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This is an I Heart podcast, guaranteed human.
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Welcome to the Living Word, a one hour special for real America's voice. Easter and the entire Holy Week are a time for pause, for reflection, to think about the sacrifice of one man who was simultaneously God, who died, was buried, and resurrected. Christians across the world remember this time as pivotal to their faith, for the man who was crucified for the sins of the world defied death and returned to heaven. The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. houses some of the oldest historical remnants of various versions of Scripture, as well as archaeological artifacts that give us a picture of what life was like in the time of Jesus. They have two current exhibitions that are rather special and unique. One is the Dead Sea Scrolls, on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority, showing fragments of Scripture found in caves in Qumran, Israel. I spoke with Dr. Bobby Duke, a PhD and chief curatorial Officer and Director of the Scholars Initiative at the Museum of the Bible, who walked with me through the exhibition, fielding a host of questions I had about the intersection of faith and ancient history.
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Take a look. In 1947, a group of Bedouins stumbled upon caves near Qumran, Israel, near the Dead Sea.
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Inside those caves were scrolls of ancient
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scriptures known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. i've come to experience
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this exhibition and learned how ancient history and faith join.
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A
Well, Dr. Duke, we were here at this remarkable Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition here, which is on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority. Tell us, what is the significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Why do they matter today?
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Yeah, well, the Dead Sea Scrolls are our oldest Hebrew and Arab manuscripts of the biblical text. The Old Testament is written mostly Hebrew, but also Aramaic. But these are our oldest copies before the scrolls were found. Our best manuscripts for the Old Testament dated to about 1000 AD. These texts, through paleography, through carbon dating and other things, date back to some of them to the second century BC. So that shaves off 1200 years of manuscript transmission. And in general, there's much fidelity between what we see at Qumran and the Dead Sea scroll caves and what we see a thousand years later.
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A
Now, why is that significant? Because, literally speaking in terms of the transition of those texts to what we know, Even you said 1200 years later, how remarkably accurate are they?
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C
Yeah. No, so what you do have is some variants, and the variants are usually very, very minor. So the Bible that you are reading today in English is being translated from the best manuscripts. And the Masoretic text of Isaiah and the Great Isaiah scroll of Isaiah are ones that give us a lot of confidence. So when you read your biblical text, you might see footnotes in the bottom that will say qumran reads or Dead Sea Scrolls read, you'll see how, in a lot of ways, how insignificant most of those quotes are. So it just gives us a lot of confidence that the Bible we're reading today is the same Bible that was being read 2000 years ago.
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A
What was the ink and what was the type of paper? Was it parchment? Was it.
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C
So you do have a Qumran. You have some papyrus which would been imported from Egypt along the Nile river, but mostly it was animal skin, so goats or sheep, even some cow that was written on. The ink was used different carbons and even different metallics. That is one that is still being researched by scholars. But the ink is such that it is not faded. So even though at times the texts are hard to read visibly because the leather has faded or darkened, the ink, through infrared and through other modern technologies with cameras can go and read these manuscripts. And again, you're seeing these texts that go back 2,000 years.
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A
So take me back to 1947, because that's about when they were discovered, right? Where was this? It was close to the Dead Sea, obviously. Were they hidden? Why were they hidden? And from whom?
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C
So in 1947, the way the story goes, and it's taken on legendary qualities, Bedouin were out looking for some lost goats. They threw a rock into a cave, heard a crash. And when they heard the crash, and they said, there's something here we need to come look at. So they came back, found broken ceramic jars, and in those ceramic jars, they found our first set of scrolls, including the Great Isaiah Scroll. And the Great Isaiah scroll is preserved in all 66 chapters in the book of Isaiah. It's 24ft long, and it most likely would have been hidden in the jars. There was a lot of the other caves that were founded in the rush to leave because the Romans were coming through. So this group of Qumran probably hid them in these 11 caves to. To leave, to then eventually come back and pick it up. But they never came back. I mean, unfortunate for them. They never returned to take the items out of the caves. For modern scholarship, it's good they never came back and took those items out because these are such a treasure. But again, they were trying to escape the Romans and eventually all died. Now, the. The Bedouin found the first caves, then archaeologists learned more about them, and then it became a race. Who's gonna find the next cave? Cave? So it was from 1947 to 1956 that 11 different caves were found. So over that time, some of the caves had very few items, but something like Cave 4 had hundreds of scrolls. And when we say scrolls, very few of them were more than a column or two because of just the 2,000 years of erosion, 2,000 years of little critters eating things in the caves. But all totaled, of those 11 caves, we have over 900 distinct documents account be identified.
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A
Now, of those 900 documents, how many of those are compatible with what we find in the Bible today to authenticate those authoritative texts?
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C
So there's basically kind of three groupings of texts. So about a third roughly are biblical texts. Another third are just kind of general texts that were not known before, but are not biblical. And then there's a whole group of what we often call sectarian texts. These are ones that give us insight into that community. So we even have their rule book. What was their rules for being an initiate into the community? What was their rules for? Even they went through the Mikmah, the bathing before they would eat or kind of to follow Levitical law. So we have these groups now when it comes to the biblical texts which were the first wave of interest, one is because they were the easiest to work on because you already kind of know what it should say and then you have the Masoretic text to compare it to. But there was this interest to say, can we trust the Bible?
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Right?
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And I will say for me, after my years of Dead Sea Scrolls research, I am more confident in the scriptures I hold today than I did before I started studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, because I think they give me just a lot of confidence in that fact that that manuscript transmission process was done very accurately.
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When I looked at some of the fragments of the scrolls, one thing that struck me is it doesn't seem like there's any mistakes in the writing, at least that I can tell. Are there mistakes in there or are they? Because we didn't have the methods that we do today to erase a mistake, it looks remarkably perfect. Is that a fair statement?
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C
So I would say when you look at something like the great Isaiah scroll, you do find some places where there's words written above lines, where when they went back and checked it, they realized a word had been left out in the copying. And you got to give them credit. They were copying these texts in a time, pre electricity in a time, and they're probably copying with olive oil lamps. So there were corrections that were done sometimes in the margin. They would do that, but you're right for most of the text that you can just see today at Museum of the Bible, you don't see a lot of scratch. You don't see scratching out. You don't see this. And you see very much a very careful copy. You can even notice on some of the texts. One example that we have currently on exhibit is what's called 11Q5 Cave 11 Qumran. It's the fifth document given a number and it's a psalm text. You can even see the rule line to which they hung all the letters from. Because they, today we teach children to set letters on the line as they're writing A, B, C. Back then they would actually hang the letters from the line. So you can see those ruling marks on that psalm scroll. You even have a place where every time they came to the Tetragrammaton, the four letters for God's name, the Lord, they actually switch to what's called Paleo Hebrew, a different font, so to speak.
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And why did they do that?
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I think they did it really out of respect. I think they paused and they said, when we write the Lord's name, we are going to do it in a special way, in a way that causes us to pause. So it's not just something we write like everything else. We actually give it some unique, unique existence.
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What do the Dead Sea Scrolls, at least the portions that we found, say about the canonization of the Bible as we know it in terms of authoritative texts versus other texts?
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What we don't have at Qumran is a list where it says, and here are the books of the Hebrew Bible. What we do have is we have some of these non biblical texts. One of them that is called, the acronym is 4Q MMT, which is a Hebrew phrase, Mase Matorah. And it's this phrase there that is where we get the title from. It's a non biblical text. But in that one, it actually does mention the Torah, the prophets and David. So it mentions Torah prophets and then David is kind of the first book in the Ketubim, the, the writings of the Book of Psalms. So we do get a sense that they already had this concept of kind of a developing canon, but they never left us a list.
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A list, right.
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These are the books that we consider canonical or not. But what we, what we can say is that the, all the books of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, the Tanakh, all of them were found in the 11 caves, except for Nehemiah and Esther. Now some of them are found in very Small fragmentary pieces, but it does give us a sense that all those books, except for Nehemiah and Esther have been shown to be at Qumran. Why Nehemiah and Esther? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe critters ate them up in the caves. Maybe they just dissolved over time.
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So we don't know that they never existed. It's just from our archaeological ev tell us about the Magdala stone.
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Correct. So this to me is one of the highlights of the exhibit because of the discovery, because of the fact that it was found in a first century synagogue that for me, I have no doubts that Jesus would have been in that synagogue for the simple reason that we have verses that say that Jesus went to the synagogues throughout the Galilee. This was a limestone table that was found in the excavation right in the center of the synagogue. It was actually nicked here on this part of it when a digger was coming to remove dirt to build a hotel. They have now since abandoned that portion of the hotel so that visitors can see the synagogue. But all the decorations around this Magdala stone are all remembering temple in Jerusalem
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and which the menorah is on. Correct. On the other side. And that's the first depiction we have of what the temple menorah would have possibly looked like.
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That menorah and then another one from a similar time period a few few decades later would be the Arch of Titus in Rome where they have this menorah depicted being carried in by Titus, who was the one who destroyed Jerusalem. But all the depictions on the top are even the showbread that would have been used in the temple and other things. But most, most likely this was used for rolling out Torah scrolls on. Some happen, even the way it's kind of leaning this way, you can almost think that someone was standing down here on the menorah side of it and looking at a tourist scroll in front of them. One of the challenges we always have with archaeology is when a people group was going to abandon a building or they were going to be destroyed from war. They didn't leave us notes to say, when you excavate this in 2000 years, this is how we use this room. That would have been very nice, but I think it is, it is a very reasonable explanation to, in your mind, envision a scroll sitting on this table being read by someone in a synagogue.
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Now, you mentioned that it's quite possible that Jesus would have visited this particular temple. We obviously know the story of Mary Magdalene and she's from Magdala. Is it possible, you think that's where he could have met her. I mean, in your scholarly mind, how do you think that interaction could have actually happened?
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C
Yeah, the biblical text doesn't tell us. She's one of those people that shows up in the Gospels and we aren't given that full. What was the first time? I mean, even shows like the chosen have to fill in those gaps, and they do it in very creative ways. So we're not really sure, but we do know that it says Jesus went to the synagogues throughout the Galilee. We know he went to Capernaum. We know he was in other places like Bethsaida. I mean, all of these places are just within a few miles of each other. So it's really impossible to think that during his ministry years up around the Galilee, he would have never gone just a couple miles away to where Mary Magdalene was from, because she was such a centerpiece of even that group of disciples traveling around.
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A
Are there any similarities or what can the Dead Sea Scrolls point us to in terms of the New Testament and what we see there?
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Well, there was no New Testament material found among the caves at Qumran, because the caves at Qumran were basically the items in the caves were being read and even written when the New Testament was happening.
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Right.
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I mean, that's the thing that always gives me pause, is I have to sit there and say I'm looking at a text from the same time when Jesus and the disciples were walking around the Sea of Galilee and going to Jerusalem. Someone was down at Quran reading this book of Genesis, let's say, and Jesus was up in Jerusalem. It just.
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That's a sight.
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That's a scene to think about.
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It's stunning. When you think of the encounter and when I think of our own country here in the United States, I mean, we're coming up on our 250th anniversary. We're all getting excited. When you start thinking of ancient history. I mean, that was many, many centuries ago. And it gives you a real kind of exciting pause to just realize the antiquity of these items.
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So, Dr. Duke, I do want to know, what do you think is the biggest misconception about the Dead Sea scroll, if there is one?
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Well, I think one of the best, the biggest misconceptions early on was that somehow the scrolls were going to kind of undercut the Vatican, undercut Christianity. It was going to undo our beliefs, and it just has not been true. One of the challenges is they were first found in 1947, but by 1991, they still weren't all published. And there was still a lot that were scholars, not from any nefarious reason, but just because they were given a whole tranche of scrolls and they still wanted to publish them. It just took a long time. But all of a sudden that that void was filled in with conspiracy theories. So what is the Vatican trying to hide? What are Christians trying to hide? What are Jews trying to hide? So I think one of the misconceptions is that somehow this. This like undoes 20th centuries of belief. It actually does the opposite. It gives us a lot of confidence that what we are still practicing today has a genetic connection all the way back 2000 years. So even as we're walking on this road here, one of the pieces that the Israeli Antiquities Authority wanted us to include and find a way to display so our guests can walk on is this 2000 year old paving stone. This was a paving stone that was part of the walkway from the Pools of Siloam up to the Temple Mount. It would have been walked on by pilgrims coming to Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Those are the moments that you just have to pause and just say, I'm standing on 2000 year old roadway from Jerusalem.
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A very unique thing for people to interact with in a way that others probably could not. Absolutely right.
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And even our team here did such a fantastic job of making it so that the stone could be walked on. This exhibit had previously been at the Reagan Museum out in Simi Valley, California, and they just didn't have the abilities, with time to find a way for guests with wheelchairs or other things to come over this stone. But our team did a fantastic job here to have this elevated platform with the vinyl that is the stone from that time with this sunk right in and.
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And as I was walking through earlier, it's very easy to miss, too. This is something you probably don't want to miss when you're at the. How long has this exhibit been here this year?
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It opened in November. November, closed in September. Okay. So it'll be nine months total. And of that nine months, there will be three rotations of our Dead Sea Scroll. So everything else we've seen will be here for the whole life of the exhibit. But it'll be the scrolls that will cycle out in sections every three months. So we had our first section closed in February. We'll have our next section closed in May, and then we'll have that final group that ends in September.
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When we come back, Dr. Duke and I continue to make our way through the exhibition, landing on an enormous 4,000 pound piece of the Western Wall at a time when those in Israel could not even visit the Wall.
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We'll be right back.
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Welcome back. As Dr. Duke and I continue our walk through the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition, I pondered what the implications of these scrolls are for Christians. And we landed upon a place, place of reflection, that even those in Israel can't visit right now.
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I noticed that some of the Psalms seem to be, or at least it's set on the plaque, that they could be out of order, because again, we don't have necessarily a proper order as it is in the Bible. Why would that be?
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Yep. Well, I even think when it comes to reading texts, 2,000 years ago, this was a time when you still had scroll technology versus books. I mean, you really start getting very concrete where everything is in agreement once you start having books, where all, all 66 books or more of the Bible could be woven together between covers. We have the individual Psalm scroll or individual Genesis scroll. And I would say that the narrative texts like Genesis and Exodus, they are in proper order, but something like Psalms, you can kind of move things around, depending on, for liturgical reasons, for other things that were being used for that group of Qumran. Because we don't know why did they use these exact Psalms? Because we don't have, with 11Q5, we don't have the entire Psalm scroll. We just have a section that includes basically Psalm 93 to about Psalm 125 or so. So maybe for those are the Psalms of ascent. The Psalms you would say when you're going up to Jerusalem.
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Right.
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Maybe they had their own little greatest hits, so to speak. Just like all of us on Spotify, create our own little list of songs to sing.
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You mentioned the 10 year period when these were discovered. You mentioned Bedouins finding them. And there's this kind of race going on archaeologically between archaeologists and everyone else trying to find these scrolls. There was also a period probably where they were selling them too. The Bedouins did try to sell them. How do we know that there aren't scrolls still to be discovered in terms of the authenticity and finding more scrolls like that? And how do we know there aren't some still being held out there privately
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that we don't even know about that is completely possible. I often get asked the question, could there ever be a Cave 12 discovered? That's also possible, but I think that's less probable just because of the amazing research the Israel Antiquities Authority has done around the Judean wilderness for every nook and cranny they have looked into to See, with ground penetrating radar and everything else. So to find a cave 12 to me is possible, but less probable. But it is possible for sure that there are families in private hands with a Swiss vault that may have had some from the 1950s or 60s, because the Bedouin did not keep good records, even things that we would label coming from a certain cave. Today, we're having to take the word of Bedouin who brought these items to Jerusalem. And early on, what they found is they first were paying the Bedouin a certain amount for each scroll that was brought in. Well, that made it easy for them to take a large piece, cut it into multiple pieces and say, oh, good, now I can sell five pieces. So they started actually buying it from the Bedouin by square centimeter. So they started saying, okay, if you bring us in a bigger piece, it's not going to be any more or less than if you bring others. So it is possible there could be some more items out there.
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We just don't know about it. How do you deal with forgeries? Because I know that that's been unfortunately a part of the deal here, part of the process. How do you authenticate those and what sort of steps are taken to ensure the authenticity of the scroll?
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So all of these materials come from the Israel Antiquities Authority. They, they are the major research body in the world that does scrolls research. So we work directly with them. There definitely was some issues that came up with anything from 2002 and on that started showing up on the market. But some of the technologies that are being used now to actually authenticate are things that were not even envisioned in the 1950s. So some of the interesting things with the electron microscopes and others really get us a good, good sense of what we are dealing with, even down to looking at text. And can we find out if a certain piece of leather is old? So it carbon dates old, but the ink is actually showing to kind of waterfall into crevices, which shows that it's probably modern ink on ancient leather. So those are some of the things that are out there that scholars are looking in. But that's still an open question. And I will give any new fragments that may come up and are available, that may be one that people will start asking different questions than they would
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have in 1950 to make this very, very current and modern. Especially if we consider the past, even two weeks with the conflict that's going on in Israel, is there any danger archaeologically to things that are happening to that area of the world that could be devastating? For in terms of Our scholarly research of antique documents.
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Yeah. So, I mean, one sad reality right now is that in February, I was in Jerusalem. We were there, me and the Green family were there for the opening of the great Isaiah scroll exhibit. It was going from February 24th into April. And it was this international exhibit that was supposed to draw a lot of tourists, but we're now, in the last two weeks, see that tourism is completely null in that part of the world. So I don't know exactly what they're going to do with that exhibit, if it's still going to close because of conservation reasons, or if they're going to extend it so that once tourism comes back. But archaeological sites are always something that have the potential for looting, for damage. There were definitely times where you saw with the Taliban and ISIS and others destroying places, but definitely our friends with the Israel Antiquities Authority, I mean, they do a great job of protecting and preserving archaeological sites to make sure there's as little of that kind of looting or damage as possible.
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This is going to be more of a theological question, so feel free to answer it if you can. But given what we know about these old scriptures and the veracity of the authoritativeness of them, the fact that it's pointing towards a Bible that is living, breathing, and existed that long ago with great certainty, what might it tell us about the times in the modern age that we are in, based on old biblical prophecy? I know it's a tough question, but it's probably a loaded one.
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But I feel like a lot of
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Christians out there, especially those that watch our network, probably would want to know an answer to that.
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I think one of the things I've taken away from my studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the group there at Qumran is that some of the things we still face today are the things they face back then. How do you live in a world, how do you live faithfully? How do you exist when there are so many complexities going on, when you're being run by an evil empire, the Romans, 2,000 years ago, or some of the tragedies we see in the modern era? And how do you find comfort in scripture?
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Right.
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And that's something that you saw, that they were pointing to Scripture, just like today. We've just seen over the last couple years a kind of revival and people going back to faith, going back to scripture because of some of the chaos we see. One thing that is fascinating about Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship, if we go back to some of the chaos that happened around Waco, Texas, with the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, all of that situation. It was actually a Dead Sea scroll scholar that was brought in by the FBI to debate David Korea on the phone, because David Koresh in some ways was using scripture in ways to try to bring sense to his reality in similar ways that we see in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other communities 2,000 years ago. They were appealing to the book of Daniel and others to try to make sense of their life. Those are some of the books that David Koresh and others were doing. So I think we're still struggling with what does it mean to live biblically? What does it mean to not let our emotions and our imaginations run away with our us? And how do we stay grounded? And that was 2,000 years ago. The same. That's 2,000 years hence. We're still dealing with that.
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Let's keep walking just a little bit, because I want to make sure there's more movement. Dr. Duke, what is your. It's be a tough question, too. What is your. Your favorite artifact in this particular exhibit and why?
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C
Yeah, I mean, we already saw the Magdala stuff here. That, to me, is truly stunning. I would say the Dead Sea Scrolls are there. I think one of the things that's the most interesting to start, not necessarily an artifact, is at the end of the exhibit when you show the scientific developments that have happened in Dead Sea Scrolls research from the 1950s to today, when we have pictures there where you see the early Dead Sea scroll scholars in the 1950s holding fragments with their bare hands.
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Yeah.
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Letting natural light just pour in on them while they're smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. That is anathema. Today. We would look at that and say, you put on gloves. You. You don't even read, stop breathing when you look at these things. So to show in the last 70 years, the scientific developments, the way conservation has really become enhanced, and to show the ways that we care for these, I think that's an addition to this exhibit that I haven't seen in other Dead Sea Scrolls exhibits. That gives that sense of just how far we've come in manuscript conservation in the last 70 years.
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A
Undoubtedly, Christians will be coming over the next several months for Easter, as we know. What. What do you find when visitors come to the museum that I know you mentioned? It confirms and gives us comfort in a lot of what we see in these. These texts and these scriptures. But what do you find Christians connect with on a very emotional level when they visit this museum?
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C
Well, I would say depending on which floor they're on and depending on their own Personality like we have, we have certain of our guests that they do our Washington Revelation flyover where they see how scripture is embedded in buildings all over Washington and they will be inspired. Like, wow. We, we're a nation that used to kind of lift up scripture in ways that in the more recent past, we have not done it as much. We have other guests that just seeing all the different Bible translations. So we have a whole room that shows called Illuminations, that shows all of the modern Bible translations and how the Bible is now accessible all around the world to people who before didn't have access. That's a place where I've seen people, people weeping, particularly if they know someone who is connected to a certain translation. I would say something like a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit is just being in proximity to something that's 2000 or more years old. So for this exhibit, it actually concludes with a big piece of stone from the western wall. It was part of the destruction by the Romans. And we actually have it set up in a way that people can leave notes.
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Let's go there.
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Actually, you can flip the light up and we'll go there.
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These ossuaries, like, had Jesus never rose
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from the dead, this is what he would be in.
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The body would have decomposed. They would have collected his bones and put them in a box like this and then been sword with his family.
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So if Jesus had not resurrected off the cross, this is what he'd be in.
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Right. It would have been a larger, more adult size.
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And there hinges history.
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C
Yeah. So each of the cases has the actual item in the middle that is light controlled. The light will go off at a certain, certain time. We have the natural light, just what it would look like in natural light. And then we have the infrared. And for scholars, this is what they work on. Very few scholars will work directly on the fragments if they're doing study of the text. Because this you can blow up on your computer screen and see it. What's fascinating about this text, and if you look closely, you have right here, that is actually the name of the Lord and it's written in different characters than all the rest. So this psalm scroll, every time it came the name of the Lord, they switched it to paleo Hebrew in a way that I think is to show that they respected, wanted to show a unique way to show the Lord's name out of respect, to fulfill the Ten Commandments, not to take the Lord's name in vain.
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Wow. So that's a completely different way of
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saying so that's what Hebrew looked Like at the time of David. These are the characters during the exile, the other characters that were adopted.
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What is this doing here?
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C
So this is a facsimile of a piece of leather that was charred. It was found at a site called Ein Getty that's about 10 miles south of Qumran. And they have found, with CT scanning, it was actually a professor at University of Kentucky that showed that they could CT scan this and actually unroll it because it's not able to be unrolled. And then with different technologies and computer software, they get unroll it digitally so they can read a text that still looks like that today in a box in Jerusalem. Wow. So you can see it here.
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They can unroll it. Wow. All right, tell us about this.
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C
This is actually a stone from the Western Wall when the Romans destroyed that part of Jerusalem. And it has been kind of accessorized around width than a faux wall, but is similar to what you see in the Western Wall in Jerusalem. And we encourage our guests, if they want to leave a note or prayer or something. And we will see people here just kind of pausing and reflecting.
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Yeah.
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C
And I think to conclude this whole experience saying, yes, you've seen a lot of history, a lot of archeology, you've seen the oldest biblical text ever, but to kind of come back to this moment of spiritual reflection, like it's all for. Not if it doesn't cause people to. To reflect a little bit on what is life really about.
- [29:06]
A
And the beauty of this is that if you can't get to Israel right now, which most people can't, this is a place the museum, they can come.
- [29:11]
C
Right. And what's wonderful is they want us to touch it and feel it. And that just, again, gives us that sense of being connected to the land as much as possible. This would be filled with people, but
- [29:25]
A
basically the last two weeks been completely barren.
- [29:29]
C
It's been completely barren because nobody is going, because we're having rocket fire. They've had some shrapnel coming from rockets that have been taken down, which all
- [29:38]
A
the more significance of having this at the Museum of the Bible. So people can come and be able to do this, but they can't in Israel currently? Absolutely.
- [29:45]
B
When we return, Dr. Duke and I transition to an entirely different exhibition at the museum, one that stunned me by its intricacy and preservation, as well as its uniqueness for visitors as a combination complement to the scrolls exhibition.
- [29:57]
A
We'll be right back, Doctor Duke. We're at a completely different exhibition now in the museum. Another fascinating exhibition Tell us all about it and the significance of it right now.
- [30:20]
C
Yeah. Well, we just saw the Dead Sea Scrolls upstairs. Now we're downstairs seeing the earliest church floor ever discovered. So we have one building here in Washington D.C. that has our earliest biblical text and the earliest church ever discovered. And I don't know if that's ever going to be true again, that these two things are going to be paired in the same building. So that's quite exciting. But this mosaic floor was found in 2004. They were doing a renovation to a prison in Israel and how it works in that part of the world. Anytime you're doing a construction project, you got to start with doing archaeology. So they actually hit this mosaic floor construction project has never progressed since 2004. It was paused permanently until they were able to figure out what to eventually do with this. And in 2024, 20 years later, they cut it into sections, they removed it, they conserved it, re leveled it. Because any of the places you see that have the. The just white plaster, those are places where it had collapsed through erosion or other things, but then they re leveled it. And this is the first place ever it's been displayed. So in 2024, it was still in the ground. It was removed, conserved, and brought straight
- [31:23]
A
here to Washington D.C. at the same time, the Dead Sea Scrolls are here. Let's walk around and tell me about the actual inscriptions on it and why they're significant.
- [31:32]
C
So, first of all, it is a Christian mosaic floor for several reasons. One, we have the fish symbol through ceramics, through coinage, through even the way the letters are written in the inscriptions. We know it dates to around 230, so the third century. That's 100 years before Constantine. That's 100 years before the Nicene Creed. It's 100 years before people thought there was actually kind of an established Christianity. And the beauty of it is the inscriptions on this floor actually show perfectly orthodox Christian theology. So the first inscription off to the far side mentions Dionys, who is our brother and a centurion.
- [32:12]
A
Okay.
- [32:12]
C
And who gave the funds for this floor. It also mentions in the bottom right the workman Brutus, who actually made the floor. So here we have probably the most powerful person in the region and a workman mentioned in the same inscription. That inscription over there just mentions four women who should be remembered. Why are they going to be remembered? Well, were they martyred? Philanthropy, we don't know. But here we have four women and two men so far mentioned in a room that probably could only hold 30 or 40 people comfortably. It Gives you that beautiful sense of what we see in the Apostle Paul, where he talks about here, there is no Greek or Jew, slave or free, male or female, but we're all wanting Christ. But it's this inscription right here in front of us that is just remarkable. And even recently, I picked up a early church history book book that it was recently published. And I always flip to the index now to see has anybody captured this? And it was missing. There was no Megiddo mosaic reference in that book. And that's a huge miss because this inscription mentions a woman named Makeeptis. It mentions that she should be honored for giving the table the honor of the God Jesus Christ. Perfect orthodox theology right here on this floor 100 years before, some scholars suggest said that there was orthodox theology. I mean, it shows that even these small communities that were far flung in the Roman Empire were still grounded in what was true theology.
- [33:34]
A
And so this would be the first written inscription that we have of Jesus Christ being mentioned as God.
- [33:39]
C
Correct. This is our earliest mentioned outside of
- [33:42]
B
scripture, the divinity of Christ, and perfectly intact.
- [33:45]
A
Absolutely not having to be pieced together. It's just, it's. It looks pristine, as if someone had made them a replica of this, but it's not.
- [33:52]
C
Well, and even the word for table in Greek, there is trapeza. That table right in the center of the room would have been used for the Eucharist in this community. And I was giving a tour through here of a group of Greek Orthodox priests, and they got so excited when they saw that word trapeza there. Because still today in Greek Orthodoxy, all around the world, they call it the holy Trapeza, the holy table. When they have communion in Catholicism, they use the Eucharist, and a lot of more Protestants, they call it communion. But in Greek Orthodoxy, trapeza, which is the word sitting right there. And they were saying, wow, for 1800 years, from this community in this backwoods of the Roman Empire to today, it's this through line of consistency of still worshiping and celebrating the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.
- [34:40]
A
So we have a financier, we have a builder, and we have several women named and then also God, Jesus Christ. A perfect example of the church bringing everyone together. That's incredible. And tell me a little bit about the geometric shapes that we're seeing here, because there certainly is a beautiful amount of parallelism. And it's beautiful, aesthetically speaking. Talk to us about that.
- [34:59]
C
Yeah. So even all the patterns, because the only, say, kind of animate object are the fish that are over there.
- [35:09]
A
Well, what fish are They, I think
- [35:11]
C
one's a tuna, one's a bass. Okay, I forget what it is. But the fish was the earliest symbol of Christianity, Right? The most probably remembered miracle is the loaves and fish, right? You have the fact that the disciples are called to be fishers of men. There you have that. And the. The word in Greek for fish is ik. But the first letters, if you take each letter in the word ichthus and then put a word to it, it does feel like Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. So it became an acronym for Jesus. 100 years later, after the time of Constantine, you have the cross become the predominant symbol of Christianity. But here we're in earlier period. All the other patterns, though, are very geometric. So the fact that the only animate object on there is the fish also indicates that. But even some of the patterns, I've been asked before, before, like, is there some consistency? Is there some reason, like this inner threaded thing here, is that showing, like, infinity and everything seems to go on forever. But you have different patterns, to my knowledge. And the full dig report, even though it was excavated in 2004, has not been completely finished yet. So I don't know if there's any other mosaics in and around the Roman Empire that would have the same designs, but it truly is stunning. And even the fact that the color has stayed fairly vibrant over the last 1800 years.
- [36:29]
A
Well, as I look at these and you mentioned talk about infinity, what I see, and again, take your scholarly opinion here, because I know that we don't necessarily have it yet, but when I think about the imprint of DNA and the things genetically that we may find, there are patterns there. And could we potentially find that archaeology is also pointing us towards the DNA structure of the fact that God created it? I mean, that's.
- [36:52]
B
That's an existential question.
- [36:54]
A
But I just feel like what we're seeing here physically may also be indicative of what could be genetically within us.
- [37:00]
C
Well, and I would say too, just the fact that, that it shows that there's this simple beauty of a room like this. It is one where people came in here. And to use your imagination of having, again, maybe 30 or 40 people gathered around here, maybe fewer, maybe 10 or 15, we don't know. But we do know it was a very egalitarian community, that you'd have a centurion, women and a workman all mentioned together is truly stunning.
- [37:27]
A
What do you hope the visitors, when they come through the Museum of the Bible, kind of take away what they. Because everyone's gonna have an individual experience I know that you can't generalize, but what do you hope? Because this museum is very unique in terms of Washington, D.C. what do you hope that they actually walk away with when they leave here?
- [37:42]
C
So in our mission, we just want to talk about the transformative power of the Bible. And I think a. Even a room like this shows that here's this community that probably to some risk of their own career, Guyana, the centurion, or these women, they were going to worship Jesus. Why? Because they believed in the New Testament. They believed in that transformative power. And I think that is something still today when we, we want all of our visitors to come and at least reflect on the fact that the Bible is a transforming power in culture and that even studies have shown that where the Bible has gone, where Bible translation has gone, it's often elevated the society, literacy goes up, economy goes up, and it's something that the word comes with power, so to speak.
- [38:24]
A
The Green family has obviously been the benefactor of this museum, and it seems like a relatively new museum. Why do you think it took the Green family's benevolence to create a museum of this kind? Why have we waited so long?
- [38:35]
C
Well, it's. I mean, that's. There's a lot in that question.
- [38:39]
A
Well, and the reason why I ask it is because we think of Washington, D.C. as a place of Smithsonians and a relatively young country. Right. This has artifacts in it that are so much older, but so much that are so incredibly pivotal to the founding of our nation, which some people want to ignore for whatever reason. But I feel like DC had to been chosen for a specific reason too, in terms of. In of terms places where scripture can even be found across this city. Talk about the parallels between why DC maybe was chosen for this.
- [39:04]
C
Well, there were other locations that were considered, but I am so glad DC was the ultimate choice because for one, you cannot do a museum poorly here in D.C. museums here in D.C. because you have so many competitors. If you don't do it with excellence, you'll be noted really quickly. So that actually has wonderful group of competitors, so to speak, that are giving us a peer to compare ourselves to. But I think also D.C. we are coming up on our 250th anniversary as a country, and there's going to be a lot of thought on just what, what is the. The country been like over the last 250 years? And it's without a doubt the fact that the Bible impacted early America more than any other book. The book of Deuteronomy was quoted more Than than many of the great other works of philosophy. I mean, the Bible was just where they drew their insights and knowledge. And it's one where even this morning I was in an event where a fairly senior politician was talking about the separation of church and state. That is often used improperly.
- [40:07]
A
Right.
- [40:08]
C
It's a thought that the church is supposed to stay out of the state. It's actually the opposite. It was set there so that the state was never going to come in and infringe on religion, religious freedom. And I value my religious freedom and I want to value it for all Americans, whether they're Christians or not. Just to say that's something that we don't want state controlled religion. And that's something where then the Bible gives us the authority, not the state.
- [40:30]
A
I want to give you a quote here since you mentioned this about D.C. that Lawrence Shiffman, an authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls and professor of Hebrew at nyu and I want you to get you react to what he said. He said the overarching narrative is the impact of the Bible. Its own internal history of how it came together, spread and was passed on. It exudes one of the best things about art culture in this country. Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Ethiopic, Orthodox, all of them. Here there's a message of shared culture and respect that the museum exudes. Everyone who comes here is going to go out with that message. For visitors coming to D.C. it would seem that the museum is as good as, if not better than, any Smithsonian in this city.
- [41:05]
C
Amen. You just said it. We can pass the offering plate and we're done. But no, I would say. And actually Professor Shifman and I are doing a lecture this Sunday together here at the museum. He has been a wonderful supporter and advocate, but also one that has helped us make sure that the narrative is correct, accurate, and does embrace all people of the book, whether it's Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox. And it's one where I would agree wholeheartedly with that. With the goal here is not to proselytize, it's not to evangelize. It's just to put out the truth that the Bible has been an impacting force for centuries. And can that still be true today?
- [41:45]
A
A lot of Christians will come here, myself included, having never read the entire Bible. It's a long book. I do know that you're having a very big event though, coming up in April, the reading of the Bible. Tell me a little bit about that because that's unique, especially as we celebrate our 250th birthday.
- [41:58]
C
Yeah. There's going to be about a week where the entire Bible, from Genesis 1:1 all the way through Revelation is going to be read. Some very significant politicians, actors, athletes and others are going to be part of that reading. But it'll be hosted here at the museum and it'll be one where I think it'll be inspiring to a lot of people just to hear scripture read publicly in a place like Washington, D.C.
- [42:20]
A
what are the things this year, as we kind of conclude our tour here is the museum going to be doing this year? And of course, you've got the wonderful exhibit here. You have the mosaic, you have, of course, the reading of the Bible. Will you be affiliated at all with the America Praise event that's coming up in May or other things this year that we can, that our visitors can look forward to?
- [42:38]
C
So for sure, any of those events that have at least a connection to scripture, I mean, we will have our doors open and we will welcome people that are coming here for another event and then come by to the museum for America's 250th. We're going to have a special exhibit called Sacred Liberty.
- [42:53]
A
Okay.
- [42:53]
C
It's going to focus on the importance of the Bible during that first, basically generation of the founding of America. You will not be able to walk into this museum July 4th and not realize the Bible impacted this country 250 years ago. But later this year, in November, we're going to open a special exhibit in partnership with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch out of Constantinople. They have given us the green light to show for the first time various paintings of biblical figures that we call icons that are from Patmos, the island where St. John wrote Revelation, and from the. The city of Thessaloniki, Thessalonians in the Bible. So we're going to have a whole exhibit on Greek Orthodox icons that show how art and how the Bible was basically taught through icons in a time when sometimes literacy wasn't as high. So we have so many more things in 20, 20, 26, and then 2027's coming.
- [43:46]
A
And finally, Dr. Duke, where can people go to find out more information about the museum and specifically how to connect with you and your research that you do in all the lectures that you give.
- [43:52]
C
Yeah. So, museum of the Bible.org Go to our website. You can see all of our educational events, our various other lecture type events that are coming up and ways that you can come visit the museum. And really, it would take you a week to see everything in this museum if you wanted to read everything else. So become a member. So you can come back many times.
- [44:11]
A
Perfect. Thank you, Dr. Duke. You're welcome. I appreciate. That was terrific, man. Thank you.
- [44:30]
B
Welcome back. The Museum of the Bible is a fascinating place. And having visited a number of great museums in our nation's capital, I can tell you with certainty that it is worth your time to visit. I remember when I went to see the Declaration of Independence and Constitution at the National Archives, how amazing it is to see an original document that is so consequential in history. When you realize that those documents are a mere 250 years old and the Dead Sea Scrolls are too thick, thousand years old, it really puts things into perspective. Our nation is relatively young, all things considered, so our museums hold rather young documents compared to what is housed in the Museum of the Bible. What I took away from my walk with Dr. Duke is that, number one, the fact we even have these scrolls is a remarkable feat. Had the Bedouin not thrown that rock down a cave, we might never know about them. Secondly, the Bible we read today has remarkable consistency and accuracy from the transcriptions over thousands of years with only minor variations in text. I found it fascinating that at the time these scrolls were being transcribed and read in the first century, Jesus of Nazareth was walking the earth in this vicinity during his ministry. I mean, imagine you're in Israel thousands of years ago, reading about prophecy from Isaiah and then hearing about, or even better yet, getting to see the rabbi. These prophecies were written about. So this is something that I reflected upon in realizing the historical time period in which the scrolls existed, connecting Judaism to Christianity. And it also made me think about those bone boxes. If Jesus died and they found a body, his bones would be in one of those boxes. But because the tomb was empty, we celebrate a risen Lord. I was also very much taken aback by the live look at the Western Wall, where it is completely empty due to the ongoing conflict with Iran and Israel. It is unsafe to be there with rockets still hitting the sacred area. The fact that I could write a note that I could stick in a crevice of the piece of wall was a testament that this exhibition and this museum offers something that cannot be replicated at the wall's origin. Thirdly, it was incredible to see the Megiddo mosaic, which is a spectacle and quite a transition from seeing the minute fragments of scrolls that are rather small to an entire floor that you have to physically walk around the perimeter of, to see each intricate part, to see the confluence of a benefactor, an artisan, and a handful of women who let faith guide such an incredible mosaic. Which is largely intact without much blemish, was an inspiration for history and archaeology buffs. This is a gold mine. For those of faith, it is a treasure, a critical piece of history that shows that Jesus Christ, the one prophesied about in the ancient scriptures, is mentioned as God. This is what makes the museum's current exhibitions entirely unique, where one can view such critical pieces of the Old Testament and an artistic representation of the New Testament in one place. As Dr. Duke said, this has never been offered before in the same place at the same time. So for those who might visit the D.C. area, this would be a remarkable once in a lifetime opportunity. I want to express my gratitude to Dr. Duke, Dr. Carlos Campo, the CEO of the museum, and Kelly Koch, head of Public relations, for being so hospitable. All of what you have seen today was made possible by the museum and the Israel Antiquities Authority. What I think you will find compelling as well is that in light of the current conflict in Israel, we simply don't know how much of ancient and biblical history could be potentially destroyed or lost. We also don't know when tourism will resume in Israel, especially for Christians who want to walk the steps of Jesus. So this Easter, as we reflect upon the risen Christ, I encourage you to think about the continued persecution of people of faith, how our modern world's chaos and conflicts connect directly to ancient Israel and its persecution and the one man who defied persecution and death so that we could have a new life. The same Messiah who came to save man's soul 2000 years ago still represents a lifeline for the hopeless, the downtrodden and the sinner. It's never too late to start believing, but it's always too late to wait. I hope you'll have a chance to see these artifacts and scrolls as I did at the Museum of the Bible, and I wish you all a very happy and reflective Easter.
- [49:30]
C
This is an I Heart podcast, guaranteed human.