A Bible museum is coming to town. Planners recently bought a building just blocks from the National Mall, at 300 D St. SW, to house the private Bible collection of Oklahoma’s billionaire Green family. Mark DeMoss sits on the museum’s board.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I would call myself a Christian or a follower of Christ. The church we attend in Atlanta is a nondenominational church called Passion City Church. I grew up in a Christian home and have at one time or another attended several different denominations, but all would be considered mainstream evangelical. I appreciate the emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ — that we can know him personally and that he can influence our daily lives. It’s not a tradition or an intellectual knowledge, but a real personal relationship.
What is the goal for the Bible museum?
The Green family in Oklahoma City has been for several years now accumulating what now is the world’s largest private collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts. The goal of the museum is to be a resting place to display these items, which now number 40,000. The goal is to illustrate how the Bible came to be, how it was written and translated and put to paper; and second, to illustrate its impact on the world. The Bible is the best-selling book in the world. The Greens’ desire is not to just create some place for scholarship — although they would like Bible scholars to come and study and do research — but to go way beyond that and present things in a way that families and people of all ages could come and experience more about this book.
What’s the coolest thing in the collection?
I’ve just seen the tip of the iceberg of the collection, but I think some of the most interesting and rare items in the exhibit would be the world’s largest private collection of Jewish scrolls, including Torahs that survived the Spanish Inquisition and some Torahs confiscated by the Nazis and recovered in concentration camps. It has the earliest known near-complete translation of the Book of Psalms, and it’s got a large portion of the Gutenberg Bible.
To some in D.C., news of the museum sounds like the Bible Belt is moving in and setting up shop. Does the museum plan to evangelize?
I would not call it an evangelical museum. I think the Bible has been used for centuries by people of many faiths, and we want to present it and let people draw their own conclusions, take away whatever they take away. We just believe it’s a powerful book and speaks to people who read it and learn about it. So we really envision this as a museum in a city of great museums.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
Jesus Christ is real and is the center of my life and is the anchor around which I built the rest of my life, my marriage, my business, my family. I don’t do it perfectly, but it’s my core belief — that Christ is at the center, and I want to follow him.
– Liz Essley
