The Creation Museum (CM) in Kentucky has received a great deal of public attention, and I have previously written detailed comments on  a debate that took place there as well as on a movie that is  in some way associated with Ken Ham, his followers, and the museum. So my very first visit to that museum was just three days ago.

I went with my close friend of 6 years, Bobby Hopper, who happens to believe in a young creation (speaking in thousands, not millions of years), although not necessarily in a young earth. In fairness to Bobby, he had no agenda to defend the museum on any point of presentation. And in fairness to CM, I spent only 4 hours at CM, which means I got only a nice overview of the place, including the gardens.

Comparisons: I’ve been to several great natural history museums:  the Smithsonian (in Washington, DC), and also museums in Los Angeles, Denver (many times), Chicago, and a few others. They are always exceedingly interesting. Thinking of size: compared to the Smithsonian’s 1,500,000 sq ft (or nearly 35 acres), CM is on the small side: a mere (!)  75,000 sq ft. or about 1.75 acres (about 1/3 larger than a football field). That’s not at all a criticism, just a comparative note. But then, compared to the local museum in Greencastle, IN (which may have a chicken bone or two in it), CM is incredible! This is an impressive mid-size museum.

Style/Quality: Aside from all comparisons with others, the presentations and exhibits found throughout CM are of very high quality materially and stylistically. CM does a good job of representing its position with high quality presentations. I took only a few pictures, not at all fully representative of the museum. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and my day with my friend, and I plan to return to see the museum in more detail and also the new life-sized Ark exhibit that is 45 minutes away from the museum.

Click on the following pics to enlarge (I took these and many other pictures with my phone):

TRex

Guttenburg Press

Visiting Paul

Paul Writing

Technicalities:  I especially liked the exhibits in the pictures above (there are many, many more of course) and I got a picture (in ##3 and 4 above) of Paul writing 2Tim 3:15-17. However, while I was standing there, Paul slipped me a note saying  “I didn’t write this . . . it just showed up in front of me!”  So when I looked closer at this text, I found a few interesting things, and the following comments are not intended in any way as harsh criticisms, but just technical comments that some might enjoy:

1. Word Paragraph Separation: Most obvious to anyone, the words were not originally separated like they show up in #4. They would have all been run together without breaks or paragraph marks.
   __
2. Greek Script: Not obvious to most, CM has chosen to represent Paul as writing in what appears to be archaic Ionian Greek script instead of the then more common classical Ionian script (commonly used in Hellenistic texts) represented, say, in the earliest NT Greek Ms in existence:  P52. It is good to remember that Greek scripts varied widely, similar to handwriting today.  By the 10th and 11th centuries, for example, when minuscule (lower case) letters were written, scripts looked very different from the classical period.
   __
3. Misspellings: There are two or three:
   1. Line 3, last word (dunamena), 3rd letter is miswritten as an “m” in stead of an “n”  (although with an apparent attempt to correct it; and it at least looks like [?] that after that point an attempt was made to make a clearer distinction between “n’s” and “m’s”.)__ 
   2. Line 8, 2nd word ([raw]ō[/raw]felimos), the 6th letter is clearly miswritten as an “n” instead of an “m”
   3. Line 14, 2nd word (“[raw]ē[/raw]otou“) is actually three words ([raw]ē[/raw] o tou). It is true that these words would have all been run together at this date, but that includes all the words on the page.
      __
4. Greek Text: More significant, this one is neither a mistake nor an accident. It is clear from this single small display item that CM prefers the Greek text used to translate the KJV.  This is quite subtle, but in line 10, 1st word “elegthon” appears, instead of the more commonly accepted word “elegmon“. Again, this is not a mistake.  These two words are pretty much synonyms, so there is no big change in meaning. But by including the one over the other, CM shows that the textual basis being preferred is the Byzantine Text family (i.e., the Textus Receptus, which was used by the King James Version), and not today’s more widely accepted Nestle-Aland text which stands behind almost all current English translations of the NT. There is a huge debate about this driven (hard) by ultra conservatives which can be found all over the web. Again, there is nothing sinister about what the CM has done in this wonderful little display, it is just interesting to note how much a small item in a display can show.

Now I wish to repeat that on the one hand, truly, none of this is a big deal.  This was, after all, in a single exhibit (out of hundreds!), a small display, and the page is even upside down to onlookers, not intended to be read by anyone.  Only a few pinheads like me would even be interested in this.

On the other hand, the Greek script chosen for this was not the later scripts or modern scripts normally used today, but apparently the archaic Ionian script. I respect this attempt by CM to show some awareness of ancient Greek scripts. But since that is apparently the case, I offer a friendly word to the curators to also spell the words correctly.

Next Post I will turn to some critical comments about my encounter at CM.