MBTS co-sponsors event to bring awareness of biblical collection to Kansas City community
posted on Jul 15, 2011 by T. Patrick HudsonMidwestern Baptist Theological Seminary teamed up with the metro area’s business community on July 13 at Kansas City’s historic Union Station to promote a greater awareness of one of the nation’s premier biblical artifact collections.
The Green Collection is a compilation of more than 40,000 biblical antiquities that is currently featured via the worldwide traveling exhibition Passages and will eventually form the core of a permanent, international, non-sectarian museum of the Bible, according to its website. The Collection’s first artifact was purchased in 2009 by Steve Green, the president of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts retail chain.
“Our primary purpose in co-sponsoring this event with J.E. Dunn Construction and Union Station was to introduce the Kansas City community to this phenomenal collection,” said Dr. R. Philip Roberts, Midwestern’s president. “I was amazed at the quality and richness of it when I saw the opening exhibit in Washington, D.C., and I wanted to draw the attention of as many people as possible to it. The collection’s richness and variety, in terms of time and width of impact and resources, as well as the enormous quality historically of all that is involved is amazing. It is also our hope to see some of it, if not all of it, here in Kansas City in the near future.”
More than 200 of Kansas City’s business, educational and religious leaders were in attendance to listen to Green, the event’s featured speaker. Also assisting in the presentation was Dr. Scott Carroll, director of the Green Collection and an ancient and medieval manuscript scholar, as well as Cary Summers, CEO of the Nehemiah Group and designer of the Passages’ traveling exhibit.
During his talk, Green noted that the Collection’s genesis resulted from the findings of a survey focused on interest within American society to open a Bible museum. He said two of the survey’s questions provided surprising answers: “Do you believe the Bible still applies to today’s problems or was it only practical years ago?” and “Is America more in need of the Bible today than ever before?” In each case, better than 90 percent of the respondents believed the Bible to be relevant and needed in America today.
“This just goes against what we would hear in the popular culture…and this gave us great confidence that what we’d be doing, there’d be a market for,” Green said. “The acceptance and interest level for having a museum dedicated to the Bible – the most incredible book ever written and that has had the greatest impact on our society of any other book – there needs to be a museum that tells that story in a very solid academic way.”
The Hobby Lobby president said that while the Collection is in somewhat of a holding pattern awaiting a permanent home, there was a need to get the word out about it. He enlisted the help of Summers to design the compendium’s traveling element – Passages, which is a 14,000-square-foot interactive, multimedia exhibition featuring rare biblical manuscripts, printed Bibles, and historical items including a Dead Sea Scroll text, ancient biblical papyri, portions of the Gutenberg Bible and multiple first editions of the English Bible through the King James Version.
According to Passages’ website, over 300 of the world’s rarest artifacts are presented in thematic settings which depict significant historical periods of time and are brought to life with animatronic historical figures, creative films and many interactive activities.
Another aspect of the Green Collection discussed during the event was the Green Scholars Initiative, which allows undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students nationwide hands-on access to these ancient artifacts. According to the Green Collection’s spokespeople, the program has assembled a team of world-renown scholars who direct research projects at 70 universities and seminaries throughout North America and is designed to foster collaboration between established and young scholars to pioneer new biblical discoveries.
“The Green Scholars Initiative flips the traditional paradigm, which is leading institutions controlling ancient documents and doling them out to whomever they want, or you come to them and work by their terms,” Carroll said. “We thought, ‘What if these things were entrusted in the hands of excellent scholars and mentors and democratized, distributed around the country?’ When the entire thing is up and running, then hundreds of students will be involved and impacted by this process.
“The different research initiatives are overseen by the leading scholars in the world via the internet, and items are entrusted predominantly to traditional undergraduate institutions,” Carroll continued. “So there are sophomores and juniors working on the earliest texts in the New Testament and involved in the publication of those things. This will rise up a generation of capable young scholars who are invigorated and excited about studying these things.” Carroll will return to the Kansas City area on Oct. 25-27 to lecture at Midwestern Seminary about the Green Collection and about the importance of historical biblical research.
Green wrapped up his discussion by stating that the intended results of the Collection are threefold: to present the history of the Bible, to depict the impact of the Bible, and to tell the story of the Bible. “We have probably the most ignorant population we’ve ever had in our society (about the Bible) because it’s been taken out of our schools,” Green said. “We want to be able to, in a simple way, explain to them ‘Here’s what the Bible is.’ Ultimately, it’s about the fact that we are sinners; we need a Savior; and Christ was that, and He came to die for us that we might have life.”
Green added that the Collection’s leadership is currently researching the best place for a permanent museum with Washington, D.C., New York and Dallas being strongly considered. The Passages traveling exhibit is currently on display at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art until Oct. 16.