THE FROM THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS TO THE BIBLE IN AMERICA EXHIBIT, currently showing at High Point in North Carolina, has a sleazy connection that has been mentioned here before, but this article by by Barbara Thiede ("For shame! Slick marketers find gold mine in selling God") in the Charlotte Observer (free registration required) is a good opportunity to highlight it. The meat of the story is this:

A group of private dealers in rare Bibles has opened an exhibit in High Point. The exhibit includes antique biblical texts, sections from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. A mock biblical market featuring books, videos and jewelry for sale sits alongside.

What's wrong with a private exhibition of ancient manuscripts and early printed Bibles? Is there anything inappropriate about making good money from entry fees to see such an exhibit? Is it immoral to profit from the sale of related items in the accompanying gift shop?

The problem is simple: The promoters are selling God.

One of the participants, the Arizona rare-book business of Craig Lampe and John Jeffcoat called GreatSite.com, has lent various artifacts to the show. Go to their Web site, and you can find out what sort of items they market.

One is a 400-year-old Torah.

Its marketers are selling it bit by bit. They cut it into panels, exactly according to their customers' specifications, like cloth in a fabric store.

The Torah, the Web site explains, was damaged in a fire. But you can buy a surviving column. You can buy two.

Sure enough, this is the page at the GreatSite.com website.

Ancient Hebrew Torah Scroll Panels:
From the World�s Oldest Scriptorium

A panel of leather from an incomplete ancient Hebrew Torah Scroll of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). These hand-written, one-of-a-kind pieces are approximately 300 to 400 years old. They were produced in the world�s oldest continually operating scriptorium, a 2,400-year old scriptorium in South Yemen, about 1,000 miles south of Israel. These are pieces of the same type of �Bible� that Jesus read, and quite possibly from the same scriptorium! They are available as approximately 22 inch tall segments of any length you desire from 9 inches to 9 feet or more! Each comes with a beautiful Certificate of Authenticity.

In a word, for $100 you can have a column sliced out of a damaged three- or four-hundred-year-old Torah scroll and turned over to you to hang on your wall. While you're at it, it seems you can buy individual leaves removed from the first printing of the King James Bible or from "the earliest available printing" of the Tyndale Bible.

In some past entries I have tried to cut antiquities dealers some slack, although I have to say my attitude has been hardening in light of the ongoing forgery scandal in Israel. I'm still open to discussion about whether it is acceptable, say, to sell potsherds that otherwise would be discarded or buried in museum basements. But this is another matter. I'll leave aside the question of whether the exhibition promoters should be selling God. My concern is that they are mutilating precious, historic manuscripts and scattering them to the wind for the sake of a few bucks. It certainly seems beyond the pale to me, and I hope that if you or someone you know are considering spending your money on this exhibit, you will keep this in mind.