David Green is the founder of US retailing giant Hobby Lobby, and has been labeled as American’s “biblical billionaire” by Forbes Magazine. He’s ranked as 90th on the Forbes 400 Rich List this year, with an estimated net worth of $5 billion. His son, Steve Green, the current President of Hobby Lobby, is leading the development of the Bible Museum.

A fragment of one of the earliest surviving texts of the Bible from the Book of Genesis, from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Image courtesy of Museum of The Bible.

The Green family’s non-profit organisation is called Museum Of The Bible, and states its existence is “to engage people with the Bible through travelling exhibits of biblical artifacts… academic research through the Greens Scholars Initiative and an international museum… dedicated to a scholarly approach of the history, story and impact of the Bible.”

Steve Green’s collection of biblical artifacts will form the basis of the yet-to-be-named museum, slated to be one of the largest museum’s in Washington D.C. Plans to display items loaned from other prominent collections are also in the works. But with more than 40,000 items, the ‘Green Collection’ is one of the world’s largest private collections of rare biblical texts and artifacts.

Included amongst them are the largest private collection of Torah Scrolls, and the second largest collection of Dead Sea Scroll fragments, an undocumented copy of Wycliffe’s New Testament and large fragment of the Tyndale New Testament and early tracts and Bibles of Martin Luther.

“Our collection is of great historical and biblical significance and demonstrates the Bible’s impact on every facet of life throughout the ages—including science, the arts, government, literature and languages,” said Steve Green in a statement. The Green family have reportedly spent over US$40 million amassing their collection, which has been exhibited around the US and internationally.

The site of the new Bible museum in Washington D.C.

In an interview with Washington Post this week, Museum of the Bible’s chief operating officer went through early plans for the museum, with three sections for the history, stories and impact of the Bible. Summers called the storytelling section “Disney-esque”, while the impact section may see social media streaming and real-time conversations.

Earlier this year, Dr David Trobisch was announced as the new museum’s collections director. Dr Trobisch had previously taught New Testament at Universities of Heidelberg in Germany and Yale Divinity School and Bangor Theological Seminary.