The museum of whose Bible?

What have Coptic papyri, letters of provenance, and import-export agree­ments to do with America’s culture wars? More than you might think, suggest Candida Moss, who teaches theology at the University of Bir­ming­ham, and Joel Baden, who teaches Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School. In Bible Nation, Moss and Baden lay bare this link by examining the Bible-promoting efforts of the billionaire Green family, work that will culminate in the soon-to-open Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

This is not the Greens’ first foray into the culture wars. In 2014, the Greens—parents David and Barbara and sons Mart, Steve, and Darsee—burst onto the national scene when they, with the help of their Becket Fund lawyers, prevailed over the Obama administration in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court case that exempted their mammoth craft store chain from Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate. Long before this dispute reached its conclusion, however, the family was well known in Christian circles for its support of evangelical causes. Moss and Baden claim to have no issues with the Greens devoting their hard-earned cash to evangelistic efforts. What bothers them is the family’s less-than-forthcoming and at turns unlawful scheme for promoting the Good Book, a plan that has sometimes been abetted by scholars who should know better.

The Greens’ most obvious impropriety involves the acquisition of artifacts smuggled out of the Middle East near the end of the Iraq War. The illegitimacy of this pursuit, outlined in the book’s first chapter, was not lost on federal authorities. This past July, in a case that received considerable press, Hobby Lobby agreed to pay a $3 million fine and return thousands of artifacts to their rightful owners. In a statement released at the time, Hobby Lobby confessed it “did not fully appreciate the complexities of the acquisitions process.” Moss and Baden are less generous in their appraisal of Hobby Lobby’s tactics, which they interpret as a see-no-evil approach to advancing their religiously inspired agenda. When it comes to acquiring artifacts, they write, “what is lacking among the members of the Green organization is any sense of due diligence.”