The Bible on the National Mall: DC's Museum of the Bible in Critical Perspective

Please join us on Thursday, September 19 in the Marvin Center, Room 402-404 for the 2019 Ziffren Lecture: "The Bible on the National Mall: DC's Museum of the Bible in Critical Perspective"

Speakers: Dr. Jill Hicks-Keeton, University of Oklahoma; Dr. Cavan Concannon, University of Southern California.

Respondent: Dr. Christopher Rollston, George Washington University

Abstract: The Museum of the Bible on the national mall was founded and funded by the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby. Yet, from the start, the museum has been highly controversial in the national press and in the field of biblical studies. Two Bible scholars will discuss this controversial institution. Whose Bible is represented by the museum? Whose is not? And why does it matter?

Jill Hicks-Keeton is assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of Arguing with Aseneth (Oxford University Press) and the co-editor of The Museum of the Bible: A Critical Introduction (Lexington/Fortress Academic).

Cavan Concannon is associate professor of religion at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Assembling Early Christianity: Trade, Networks, and the Letters of Dionysios of Corinth (Cambridge, 2017) and ‘When you were Gentiles’: Specters of Ethnicity in Roman Corinth and Paul’s Corinthian Correspondence (Yale, 2014). 

Christopher Rollston is associate professor of Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at George Washington University. He authored the volume entitled Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), as well as the volume entitled Enemies and Friends of the State: Ancient Prophecy in Context (Penn State University Press 2018). His volume entitled Forging History in the Ancient World of the Bible & the Modern World of Biblical Studies is under contract with Eerdmans and is nearing completion.

Event is free and open to the public.