The Eeonomist March 21st 2020~agers, whom they have since adopted.
In family-oriented communities like
Cheyenne, folks sometimes expect the ma-
ternity ward to follow quickly after the
church aisle. -it's like you get to a certain
age round here and you should be having
children,~ says Kevin ogle. Locals never
asked him and his boyfriend, Shawndae,
whether they wanted to have children until
they got manied, in .20lL "Then they were
like 'well, are you guys going to start a fam-
The Bible museumily?' That's the next step." They met their
sunogate, in Georgia, through a Facebook
page. Their daughter, Charlotte, is now five.
Mr caswell reckons he and Mr Hardy
have more in common with stlaigbt par-
ents than with other gay people who are
not raising children. "We'Ve never been to
Mykonos: he says, referring to a Greek is-
land popular with gay tourists. "We teach
our children that taxation is theft and thata
biggovemmentis a bad government.ft •A load of old cobblers
WASHINGTON, DC
Pake scrolla, just off the National MallW
HEN THE Museum of the Bible
opened in Washington, oc in 2017, it
boasted an exhibit to make archaeologists
salivate: flagments of the Dead Sea scrolls.
These 2,000-year-old scraps of parchment
include the oldest known transcripts of the
Old Testament-and the museum had t6 of
them. Exceptthatit didn't. In 20i8 five of its
fragments were revealed to be fakes. Last
week, the museum announced that all 16
were forgeries, probably created Jn the
20th century out of ancient leather, per-
haps from old shoes.
The revelation is an embanassment for
the museum, which has sought to present
itself as an academically rigorous institu-
tion worthy of its location just off the Na-
tional Mall. where the Smithsonian's fine
museums are located. The museum was
foundedbysteveGreen, a prominent evan-
gelical Christian and president of Hobby
Lobby, a chain of craft shops which Jn 20i4
persuaded the supreme Court that it de-
serveda religious exemption from a federal
requirement under which employers pro-
vide their workers with certain contracep-
tives. n bas rebuffed criticisms that it is an
expensiveadvertisementforfundament:al-
ist Christianity. The museum has several
respected biblical-scholar consultants and
a breathtaking collection of biblical texts
and artefacts. They include a Gilgamesh
tablet from the second millennium BC and
sections of the Gutenberg bible.
The museum's Dead Sea fragments are a
less impressive acquisition, apparently
bought without looking too closely into
their origins. The real things, most of
which are in the Israel Museum in Jerusa-
lem. were discovered in caves in what is
now the West Bank in the 1940s. The
Mscrollsft Mr Green snapped up, part of a
group of 70 or so, came to market after- The researchers who studied them
say the clues to their foigery include indl-
cations that they were written on a bumpy
surface: parchment resembles leather after
2,000 years but it would originally have
been smooth. They are also coated in ani-
mal glue to mimic the waxy sheen that de-
velops when collagen in parchment breaks
down overtimetofonngelatine.
This ls not the first time the Bible muse-
um has been embarrassed over its acquisi-
tions. Last year it emeiged that Hobby Lob-
by had bougbt 13 flagments of ancient
papyrus texts, which had been sold by an
oxford professor who has been accused of
stealing them from the collection he over-
saw. The museum said the acquisitions
were made ftin good faithu and promptly
handed them back.
It appears to have been similarly
upright and transparent about its Dead sea1rs only rock and scroll but I like ItUnited States 71mis-purchases. Last February, it commis-
sioned an independent team of research-
ers, who spent six months studying the
fiagJnents. Their 200-page report is dis-
played prominently on themusewn'sweb-
site. JeffICloha, the museum's chief curato-
rial officer, says he hopes the techniques
used by the researchers will be helpful to
other buyers of other such scrolls. Though
Mr Green has not disclosed how much he
paid for his, the group from which they
came are estimated to have sold for up-
wards of$35m.
Yet purchasing and then displaying
such artefacts without first establishing
their provenance is no way to mo an insti-
tution that presents itself as an authority
on the Bible. The enor is indicative of a
wider lack of academic rigour at the muse-
um. Though its display of biblical artefacts
is impressive, with fact-based descriptions
of how the Old and New Testaments were
gathered and translated, elsewhere, in-
cluding in a walk through the stories of the
Old Testament, the museum tends to elide
biblical stories with historical fa.ct in a way
that makes many biblical scholars uncom-
fortable. Given that America's division of
church and state means few people have
the opportunity to learn about the history
of the Bible, this seems unfortunate.
Yet the museum may be evangelising to
fewer people than it bad hoped, even be-
fore the novelcoronavimsled to its tempo-
my closure this week. In its first year,
when entry was free, it received a million
visitors. Since late 2018, it has charged an
enbance fee. Though it will not say how
many visitors it has welcomed since, it
seems likely that fewer tourists, visiting
the free musewns on the Mall, have been
swinging by to see its treasures. •- • ••