Museum of the Bible - Part II

The Museum of the Bible is contained on six different floors and at least one basement level.  To get through the museum you can walk up and down the central staircases.

In order to maximize our exercise benefit we walked up and down the stairs as much as possible.  Also including our walking around the Mall I put in 16,000 steps on Thursday, so it was a pretty good day for me.

The Museum website recommends 2-3 hours for a visit, but I would suggest that you plan for more time if the content of the Museum looks interesting to you.  We ended up spending about five hours and my wife and sister-in-law aren't big museum people.  We didn't even end up seeing all of the exhibits!

 Each elevator included a sign directly beside it that indicated what was located on each floor.

 Inside the elevator the floor buttons are all marked with content labels also so that you know where you're going.

 Inside each elevator were three large monitors.  They displayed different scenes from areas associated with biblical history.  It almost felt like you were actually watching some of the areas through a window.

Inside each elevator was another sign that showed what was on each floor.

The restroom facilities were quite clean.  Personally I prefer paper towels, but the Dyson airblade machines are quite nice and there isn't as much trash to dispose of, so I'm sure it is easier on their housekeeping team.

I didn't get as much time to look around the children's experience as I would have liked, but it was nice to see a children's area.  The exhibits inside are all hands on and geared towards children so that they can access the teaching points of the museum.

Several of these large displays presented scripture verses throughout the children's area.

This activity is called "Fish in the Boat with Peter."  The instructions tell children to "use the paddles to shoot fish into the boat.  Try to fill it up!"  There is also a section telling them to read the story for themselves in Luke 5:1-7 and a copy of the text.  I thought this was a good way to make the connection of the game to scripture quite clear.

 This puzzle is called Joseph: From the Pit to the Palace.  "Poor Joseph has been thrown into a deep pit by his jealous brothers.  But he won't stay there for long!  Soon he'll be on his way to the palace of the Pharaoh.  He has to go through a lot of twists and turns before he can become ruler!  Help Joseph find the courage to keep going all the way to the end!  Use the handles to tilt the maze and roll the ball.  Avoid all the obstacles and see if you can make it all the way to the palace!"  The game looked to be quite challenging, but still could be fun.  Genesis 37:1-41:45

 This Samson display has a sign indicating that "[h]e was the strongest man in the world, but Samson had been captured and his strength was gone.  Samson prayed one last time and God Gave him the strength to push down some pillars and defeat his enemies."  The reference given was Judges 16:25-30.

With the help of the staff member in the area Joanna figured out what to do.  She stepped between the pillars and tried to push them down.  Apparently she had the strength of Samson!

After leaving the children's experience we decided to head up to the top floor and work our way down.  There isn't much to see on the top floor itself apart from the restaurant and a private meeting room, but the wall of a million names is there.

There are plenty of windows if you want to see the view across the city skyline.  Next we headed down until we ran into more exhibits.

 This exhibit looked to interesting from an artistic perspective.

 These images were all different letters.

Daniel got hungry, so we left the art exhibit and waited outside for a bit.  Then we headed on to The People of the Land, which I'll discuss tomorrow.

~Matt