ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the seams between translation and materializing as forms of religious cultural production. To materialize is to transform source material – here, written scriptural texts – into an experiential environment. The case study is a 7,000-square foot exhibit, “The World of Jesus of Nazareth,” at Washington, D.C.’s Museum of the Bible. Ostensibly, the exhibit conjures a first century Galilean village: the quotidian milieu of Jesus’ early life and ministry. In fact, this project of material translation emerges from a diverse intertextual matrix of biblical texts, archaeological records, and a related living history museum in Israel. Created by a US-based experiential design firm, the exhibit mobilizes strategies of the experience economy to immerse visitors into an imagineered biblical lifeworld. Drawing on interviews with design team members, fieldwork at the museum, and visitor data, the chapter examines the exhibit’s design rationale, sensory choreography, repertoire of materiality, and intertextual gaps realized in performance.
