After years of painstaking cleaning, not to mention adding a whole new roof, the church of the Nativity. There has been a nice exhibit showing the results at the MOTB. And here are some shots. The original floor has been protected under boards for centuries, but it too got refurbished…. The columns and the wall frescos had been covered with the soot of centuries of burning lamps and candles in ages before electricity. Here are some images now... Read more
At first, when you get to the basement you run across warning signs…. This is by the door of the digital imaging lab. But stay tuned. On the other side of the door are more signs which can be posted on the outside of the door as needed… Inside is equipment that is uber expensive, and a special thanks to the Murdoch trust for making it possible for the Museum of the Bible to have this state of the... Read more
There is a new exhibit in the Museum of the Bible about the numerous Hagia Sophias. By way of background these churches are called Hagia Sophia because of the Orthodox theology that the personification of God’s wisdom found in Proverbs 3, 8-9 was assumed to actually refer to Christ the second person of the Trinity who was involved in the work of creation with the Father. Hagia Sophia then is usually accompanied with and pointing to an image of Christ,... Read more
It was sad when Mr. Pepperoni died, and just when they were about to lower him into the grave they notice at the bottom of the headstone a tiny inscripture which read— EAT ME!!! Chaos ensued. Read more
There are some fun exhibits about Christian thoughts about space, for instance, and how it has influenced films. But most of the exhibits are quite serious about showing the Christian origins of science, in part by displaying some of the early essays or treatises by folk like Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and others. One of the most interesting exhibits is the creation of a door of Chartes Cathedral, which became a center for learning including philosophical and scientific learning. Read more
The new exhibit in the Museum of the Bible on Science and Scripture has been excellent, but not as well attended as one might have hoped. There are several emphases in this exhibit, for instance showing how most of the early pioneers in science were devout Christians (see the pictures above) and some of the modern ones like Francis Collins, the former head of the human genome project, and Dorothy Vaughan, the NASA scientist mathematician and devout Christian who worked... Read more
Q. Josephus is an enigmatic figure, no matter how you read his work, not least because he seems to be an example of the old adage of ‘once bitten, twice shy’ and by this I mean, Josephus himself was a zealot, at least to the extent that he led Jews against Romans, though perhaps somewhat reluctantly, but then blamed his fellow zealots for the destruction of Jerusalem and the failure of the war. This helps explain his extreme reluctance to... Read more
Q. Where does the idea that David was taken up into heaven, or went there at death come from? 2 Kings is clear enough that he was gathered to his ancestors, i.e. like the prophet Samuel he was in Sheol, the land of the dead, not in heaven like Enoch or Elijah. A. I think it probably comes from Ezekiel 36, where “my servant David” could very naturally be understood as David himself, not a descendant. No one thought that... Read more
Q. In your discussion of the oldest interpretation of Dan. 7 in 4 Q246 you stress on p. 191: “The interpreters of the Hebrew Bible did not think analytically like modern Biblical scholars. They did not compare Dan. 7 and the major prophecies of a new David, observe that they do not have much in common, and see them as offering different eschatological scenarios or different kinds of messianic figures. Rather they thought synthetically. They brought such passages together in... Read more
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