Exhibit of rare Bibles travels within reach of Arkansas

Passages exhibit in Springfield, Mo., shows rare artifacts from Hobby Lobby family

Published: November 17, 2014

By Alesia Schaefer
Rogers Correspondent

Courtesy Museum of the Bible / DeMoss Group

Among the more than 450 rare biblical artifacts on display at Passages is the world’s largest Bible, containing more than 8,000 pages and weighing more than 1,000 pounds.

Courtesy Museum of the Bible / DeMoss Group

Among the more than 450 rare biblical artifacts on display at Passages is the world’s largest Bible, containing more than 8,000 pages and weighing more than 1,000 pounds.

ROGERS — Looking for an activity to enjoy during the holiday season? Consider a road trip to Missouri to visit a traveling exhibit showcasing the story of the Bible.

Complete with ancient manuscripts, artifacts and interactive displays and stories of influential figures in biblical history, the exhibit is one of the most comprehensive and informative of its kind.

Passages is a traveling exhibition that is part of a larger, 40,000-item collection that is said to be assembled from Cambridge to the remotest parts of China. The exhibit opened in Springfield in April and will continue its run through Jan. 3.

Aaron Rutherford, director of Passages domestic traveling exhibit, said he expects the holidays to continue to draw crowds.

“The exhibit has been well received,” Rutherford said, “and Springfield is well positioned because of the number of colleges in the city and its location to attract visitors from the surrounding states.”

From the humble beginnings of the purchase of the first biblical artifact, the Roseberry Rolle manuscript in 2009, by Hobby Lobby president Steve Green and family, the exhibit has grown to include world-renowned artifacts and rare private collections.

Green, chairman of the board of the Museum of the Bible, established the non-profit museum in 2010. Since its inception, Green has assembled one of the world’s largest private collections of rare biblical artifacts, known as the Green Collection.

Over the years, Green, whose passion is to make the Bible more accessible to the world, has united a team of academics, designers, technology professionals and other experts to create the 430,000-square-foot Museum of the Bible, dedicated to a scholarly and engaging presentation of the Bible’s impact, history and narrative, scheduled to open in 2017 in Washington, D.C., three blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

“The Bible is the best-selling, most-translated book of all time and is arguably history’s most significant piece of literature,” Green has said about his interest in biblical artifacts. It has had an unquestionable influence on science, education, democracy, arts and society. This book has also profoundly impacted lives across the ages, including my own.”

Making the Bible accessible to all is not just a catch phrase for Green.

In April 2012, the Verbum Domini (“Word of the Lord”) exhibit showcasing more than 200 ancient and rare biblical texts and artifacts from the Green Collection opened at the Vatican. Following a successful run, a second exhibit, Verbum Domini II, opened in March 2014.

In September, the world’s oldest known Jewish book of prayers (“siddur”) was displayed in Israel for the first time after being bought only a year earlier in 2013 by the Green Collection.

Now considered one of the world’s largest private Bible collections, the exhibit features rare biblical texts and artifacts in historical settings, hands-on activities and digital technologies.

Visitors to Passages interactive living-history exhibit in Springfield will witness a display that chronicles the story of the most debated book of all time and will experience how the biblical narrative has been handed down from ancient times to the modern age.

Additionally, the exhibition features some 400 items from the Green Collection. Important to the exhibit are artifacts preserved through the Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox faith traditions. In Passages, visitors will also have the opportunity to see other treasures such as:

• First-century B.C. Dead Sea Scroll fragments

• First editions of the King James Bible

• Codex Climaci Rescriptus, containing the most-extensive early biblical texts similar to Jesus’ household language

• Torah scrolls that survived the Nazi Holocaust

• Cuneiform tablets dating to the time of Abraham

• Early and first editions of the Douay-Rheims Catholic Old and New Testaments

• Rare letters and Bibles from Martin Luther, John Wycliffe and William Tyndale

• The world’s smallest Bible — and the largest, containing more than 8,000 pages and weighing more than 1,000 pounds

• The original, handwritten manuscript of the biblically inspired ”Battle Hymn of the Republic”

Some of the unique features of Passages are replicas of a Jewish synagogue during the Nazi Holocaust, King James’ chamber at Westminster Abbey and Israel’s Qumran Caves, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery in 1947. A working replica of the Gutenberg printing press is also displayed.

Since premiering in Oklahoma City in May 2011, Rutherford said thousands of people have experienced the traveling exhibit that has visited five U.S. cities and three countries.

After Passages leaves Springfield in January, it is scheduled to head to the West Coast.

“The next and final stop, although not officially announced,” Rutherford said, “will be in Los Angeles where it will stay until 2016.”

From there it will make its way back to Washington, D.C., to the international Bible museum scheduled to open in 2017.