Free Republic

Many years ago, my then-teenage daughter was on a church choir tour in Philadelphia. My wife asked her by phone how it was going. Our daughter replied that everything had been going great, and they were hoping to visit the nation’s second largest shopping mall. But no. Instead, they had to go see “some stupid bell with a crack in it.” She told me later she just said this because she wanted to get a rise out of her dad—that would be me. Feelings of patriotism ebb and flow. Is patriotism making a comeback?

One block from Independence Hall, where the Founding Fathers met to form a new nation, the American Bible Society is making a case for the Good Book’s place in American history. The messages in scripture about freedom, truth, and fairness were so ingrained in the culture of the new republic that Christian principles must have influenced the documents that form its foundation, the Bible society’s officials argue. For them, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bible are inextricably intertwined.

The Museum of the Bible said Monday that five of its 16 famous Dead Sea Scrolls fragments are fake. A team of German experts analyzed the privately funded Washington, D.C., museum's fragments and found they had "characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin." The fragments will no longer be displayed at the museum. "Though we had hoped the testing would render different results, this is an opportunity to educate the public on the importance of verifying the authenticity of rare biblical artifacts, the elaborate testing process undertaken and our commitment to transparency," said Jeffrey Kloha, chief curatorial officer for the museum, said...

Critics accuse it of threatening the separation of church and state; in truth, Washington’s new museum makes an invaluable contribution to American (and Jewish) cultural literacy.

Even skeptics are wowed by the high-tech museum. Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Kennicott called Museum of the Bible ‘stocked with historic treasures.’ By Josh ShepherdNovember 20, 2017 The professor of Jewish studies passes under an ornate archway, leading to another part of the sprawling History of the Bible floor. Keeping up with him isn’t easy, as we dodge workers who continue to install museum panels before opening day.“There’s nothing false anywhere,” Professor Lawrence Schiffman says over his shoulder, gesturing towards dozens of Torah scrolls carefully lit for preservation. “I’ve been walking around even today, reading more labels. We keep...

One of America’s most famously Christian businesses is amassing a vast collection of Biblical antiquities. The problem is some of them may have been looted from the Middle East. In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay tablets on their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by U.S. Customs agents in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in cuneiform—the script of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day Iraq—and were thousands of years old. Their destination was the compound of the Hobby Lobby corporation, which became famous last year for winning a landmark Supreme Court case on...