Rare Biblical Items On Display At Oral Roberts University

There's an exhibit of extremely rare items of biblical history on display right now in Tulsa.

It's part of a larger exhibit that later will be in Washington, D.C.

It's not just old, some of it is ancient writing, all related to the heritage of today's Bible.

The students from a private school studying biblical history were some of the first to see the temporary exhibit.

The documents and artifacts date back thousands of years, tracing the heritage of Christian and Jewish sacred texts.

"You would have to travel the world to see everything that we have in here," Amy Van Dyke said.

Van Dyke is the education director for the Green Family Collection, which is part of a larger traveling exhibit, called Passages, that is on a national tour.

The 50-item collection is at the Oral Roberts University this week only, and curated by the Green Family of Oklahoma City, and the school's largest benefactor.

"The Bible was considered a university textbook at one time, so this being a university exhibit, we really promoted the idea of scholarship behind this because the use of the Bible as a textbook is so important," Bryan said.

The exhibit has documents as rare as they come, from days long before the printing press.

Much of it is handwritten, some on scrolls, some duplicates of the one of a kind originals.

This is a real 13th Century volume from Paris.

The mini-museum is just a thumbnail of the larger Green Family Collection, containing 40 pieces; all biblical texts and artifacts of early literature.

The entire collection is destined for a museum in Washington, D.C. in a few years, billed as what will be the world's largest collection of biblical artifacts, focusing on scholarship of the origins of sacred writing as a tool for

"Not only was it used in that way for literature and history, but it was also used in the arts, so it affected our culture and science, astronomy and physics, so much of our culture," Van Dyke said.

The exhibit is in the south lobby of the Mabee Center, through Saturday.

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