Following a lengthy search, the world’s largest private collection of ancient biblical texts and artifacts has found a permanent home in the nation’s capital.
The Museum of the Bible, a nonprofit organization and owner of The Green Collection, recently purchased the Washington (D.C.) Design Center for $50 million. The name of the museum has yet to be announced, as has construction timelines and an opening date.
The building will be reconfigured into a scholarly focused national museum that will illustrate the origins of the Bible and its impact on the world.
The Green Collection sports approximately 40,000 biblical texts and artifacts, including one of the world’s largest private collections of Dead Sea Scrolls. It also boasts the earliest-surviving New Testament texts in Jesus’ language and other antiquities dating from the first century BCE to Torah scrolls that survived the Holocaust. The museum also plans to display items borrowed from other prominent collections from around the world.
“After an 18-month search in cities including Dallas and New York, the museum’s board chose the nation’s capital— a destination known for its world-class museums—to be the location of this future museum,” said Mark DeMoss, spokesperson for the Museum of the Bible and a member of its board.
“Our intent is for this museum to showcase both the Old and New Testaments, arguably the world’s most significant pieces of literature, through a non-sectarian, scholarly approach that makes the history, schlolarship and impact of the Bible on virtually every facet of society accessible to everyone.”
Items from The Green Collection continue to be displayed around the world through traveling exhibitions like Passages, which recently completed a seven-month run in Atlanta; VerbumDomini, which was on display in St. Peter’s Square during Lent and Easter; and exhibits at colleges, universities and other venues across the globe.
