Storytelling the Bible at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and Museum of the Bible

Storytelling the Bible at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and Museum of the Bible
Title Storytelling the Bible at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and Museum of the Bible PDF eBook
Author Paul Thomas
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Pages 230
Release 2020-04-16
Genre Religion
ISBN 056769416X

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Paul Thomas chronicles a multi-level reception study of the Bible at both the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, USA. Thomas explores the commercial presentation of biblical narratives and the reception of those narratives by the patrons of each attraction, focusing upon three topics; what do young Creationists believe, how they interpret their beliefs from the Bible, and what is the user experience at the museums? The volume begins by explaining how Answers in Genesis (AiG) use Bible passages to support young-Earth creationist arguments, allowing for the chance to consider the Bible via physical means. Thomas then examines how the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter visitors receive the Bible (as presented by AiG) and how this presentation informs visitors' understanding of the text, exploring concepts such as the most prominent displays of the two attractions, the larger context of museums and theme parks and the case studies of the Methuselah display and The Noah Interview. He concludes with the summary of the user experience generated by the attractions, analyzing the degree to which patrons accept, negotiate, or resist the interpretation of the Bible offered by AiG.

The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture

The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture
Title The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture PDF eBook
Author Dan W. Clanton, Jr.
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 615
Release 2020-11-24
Genre Religion
ISBN 0190077476

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The study of the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and popular culture has blossomed in the past few decades, and the time seems ripe for a broadly-conceived work that assesses the current state of the field, offers examples of work in that field, and suggests future directions for further study. This Handbook includes a wide range of topics organized under several broad themes, including biblical characters (such as Adam, Eve, David and Jesus) and themes (like Creation, Hell, and Apocalyptic) in popular culture; the Bible in popular cultural genres (for example, film, comics, and Jazz); and "lived" examples (such as museums and theme parks). The Handbook concludes with a section taking stock of methodologies and the impact of the field on teaching and publishing. The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture represents a major contribution to the field by some of its leading practitioners, and will be a key resource for the future development of the study of both the Bible and its role in American popular culture.

Righting America at the Creation Museum

Righting America at the Creation Museum
Title Righting America at the Creation Museum PDF eBook
Author Susan L. Trollinger
Publisher JHU Press
Pages 340
Release 2016-05-15
Genre Religion
ISBN 142141953X

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What does the popularity of the Creation Museum tell us about the appeal of the Christian right? On May 28, 2007, the Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. Aimed at scientifically demonstrating that the universe was created less than ten thousand years ago by a Judeo-Christian god, the museum is hugely popular, attracting millions of visitors over the past eight years. Surrounded by themed topiary gardens and a petting zoo with camel rides, the site conjures up images of a religious Disneyland. Inside, visitors are met by dinosaurs at every turn and by a replica of the Garden of Eden that features the Tree of Life, the serpent, and Adam and Eve. In Righting America at the Creation Museum, Susan L. Trollinger and William Vance Trollinger, Jr., take readers on a fascinating tour of the museum. The Trollingers vividly describe and analyze its vast array of exhibits, placards, dioramas, and videos, from the Culture in Crisis Room, where videos depict sinful characters watching pornography or considering abortion, to the Natural Selection Room, where placards argue that natural selection doesn’t lead to evolution. The book also traces the rise of creationism and the history of fundamentalism in America. This compelling book reveals that the Creation Museum is a remarkably complex phenomenon, at once a “natural history” museum at odds with contemporary science, an extended brief for the Bible as the literally true and errorless word of God, and a powerful and unflinching argument on behalf of the Christian right.

Does Scripture Speak for Itself?

Does Scripture Speak for Itself?
Title Does Scripture Speak for Itself? PDF eBook
Author Jill Hicks-Keeton
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 249
Release 2022-10-06
Genre Religion
ISBN 1108655688

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Is the Bible the unembellished Word of God or the product of human agency? There are different answers to that question. And they lie at the heart of this book's powerful exploration of the fraught ways in which money, race and power shape the story of Christianity in American public life. The authors' subject is the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC: arguably the latest example of a long line of white evangelical institutions aiming to amplify and promote a religious, political, and moral agenda of their own. In their careful and compelling investigation, Jill Hicks-Keeton and Cavan Concannon disclose the ways in which the Museum's exhibits reinforce a particularized and partial interpretation of the Bible's meaning. Bringing to light the Museum's implicit messaging about scriptural provenance and audience, the authors reveal how the MOTB produces a version of the Bible that in essence authorizes a certain sort of white evangelical privilege; promotes a view of history aligned with that same evangelical aspiration; and above all protects a cohort of white evangelicals from critique. They show too how the Museum collapses vital conceptual distinctions between its own conservative vision of the Bible and 'The Bible' as a cultural icon. This revelatory volume above all confirms that scripture – for all the claims made for it that it speaks only divine truth – can in the end never be separated from human politics.

Bible Nation

Bible Nation
Title Bible Nation PDF eBook
Author Candida R. Moss
Publisher Princeton University Press
Pages 252
Release 2019-07-16
Genre Religion
ISBN 0691198993

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How the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make America a “Bible nation” The Greens of Oklahoma City—the billionaire owners of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores—are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in an ambitious effort to increase the Bible’s influence on American society. In Bible Nation, Candida Moss and Joel Baden provide the first in-depth investigative account of the Greens’ sweeping Bible projects. Moss and Baden tell the story of the Greens’ efforts to place a Bible curriculum in public schools; their rapid acquisition of an unparalleled collection of biblical antiquities; their creation of a closely controlled group of scholars to study and promote the collection; and their construction of a $500 million Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Revealing how all these initiatives promote a very particular set of beliefs about the Bible, the book raises serious questions about the trade in biblical antiquities, the integrity of academic research, and the place of private belief in public life.

Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark?

Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark?
Title Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark? PDF eBook
Author Janet Kellogg Ray
Publisher Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Pages 169
Release 2021-09-09
Genre Religion
ISBN 1467463027

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A scientific look at creationism from a former creationist A significant number of Americans, especially evangelical Christians, believe Earth and humankind were created in their present form sometime in the last 10,000 years or so—the rationale being that this is (presumably) the story told in the book of Genesis. Within that group, any threatening scientific evidence that suggests otherwise is rejected or, when possible, retrofitted into a creationist worldview. But can this uncomfortable blend of biblical literalism and pseudoscience hold up under scrutiny? Is it tenable to believe that the Grand Canyon was formed not millions of years ago by gradual erosion but merely thousands of years ago by the Great Flood? Were there really baby dinosaurs with Noah on his ark? Janet Kellogg Ray, a science educator who grew up a creationist, doesn’t want other Christians to have to do the exhausting mental gymnastics she did earlier in her life. Working through the findings of a range of fields including geology, paleontology, and biology, she shows how a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis simply doesn’t mesh with what we know to be reality. But as someone who remains a committed Christian, Ray also shows how an acceptance of the theory of evolution is not necessarily an acceptance of atheism, and how God can still be responsible for having created the world, even if it wasn’t in a single, momentary, miraculous event.

Art as Biblical Commentary

Art as Biblical Commentary
Title Art as Biblical Commentary PDF eBook
Author J. Cheryl Exum
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Pages 288
Release 2019-05-23
Genre Religion
ISBN 0567685195

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Art as Biblical Commentary is not just about biblical art but, more importantly, about biblical exegesis and the contributions visual criticism as an exegetical tool can make to biblical exegesis and commentary. Using a range of texts and numerous images, J. Cheryl Exum asks what works of art can teach us about the biblical text. 'Visual criticism' is her term for an approach that addresses this question by focusing on the narrativity of images-reading them as if, like texts, they have a story to tell-and asking what light an image's 'story' can shed on the biblical narrator's story. In Part I, Exum elaborates on her approach and offers a personal testimony to the value of visual criticism. Part 2 examines in detail the story of Hagar in Genesis 16 and 21. Part 3 contains chapters on erotic looking and voyeuristic gazing in the stories of Bathsheba, Susanna, Joseph and Potiphar's wife and the Song of Songs; on the distribution of renown among Jael, Deborah and Barak; on the Bible's notorious women, Eve and Delilah; and on the sacrificed female body in the stories of the Levite's wife (Judges 19) and Mary the mother of Jesus.