An elaborately encased Torah on exhibit is about 500 years old.
A page from a 1455 Gutenberg Bible contains text of Isaiah.
Posted on 01/16/2005 7:43:54 PM PST by Mike Fieschko
HIGH POINT
A new exhibit of ancient manuscripts and early printed Bibles gives Triad residents a chance to see a range of ancient material that usually appears only in the major museums of large cities.
"The Dead Sea Scrolls to the Bible in America" opened yesterday at Providence Place in High Point. It will be on view until Feb. 27.
Though a few Dead Sea Scroll fragments are given top billing, the exhibit ranges from 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian clay tablets to hand-painted pages from the medi-eval era to dozens of rare early Bibles.
The variety of the exhibit is one of its strongest points. There are parts of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a Coptic fragment of the New Testament from the third century, a medieval Torah scroll and a page from the Gutenberg Bible. There is a first edition of the King James Bible in 1611, early Spanish and Latin Bibles, and the first Bible printed in America, which was produced in the native Algonquin language in 1663.
Dan Gentry of Thomasville, standing in front of the quarter-size fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, said that seeing even those tiny bits from the biblical era "sends goose bumps down my spine."
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by accident in the desert outside Jerusalem in 1947 by young Bedouin Muslim shepherds. Virtually all of the scrolls remain in Israel. Along with thousands of fragments, they are some of the earliest examples of the Old Testament in existence and have been studied for decades by biblical scholars. The curators seem to have aimed for a presentation that is both nondenominational and strongly Christian. The religious views of America's Founding Fathers are given prominent display, and about half of the hall is a sort of biblical market containing books, videos, and even jewelry.
But much of the material is so beautiful that even those whose main interest is history, graphic design or rare books would likely enjoy a visit.
But the traveling exhibit brings some controversy to High Point, too.
The Arizona rare-book business of Craig Lampe and John Jeffcoat lends material to the exhibits. The business, GreatSite.com, calls itself the largest dealer in rare and antique Bibles in the world. Among the items the company sells are fragments from a previously damaged and incomplete 300- to 400-year-old Torah scroll. Critics in Pittsburgh said that is forbidden under Jewish law, and Rabbi Andrew Ettin of the Wake Forest University Divinity School agrees.
"To take a scroll that is simply damaged and to treat it as if one were cutting up cloth - that really is offensive to those of us who really care about the Torah," Ettin said.
John Jeffcoat, the owner of Greatsite Marketing, said that the company doesn't mean to offend.
"We are not Jews - we are Christians," Jeffcoat said. "We are fragmenting the (Torah) fragment - guilty. Now - what are we guilty of? We are guilty of taking one incomplete fragment and making it available to many people. We do so unapologetically."
Ettin said that Jewish law would normally mandate that a damaged Torah be buried, or perhaps be used to repair another Torah.
Jeffcoat said that if his company were to turn the Torah fragment over to a rabbi, it would essentially be destroyed, or taken out of public view.
"The destruction of biblical material - fragmented or complete - is not good," he said, noting that the company respectfully sells antique Bible leaves, too.
Such disagreement essentially exists in museums all over the world that exhibit ancient artifacts that have been taken away from their original homes.
The point of the traveling exhibit, Jeffcoat and the other organizers said, is to give as many people as possible the chance to see a very special collection that tells the history of Scripture.
In that, they seem to have succeeded.
Back in High Point, viewers came away from the exhibit with feelings of awe and wonder.
"It was sort of mystical," said Kim Canter of High Point. "I'm standing right next to something 4,000 years old," she said. "It's phenomenal."
An elaborately encased Torah on exhibit is about 500 years old.
A page from a 1455 Gutenberg Bible contains text of Isaiah.
Among the items the company sells are fragments from a previously damaged and incomplete 300- to 400-year-old Torah scroll. Critics in Pittsburgh said that is forbidden under Jewish law, and Rabbi Andrew Ettin of the Wake Forest University Divinity School agrees."To take a scroll that is simply damaged and to treat it as if one were cutting up cloth - that really is offensive to those of us who really care about the Torah," Ettin said.
Are these the same people who sell individual pages of the Geneva Bible on Ebay? Tacky, tacky, tacky.
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