The Christian president of Hobby Lobby craft stores plans to open a national Bible museum in Dallas to display his family’s growing collection of rare Bibles and religious texts, according to a New York Times article.
Steve Green has bought between $20 million and $40 million worth of Torahs and Bibles on behalf of the family, the story said. Green has partnered with an ancient texts scholar and a venture capitalist to start the 300,000 square-foot museum in Dallas because of the city’s Christian population and universities.
More from the Times:
The collection now includes more than 30,000 items, according to Mr. Green and his team. Some of those were shown to The New York Times at Hobby Lobby offices in Oklahoma City, including a New Testament papyrus from the second century A.D., a lavishly illustrated and illuminated Martin Luther New Testament and a Spanish Inquisition Torah….
With money to spare, the younger Mr. Green, 46, has found a passion to complement his vocation, and is working with specialists in deal-making and history who, using company money on behalf of the family, began buying with a flourish about six months ago.
“They have caught everyone’s attention because no one in recent memory has spent so much so quickly on Bibles,” said Dr. Eric White, curator of special collections at the Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“The goal is to create a museum around the story of the Bible,” Mr. Green explained. “No book has been persecuted as much or loved as much. Its incredible story needs to be told.”
Mr. Green is Pentecostal, but other family members worship in churches of other denominations, including Baptist and Assemblies of God. The family gives to a variety of Christian causes, Oral Roberts University and evangelical ministries among them, and adheres to Christian principles, closing its stores on Sundays, playing Christian music in them and operating Mardel, a separate chain of religious bookstores.
