First 1000 years of the Bible....
WOW.
45 minute wait, rented a little PDA so you got an audio description at each exhibit. My mother, my kids, my sister and her kids went.
We also went through part of the Native American Museum...the reason I mention it, the tie between the two, was the acknowledgement in both exhibits to turn of the century white collectors, who may have started with greed but ended with philanthropy who without their millions and passion many museums would not have collections and much history would have been lost.
At tad more from the Native exhibit, the first major museum where so many native cultures in the western hemisphere were consulted and had major input on the nature and tenor of the exhibits....all truly incredible...and heart wrenching.
Back to the Bible exhibit....the Smithsonian specifically looked at the bible as a book, and the history of it, and the history of books that lay within it.
First thing you saw was a plexiglass box about a square meter, 25cm tall full of old papers, tattered junk, most of it crumbled to ashes...and behind it an old photograph blown up with a man at a table of such paper and behind him other tables mounded high...sorting...this is the painstaking task of the early research....(if you've read anything on Deep Sea Scrolls or Nag Hamadi texts...this picture brought those stories even more to life)
ah there was a piece of a Dead Sea Scroll as well....incredible.
What this exhibit in combination with reading the info, looking at the pictures, seeing the pieces of history, and listening to the audio...more than anything else...brought the stories to life, unbelievably to life, at times I wasn't in a museum, I was walking through the streets with my first and second century counterparts...
It is so funny, sitting here in front of the computer posting, next to my bookshelf, in the midst of my pile of papers...I'm driven back to the experience of the exhibit, and the contemplation of what it was like.
.....
Yes there is value in the Torah, in the scroll, holding it, feeling the enormity, reading the ancient text, but these books provide us with the ability to travel with scripture, and entertain modern contemplation. (Books were PLENTIFUL (that is why they are able to find so many pieces) Genisus, Exodus, Gospel of John, Acts...all the canon and all the apocrypha were copied, duplicated in individual book form and carried)
The scrolls have their place, in the temples, for us each carrying a couple small books in our robes we can sit and compare thought, compare individual lines and words, absolutely impossible with a scroll, trying to roll back and forth from one story to the next! Here we can not only easily carry a portion, but lay 4 books out side by side to compare and contrast and discuss meaning. (It was as huge a step then to them as the iPod or wordsearch and internet is to us. The ability to transport information easily, and compare from one area of the Torah to another and to compare it with some of the more recent books (New Testament and apocrypha) only it wasn't apocrypha...all these books outside the canon were being carried around and discussed as part of the stories/history of Jesus and these new thoughts in Judaism/early Christianity)
Yes they old Rabbi's don't like the new books, but they don't like anything new, and they don't like us discussing and learning amongst ourselves...but they couldn't keep the scripture and G-d in the box forever...it is now ours...
Books were prevalant, I still can't get over that notion, there were many scribes and the books were being translated back and forth from whatever they originated in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic...into Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Coptic...and rather than the tedium of the scroll, which took a scribe forever....and was often only done in temples under supervision...these little books with folded and bound pages could be knocked out quickly and gotten to the street where the market was strong as people were starving to have the info in their hands...no intermediary...
Oldest piece in the exhibit, ever seen the little fragments of fossils that someone pieces together a T-Rex? Well a small line and a half of Mathew, pre 200 AD...gave me goosebumps.
A page from the oldest known, considered now the first bible... basically written like a scroll, four colums to the page, pages about .5 meter square...the page had some little notes and corrections on it...more goosebumps...
The call it the bible...not a scroll...but in book form and containing all the books of the old and new testaments...these like the scrolls were unwieldy, they were so big, only used in a temple...
Bibles in Hebrew, yet with Arabic script.. Early Parallel bibles with Hebrew on one page and Coptic on the opposite...and then the beginnings of fancy books, and illustrations...
The
book is available it looks good. Unfortunately the exhibit is not traveling, it is only here until January 7th and then all its pieces go back to their respective museums...
There is no way I could do it justice, I hope my descriptions sufficed. My mother and sister enjoyed it immensely. Our kids...well they were through it like all museums and ready for to go to Chinatown to eat... But they were exposed...and somewhere along the line they'll read about the Dead Sea Scrolls or be contemplating or studying bible origins and realize they were there...and someday they'll have the same experience with their kids...and they'll be planting seeds...
