The Green Collection that tell the story of the English Bible, was announced to a gathering of business, government, academic and religious leaders at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C. on March 31, 2011. Passages made its worldwide debut at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art in Oklahoma City—home to Hobby Lobby’s headquarters—in May 2011. The exhibit was eventually seen by more than 63,000 people in Oklahoma's capital city.

Visitors to Passages interact with more than 400 rare biblical texts, artifacts and discoveries through multimedia and historical settings in an 30,000-square-foot (2,800 m²) exhibit designed to tell the story of how today's Bible came to be.

Other Exhibits

Portions of Passages and The Green Collection have also been on display on various college and university campuses throughout its worldwide tour, including Baylor University for its conference on "The King James Bible and the World It Made, 1611-2011" in April 2011, Liberty University in September 2011, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in February 2012, and Indiana Wesleyan University in April 2013. Items from The Green Collection appeared at a series of conferences in West Africa in September 2011.

In honor of the Pope's September 2015 visit to Philadelphia, the Museum of the Bible will sponsor a special exhibition entitled, "Verbum Domini II,"at the Philadelphia Convention Center adjacent to the World Meeting.

Scholars Initiative

Formed in the summer of 2010, the Scholars Initiative provides university mentors and student scholars at participating institutions with research opportunities on items from The Green Collection.

Academics and textual experts participating in the Scholars Initiative include:

Mariam Ayad, University of Memphis: Lead Mentor-Scholar, Papyri Project and Egyptian and Coptic Texts

Gordon Campbell, University of Leicester: Co-Senior Scholar, King James Version Project

Robert Duke, Azusa Pacific University: Scholar of Hebrew Texts

Jeffrey Fish, Baylor University: Scholar of Greek Texts

Ralph Hanna, University of Oxford: Senior Scholar, Richard Rolle Project

David Lyle Jeffrey, Baylor University: Senior Scholar, Christian Tradition and Spirituality

Alister McGrath, University of Cambridge: Senior Scholar, KJV Critical Text Project

Curt Niccum, Abilene Christian University: Distinguished Scholar of Ethiopic Texts

Dirk Obbink, University of Oxford: Senior Scholar, Papyri and Codex Climaci Rescriptus Projects

Thomas Oden, Drew University: Senior Scholar, African Texts

David Riggs, Indiana Wesleyan University: Distinguished Scholar of Latin Texts

Marcel Sigrist, École Biblique: Senior Scholar, Cuneiform

Daniel B. Wallace, Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, and Dallas Theological Seminary Mentor-Scholar:

Peter Williams, University of Cambridge: Scholar of Aramaic Texts

Benno van den Toren, University of Oxford: Distinguished Scholar of Dutch Texts

Indiana Wesleyan University Professor Jerry Pattengale serves as Executive Director of the Green Scholars Initiative.

Museum of the Bible

In 2012, Steve Green announced his family's intention to open a permanent institution, which he claimed would be a scholarly museum, not an evangelistic outreach ministry, within the next four years to house The Green Collection. The mission statement of the museum, however, as found in its 501(c)3 tax filings for 2011, the most recent year available, is "To bring to life the living Word of God, to tell its compelling story of preservation, and to inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible." More recently, Green told a press conference that the Museum will focus on the Bible’s impact, history and narrative, explaining that while he might hope that the museum would bring people to Christianity, the museum is not created as a tool of evangelizing, “We’re not discussing a lot of particulars of the book. It’s more of a high-level discussion of here’s this book, what is its history and impact and what is its story."

The Greens identified Washington, D.C., Dallas, and New York City as finalists for the museum's location.

In July 2012, The Green Collection announced the purchase of the building housing the Washington Design Center in D.C., for a reported $50 million, to house the as-yet-unnamed national Bible museum. The building is located two blocks from the National Mall at 300 D. Street SW, near the Federal Center SW Metro station. The museum will reportedly charge admission, as do other private museums in Washington, such as the National Building Museum, the International Spy Museum, and the Newseum.

The museum is under construction in the former Design Center, an historically protected Renaissance Revival building close to the National Mall and the United States Capitol.

References

Green Collection Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA

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