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Comment by justinator | Hacker News Reader

I think it's worth noting that MOST Christian relics are obviously fakes, made to attract tourists and take their money. It's practically the same thing with fake Dead Sea Scrolls.

The, "Museum" of the Bible is meant to evangelize, not to educate. Give me a break about victimization.

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If you're referring to relics in the Catholic sense of the remains or possessions of canonized saints being "fake" then there's probably an element of truth to many (most? not sure...) in that they likely were at a time fabricated. However, this core belief in them being real and the history surrounding them still makes them historically significant so it's hard to understand what value there is in claiming them as fake in this context. Is the Shroud of Turin the real shroud used to wrap Jesus at his burial? Pretty much certainly not. That said, it is still clearly historically significant.

Now, if more broadly you are referring to relics in the generic sense of objects of historical importance surviving from times long ago, then it seems obvious that most Christian relics are NOT fakes. Christianity has a long, deep history that has influenced the creation of massive amounts of art, literature, architecture, pottery, etc.

>Is the Shroud of Turin the real shroud used to wrap Jesus at his burial? Pretty much certainly not. That said, it is still clearly historically significant.

Clearly it is not something worthy of a museum then. A fake thing being old doesn't make it historically significant for a museum. A church, maybe.

Relics are important for understanding the medieval period's interwoven trade and pilgrimage.

No relics? less travel? Slower "flatten the curve" back plague? Smaller renaissance? Weaker atheism today? :O

No one said fake + old = museum worthy. There's far more to the Shroud of Turin's history that makes it museum worthy.

Christianity has a long, deep history that has influenced the creation of massive amounts of art, literature, architecture, pottery, etc.

Unfortunately I tend to focus on the atrocities that have happened in history in the name of the religion itself. Perhaps that would make a good topic to build a museum about.

The value in pointing out their fakeness is to make sure people don't get misled about their realness. People are still trying hard to prove the Shroud of Turin real [1], and until that's a dead argument, we should always be clear about the truth.

I do agree that it's worth keeping the fakes, though. If the Museum of The Bible were bigger on "museum" than "bible" this would be a great centerpiece for an exhibit on the long history of profitable religious forgeries.

[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02/researchers-hung-men...

It's a little known fact, but the altar in every Catholic church contains relics of a saint. But almost all of them contain relics from relatively modern saints, not the bones of St. Peter or something.

The relics business is way more organized than I thought. There are technically three classes of relics, first (actual remnant of a saint), second (remnant of object belonging to saint) or third (touched a first class relic or a saint’s tomb) [1]. So technically it’s always possible to manufacture more relics.

[1] https://m.ncregister.com/blog/smcafee/i-made-a-third-class-r...

> "Depending on what you read, there were eight, twelve, fourteen, or even 18 different holy foreskins in various European towns during the Middle Ages."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Prepuce#Traffic_in_relics

Funny anecdote. Middle age conmen.

I don't know much about them but their wikipedia page states:

> The museum says it is nonsectarian, non-political, and that it does not proselytize.[4][5] The former president of the museum, Cary Summers, said the goal was to "reacquaint the world with the book that helped make it, and let the visitor come to their own conclusions. ... We don't exist to tell people what to believe about it".[5]

Does it pass any sniff test that they've built a $500 million museum about, "The Bible" in the shadow of the Capitol b/c of the goodness of the heart?

Like, they're just really that into the Bible? It's not like it's out of print; that it needs to be reacquainted with.

In what way/shape/form does The Bible have any geographical relevance to Washington D.C.?

Your theory is that people are always honest about their motives? The guy behind this is the world's largest benefactor to evangelical causes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2012/09/18/david-g...

I read it as very much a move in the culture war. It's not a museum about religious texts in general. It's very much a sectarian enterprise, whatever the PR people write.

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