Around Halloween, stories started popping up about the “godly” millionaires who own Hobby Lobby. The New Republic‘s Elizabeth Bruenig:
… Hobby Lobby’s owners, the Oklahoma-based Green family, have now set their sights on greater things. No longer content to traffic purely in yarn, felt, or health care policy, the Greens have begun trafficking in potentially looted antiquities plucked from conflict zones in the Middle East.
This week Candida Moss and Joel Baden—professors at Notre Dame and Yale Divinity School, respectively—reported that federal investigators are looking into a shipment of more than 200 ancient clay tablets procured by the Greens from Iraq via Israel… Both federal and international laws prohibit the plunder of antiquities from conflict zones, as well as the ruins of important historical sites…
The sale of looted artifacts likely benefits ISIS, which appears to be smuggling portable artifacts out of the region as a means of raising income… Though it isn’t clear how the Greens purchased their tablets, Moss and Baden emphasized in an email to the New Republic that “every purchase of unprovenanced artifacts reinforces the market for illicit antiquities and emboldens those engaged in looting,” adding that “the risks of inadvertently financing an illegal and violent market are just too high to justify the acquisition of improperly documented material.”…
Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire:
… I think it was so nice of those 5000-odd Americans, and those 100,000-odd Iraqis, to die so that Dick Cheney’s pals could clean up in the oil fields and so that evangelical grifters could loot what artwork the mobs in the streets hadn’t already carried off or wrecked. (“Freedom is messy.” – Donald Rumsfeld, career wrongfella.) The Greens are truly appalling people with a truly appalling amount of money that is enabling them to build a truly appalling building in the middle of the nation’s capital. Now, it appears, their truly appalling Museum Of The Bible may discuss only eight commandments – hanging up those prohibitions against bearing false witness and coveting your neighbor’s goods may strike some people as a little ironic, and may cause this truly appalling monument to theocratic simpletons to catch the odd lightning bolt or three…
Why would the Greens so egregiously violate their own professed moral code, not to mention Federal and international law, in order to stockpile batches of “handmade clay tiles” (how the smuggled artifacts were mislabeled) and similar antique bumf? Well, evangelicals believe in the power of The Word — consider the tantrums over how President Obama has failed to intone the correct version of radical Islamic terrorism, because if he had then ISIS would already have disbanded. And it seems that the Greens have an Orwellian vision of “The Good Word” (divine, perfect, transmitted intact from a solitary Higher Power to today’s American evangelists via King James’ translators) which they are committed to impose upon the messy theological history of the past two millenia.
Joel Baden & Candida Moss, in The Atlantic:
In November 2017, the Museum of the Bible will open in Washington, D.C., two blocks from the National Mall. Like many of the city’s other museums, it is designed to attract hordes of visitors each year, and it will be vast—eight stories tall, and covering 430,000 square feet. Despite its location and size, however, it isn’t a government institution. It’s private, backed by the family of David Green, a wealthy businessman from Oklahoma City, better known as the founder of the Hobby Lobby retail chain, and it will house artifacts from the family’s stunning collection of biblical manuscripts, Torah scrolls, Dead Sea Scrolls, and cuneiform texts. The Greens’ collection is one of the largest private collections of such artifacts in the world, comprising some 40,000 objects—many of which, remarkably, were unknown to scholars and the general public before the Greens acquired them. And the Greens made their first purchase only six years ago.
That’s a startling pace of acquisition, especially given the fraught and specialized market for biblical antiquities, and it raises difficult questions about how the Green family has acquired its artifacts, and why…
… Steve Green doesn’t distinguish between business and belief. “God’s given us the ability to be very successful in our business,” he told us, “and I think to some degree it’s providential.” Hobby Lobby, he explained, is not just a business. It’s a business that enables a ministry, and at the center of that ministry is the Bible. “We want to share this book with people all over the world,” he said. “And the more resources we have, the more we’re able to do that.”
Hobby Lobby brings in a yearly revenue of roughly $3.7 billion, according to Forbes. You can do a lot to promote the Bible with that kind of money. And the Greens do: They create films with biblical themes, they own a chain of Christian bookstores, they support the development of a Bible curriculum for schools, they sponsor trips to Israel, they donate to Christian charities. They once spent $70 million to prop up Oral Roberts University when it was struggling. But the most expensive, extensive, and time-consuming project in their portfolio is the Museum of the Bible. Steve Green may be the president of Hobby Lobby, but he devotes half his time to the museum.
The Greens didn’t originally intend to build a museum. Nor did they originally intend to collect biblical artifacts. But in the mid-2000s they began collaborating with Johnny Shipman, an eccentric Dallas businessman who walked around town in a full-length fur coat, carried a firearm, and, as a Baptist, felt called to build something greater than himself: a national Bible museum. Shipman enlisted the support of Scott Carroll, a former academic with a doctorate in ancient studies who had made a career out of helping collectors track down and acquire items, especially rare manuscripts. Shipman had the idea, Carroll had the expertise—and the Greens, Shipman recognized, had the money.
A few years later, the Greens made their first purchase: a very early English translation of the Book of Psalms. Soon they were making acquisitions all over the world, and in 2010, they decided—as Steve Green delicately put it to us—to “take more ownership of the project.” Shipman was out; Dallas was left behind…
Steve Green has a mantra: We aren’t collectors, we’re storytellers. In his conversation with us, he made it clear that he envisages the Museum of the Bible as a place that will tell the story of a sacred book that has traveled down the centuries essentially unchanged since the time of its composition. Green describes the museum’s mission as “nonsectarian,” and language in the museum’s recent nonprofit filings reinforces that idea. “We exist to invite all people to engage with the Bible,” the most recent filing we were able to obtain reads. “We invite biblical exploration through museum exhibits and scholarly pursuits.” But in its first nonprofit filing, in 2010, the museum made a stronger claim: that its primary exempt purpose was “to bring to life the living word of God, to tell its compelling story of preservation, and to inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible.”…
The Greens want to influence Americans and bring them back to the Bible. They’re unlikely to promote their socially conservative views openly in the museum, but its exhibits may give them a prominent, seemingly authoritative platform from which to push back against what they see as the secular tide in American politics. “I hope the museum becomes a beacon for all people to engage with the ideas and beauty of the Bible,” Steve Green wrote in a statement to The Atlantic. And that, he made clear to us in our conversation, includes this country’s political leaders. “They need to know,” he said, “that this book speaks to every area of life and it has advice: It advises how a good government should be … Our Founding Fathers unabashedly looked to the Bible in building this nation, so why wouldn’t it be right for our legislators to know our history of our government?”…
Villago Delenda Est
Because they’re Mammon worshiping hypocritical filth who should be fed to large felines in an arena, that’s why.
They’re Daesh with a “Christian” skin. Fuck them. Fuck them all. Repeatedly. With non-lubed rusty chain saws.
Gvg
I would bet a bunch, maybe most of their collection turns out to be fakes. You don’t learn enough to not get scammed in just a few years, nor do I think their is that much ancient history objects available even with war zones. Time will tell. They are putting it on display so real experts ought to be able to tell us fairly soon. I wonder why they thought they could break the law, then display the crime? Even for the super rich that strikes me as unrealistic.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
Because, outside of all that makes me richer is good, they don’t have a moral code. They only have rules, which are for other people.
Debbie
I swear, these conservatives are going to be the death of me. I just listened to a long interview with the head of Ohio Right to Life, who is clearly in league with Ohio’s AG, a weaselly worm. Just as he holds a news conference accusing Planned Parenthood of “stream cooking” aborted fetuses, she sends out a mass email calling for legislation requiring burial or cremation of fetuses. And we’re supposed to believe this was just a coincidence?
Now she’s saying that the current method, incineration, is unacceptable. She’s demanding that each fetus be cremated separately. (The most recent numbers show that there are 21,000 abortions in Ohio per year.)
I’m not violent but I want to chew Michael DeWine’s and Stephanie Krieler’s faces off.
JGabriel
@Gvg:
Especially when learnin’ violates their so-called religious beliefs.
NotMax
No doubt the building’s Golden Calf cafe* will be both yooge and classy.
*Try the Tower of Babel burger! Tallest burger in town!
Visit the Loaves and Fishes sushi bar. Ocean fresh and gluten-free!
scav
“a sacred book that has traveled down the centuries essentially unchanged since the time of its composition” Well, that and the BS about the founding fathers unabashedness puts the lie to any pretense of scholarly veneer, while their violations of international law works over their pretense of morality. Not that they’ll think that in any way tarnishes their superior halos.
Baud
I wonder if the Greens were able to recover the five lost commandments.
JGabriel
The Atlantic:
I could be wrong, and often am, but I’m pretty sure Egotist doesn’t begin with Bap.
bobbo
Obama’s Big Government can’t take away Hobby Lobby’s looted artifacts – that would be a violation of their corporate religious freedom.
brettvk
@Gvg: According to the Atlantic article, the Greens are buying their own “experts” and freezing out genuine scholars whose research might conflict with the story they want to tell: that the KJV is is the authentic really real Word o’ Gawd and anything else — other translations, any authoritative Biblical scholarship — are lies straight from the pit of Hell. If they happen upon artifacts that contradict their “truth,” I wouldn’t put it past these yahoos to quietly destroy them. The Atlantic article soft-pedals the fact that the Greens are forking money over to ISIS and other thieves to loot artifacts. I’d bet my mortgage that they know damn well that they’re buying stolen merchandise, but there’s a kink in the laws that gives them deniability. Just another example of the fact that there’s one set of laws for rich people, and another set for the rest of us.
Elizabelle
@Baud: OK, I’ll bite: Thou shall/shall not ….?
Peale
Yep. There will be plenty of looted items as well. “I’ve got billions and I want moar art” is a recipient for disaster. Especially since they aren’t even bothering to be anonymous. How do you buy Dead Sea scrolls?
Baud
@Elizabelle:
No one really knows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXeTsWGPT0w
Baud
@Elizabelle:
See for yourself.
Mnemosyne
@Gvg:
It pretty much says they’re fakes right in the story:
There probably are stolen artifacts mixed in as well, but when you’re dealing with people who have lots of money and no knowledge, fakery is much easier.
Mnemosyne
Also, I’m assuming that The Mighty Trowel will have some choice words once they revive her from the coronary she probably had as soon as she started reading.
Baud
Does no one here respect deletion requests?
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: No one here respects nothing.
Bobby D
They sound like the “prosperity gospel” types. As an agnostic, who is not filthy rich, I’m thinking if I had that kind of loot, I’d be building a collection of 1950s Les Pauls, not collecting some old books of jewish fairy tales that sound like they were written while on acid.
brantl
It was a million Iraqis, as estimated by the best epidemiologists, long before the war ended, not 100,000..
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Aye, t’is true.
Anoniminous
Given:
and
This thing has “scam” written all over it. It is almost impossible important historic artifacts of the biblical period “were previously unknown to scholars.” It is very likely to a certainty the Greens know bugger-all about the bible and the biblical antiquities market, notorious for fraudsters since 560 CE. In 40,000 items there has to be actual artifacts from the period, the kind of stuff you can buy by the bushel, found in any shop in Cairo or Jerusalem.
Baud
All you cynics claiming this is a scam. When the Greens show you the scroll describing the virtues of a capital gains tax cut written in Jesus’s own hand, you’ll believe.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
I’ll believe they got the Real Goods when I see Joseph’s MasterCard© receipt for the manger rental.
AND NOT BEFORE!
Baud
@Anoniminous: Did you know the Aramaic word for “meek” is also the word for “job creators”? It’s why the beatitudes have been misinterpreted for centuries.
Darkrose
My brain just broke. I’m sitting here saying out loud, over and over, “But…that’s wrong.” I realize that these fuckwits don’t care, but I simply can’t parse how anyone could possibly believe something that’s so fundamentally not true.
Baud
@efgoldman:
You talking about Revelations?
Scamp Dog
@Anoniminous: Well, they do have an interview with the innkeeper over at John Scalzi’s blog. Isn’t that proof enough?
Elizabelle
@Baud:
LOL. Glad not to have tucked into a glass of wine yet.
More seriously, endeavors like the Green family’s make me more secular by the minute. And hand-picking the scholars, out of evangelical schools, who have not worked with biblical antiquities before … woo boy.
scav
For all most evangelicals pay attention to the actual text anyway . . . . It is what they believe it is, faux lumps of clay or actual.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
OK. You win. That was funny as hell.
Elizabelle
Did anybody notice the architectural rendering of the museum interior (from the Atlantic article) is filled with white people and only white people meandering the premises?
Oh, to be skilled at photoshopping on “Make America Great Again” trucker hats.
Mike J
Carrie Dann @CarrieNBCNews 11h11 hours ago
Via pool: Carson on optics of nixing Africa trip: “I think it’ll make me look smart to not go into some place where there’s a lot of danger”
Debg
Are they kidding?
Adam L Silverman
@Anoniminous: @Mnemosyne: @brettvk: @Gvg: I would venture an educated guess that a lot of what they have has been moved from Iraq, and now from Syria. Some of it will be fake, but some of it will be real. And not just the stuff looted from the museums during the Summer and Fall of 2003. Until I was able to get the master list of all known and suspected Iraqi heritage and antiquities sites, with their geo coordinates*, to provide to the Army in 2008, no one in the coalition had a good idea where most, if not all of this stuff was. The US Department of State Heritage Officer at the Embassy in Baghdad had NO idea. To the point where when I showed it to on of the Iraqi State Heritage and Antiquities Board members while she was standing there, she was dumbfounded when he informed us that he and the rest of his colleagues had a similar list. I personally did two very basic site walk through/surveys of sites in our AOR. There was plenty of material still in situ that could be looted and sold on the black market.
There is an Iraqi expert on all of this in the US. The former head of the Iraqi State Heritage and Antiquities Board had fled with his family to the US. He’s a Chaldean Christian with a PhD in archeology and had been teaching at one of the SUNY schools. The reality, however, is that no one independent will ever be allowed near anything that the Green’s have and/or display. They can’t risk it. While they are clearly running a scam to shear those they see as their flock, I guarantee that they are themselves being scammed by the people both providing the alleged antiquities and those authenticating them.
* I got my list from an archeology professor in the US who had done this data collection as part of her doctorate and wanted to make sure, at the urging of a former professor who had served in the Army, that care was taken to not disturb the sites. We pushed it all the way up to Multi-National Corps-Iraq. Six months after I redeployed home, the Heritage Officer was the focus of a news story, with a junior NCO who specialized in mapping imagery, for getting this information and making sure the coalition had access to it. While I personally could care less about the publicity, the credit needed to go to the professor I got the data from. Moreover, in 2011 when I went and did a guest lecture for her on the archeology of the area of Iraq I was deployed in, I found out that the same dipshit Heritage Officer was still at the Embassy and was now blocking her and a team of archeologists that had been invited into the country by the Iraqis to survey sites and consult on how to preserve them in a way that allowed for future work on them. That foreign service officer was a real piece of work…
Anoniminous
@Elizabelle:
But it is biblical, “and the blind shall lead the blind and they shall both fall into the pit.”
Anoniminous
@Peale:
Short answer: you don’t. No way in HELL the Israeli’s let something like that out of the country.
Now it is possible they are buying published texts or facsimiles. In which case, whoopie.
Thor Heyerdahl
Museum of the Bible…so are they including the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of James, the Gospel of Thomas & the Epistles of Clement?
Who am I kidding – of course it’s the KJV – in English like God wanted
Elizabelle
@Baud: Very good. Mel Brooks.
Which brought up George Carlin, with Bible Museum antidote:
The Ten Commandments.
Says having ten was “purely a marketing decision.” WRT the fourth, honor thy father and thy mother: “Some parents deserve respect, most don’t.”
From 2001. RIP George. He’s so right about the social control aspects.
Emma
@Gvg: Even better. They’re probably business records and tax collection records. A lot of the tablets are of the “6 bushels of wheat…” kind.
Adam L Silverman
@Anoniminous: @Peale: It has always been a concern that not all of the scrolls or other materials from Qumran wound up in Israeli hands. If I’m remembering correctly from my biblical archeology classes way back when I was an undergrad, once the Palestinian shepherd found his way into the caves and realized there was very old materials and artifacts there, there was a distinct delay before anyone official found out. Moreover, a number of scrolls and other items had to be purchased off the black market to compile the collection now housed at the Shrine of the Book. So it is entirely possible that the Israelis were not able to actually get everything that quickly made its way onto the black market before they could negotiate access to the site.
Adam L Silverman
@Emma: I would guess that if they have a bunch of cuneiform tablets from Iraq and Syria that that is the case. They are likely mundane records and correspondence.
Adam L Silverman
There is something that is really important here, especially in light of John’s earlier post on the conspiracy charges brought today in the California attack. If it is determined by Federal Law Enforcement, and the antiquities experts they bring in to evaluate the alleged antiquities, that these have been looted from Syria and/or Iraq and that they were trafficked in a way that profited ISIS, then the Green’s and everyone involved have exposed themselves to charges of providing material support to terrorists. This, as you all might imagine, carries a much higher penalty than trafficking in antiquities.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: I would LOVE to see that happen. (The Greens up on charges of supporting ISIS, in the name of promoting the KJV Bible.)
Thinking the Museum site will be especially well policed (thanks, DC taxpayers). It’s sure to be a target of sorts …
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: It’ll be hard to prove it all the way back. The Greens are wealthy enough to have the best lawyers who will argue to the investigators and prosecutors that they were taken advantage of by the people they hired to acquire the antiquities for them. Unless they are dumb enough to have left a paper trail or someone has been recording conversations to cover their own tukhases, the Greens are going to have problems, but the people that work for them will have the bigger ones. This, unfortunately, seems to too often be the case.
Elizabelle
Aha. George Carlin puts in a further commandment:
Works for me.
Anoniminous
@Adam L Silverman:
Yes I’ve heard those rumors too. I don’t believe them. A new Qumran Text would command millions, everybody knows it, and there’s every likelihood solid evidence would have surfaced over the decades. Second, I find it inconceivable anyone likely to have bought before the Israelis got into it wouldn’t have been found by the Israelis. The market was very, very, tiny in those days. The sellers were known. The potential buyers were known. The potential middle-men were known. One can make-up Raiders of the Lost Texts stories but, as you know, the reality of Text finding is much more prosaic.
Adam L Silverman
@Anoniminous: I don’t disagree with any of this. Things may be possible without being probable.
Anoniminous
@Adam L Silverman:
We can hope but unless they’ve got some really juicy, historically known, objects the chances of prosecution are minimal.
PurpleGirl
@Bobby D: The problem as I see it, is that they are collecting but not respecting cuneiform works from Mesopotamia which are not Jewish writings. They are mixing up Babylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian works with Israelite literature. Will they respect The Enuma Elish and the other varied genesis stories from Mesopotamia. And that these stories are OLDER than the Israelite testaments. I’m not an archaeologist or an expert on the ancient middle east/Orient but I did take several courses in the history of religion while at NYU. Argh!!!!
Scapegoat
At roughly $1,000 / square foot (a low number given the supposed value of the items displayed) the museum will cost almost $500 million.
That’s 1/10 of David Green’s net worth of $5B. Gotta wonder how much he has in available assets for the building alone.
burnspbesq
This country is doomed. We may not live to see the fascist theocracy, but our children surely will.
Emma
@PurpleGirl: Me, I get the giggles thinking they just paid hundreds of thousands for a minor riff on Gilgamesh…
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: Oh bullshit.
PurpleGirl
@Emma: This. Yes, the Babylonians especially kept records of business activity and taxes.
NotMax
@PurpleGirl
“Whaddaya mean it says that in Biblical times yarn sold at a shekel a ton? Jesus Christ, we are so-o-o screwed….”
sukabi
I think he’s mistaken, it looks more like he’s a pants wetter.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Elizabelle: Yes. And as a museum professional, no museum designer has done that for the last 20 years or so.
sigaba
Vocabulary word of the day: “bibliolatry”.
Joel
Sounds like they’re getting conned by the Elmer Gantry variant of the Martin Shrekli phenotype.
yet another jeff
Stone tablets and crazy religious millionaires and nobody mentions Snow Crash?
Bob Munck
So the Greens and Hobby Lobby are actually L. Bob Rife? (Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson)
EDIT: Ha. Jeff beat me.
Fake Irishman
@PurpleGirl:
… which is actually pretty cool in its own right (though not what the Greens are looking for.) If you’re ever in Philly, go down to the Free Library in Center City on a weekday or Saturday at 11 a.m. and head up the Elevator to the Rare Books Collection. They give a cool mean tour — and they pull out a few of the several thousand Cuneiform tablets they have.
bystander
@Mnemosyne:
If you think of repubs in general, you realize that they really don’t need to have lots of money to swallow the fakery. Seems “no knowledge” is sufficient to be a dupe.
Sherparick
Apparently the Greens have not gotten to this point in their Bible reading, or perhaps just skipped it to the juicy parts.
Mark 10:17-31English Standard Version (ESV)
The Rich Young Man
17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
23 And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is[a] to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 2
Sherparick
@Adam L Silverman: Well, when the subpoenas and search warrants come, there will be access. Also, I note another way the very wealthy, especially the very white so called Christian Conservative wealthy like the Greens, act like they have, and frequently do have, immunity from the laws that apply to the rest of us. If they are buying antiquities, real or faked, from middle men fronting for ISIS, then they are felons on several levels, but the most egregious is “Material Support for Terrorism.” https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339A
Elizabelle
@Fake Irishman:
Goes on the 2-year bucket list. Thanks for the head’s up.
boatboy_srq
They’re not even being subtle. Look at the “handmade clay tiles” claim: they’re bringing in artifacts and slapping on labeling that makes it look like they’re buying samples of flooring for the museum’s atrium. What is it about Xtians that makes lying to the
heathensunWashed unGodly sinnersmembers of every community outside their own little circle acceptable? There are no caveats to the Commandments: it’s not as if “thou shalt not bear false witness” was followed by “before the Aegyptian oppressors” or “among the Assyrian kidnappers” or some such.@Anoniminous: A thousand years ago the same type of Xtian grifter was dealing in saints’ femurs and molars. One wonders if the Greens realise exactly how Catholic they’ve become.
@NotMax:
Does that come with cheese?
boatboy_srq
@Elizabelle: You didn’t really expect subtlety from the Greens – or from anyone they would hire/contract – did you?