The Woeful American Ignorance of Biblical Studies

Dom Crossan is a religious man, a one-time (or would be, I honestly don't know which) Catholic priest.  My seminary professors, some ordained ministers, some merely laity, were uniformly believers, if not uniform in their Christian beliefs.  And yet:

There also is a lot of slippage between claims that the Bible is enormously influential (which is indisputable) and that the stories it tells are fundamentally true (a claim disputed not just by atheists, agnostics, secular scholars and scientists, but also by billions of adherents of the world’s other religions). Every resource of museum design and careful argumentation has been mustered to sweep up these unrelated ideas in one, big, overwhelming package.

Granted I'm taking this out of context, and the rest of the review of the museum is worth reading (if WaPo will let you in; sometimes I can get there, sometimes I can't.  YMMV).  But I suspect my seminary professors, religious scholars all, as is Crossan, would disagree with the claim that the stories of the Bible are "fundamentally true."  At least "true" in the sense clearly meant by the Museum of the Bible:

But both the traditional and immersive exhibitions start with unstated assumptions: that the Bible is the most important book in the world, that there is concrete archaeological evidence to explain its origins, that it has been transmitted through the ages with remarkable accuracy, and that it is fundamentally a blessing to mankind.

Debates about the meaning of the Bible are confronted openly and without bias, so long as they don’t undermine those assumptions. 

I wouldn't say that there is concrete evidence to explain all the origins of the Bible (more of the evidence is textual than not, which is the problem for many non-scholars), nor that it's been "transmitted through the ages with remarkable accuracy."  I mean, how do we know, especially as we have no original manuscripts from the hands of Paul (or actually his amanuensis; writing was a menial skill for centuries, as was (to some extent still is) typing), or "Luke" or "John" or "Moses," for that matter.  And while it's part of the Torah, Deuteronomy was definitely written after the Exile, not before (the name, from the Greek, means "second law," what lawyers would call a "second restatement" of the law), so it can't be from the hand of Moses, as tradition says it is.  Besides, we don't know how many versions of the books of the Bible existed before the canon was set, and a perusal of any Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament will reveal dozens of footnotes per page listing variant readings from several manuscripts for almost every word in any text you choose to examine. "Remarkable accuracy" is really a matter of consensus over which word to use in what sentence; and then there's the question of translation.

As for being "fundamentally a blessing to mankind," first I'd go with "humankind" (all those lessons in inclusive language!), but secondly I don't put any kind of magic power in the Bible to be, itself, a blessing.  That's a very peculiarly Protestant point of view, and not one shared by all Protestants or denominations.  The Bible is like the scrolls of the Torah, to my way of thinking:  not to be handled lightly or irreverently, nor shared with those who are not of the community.  Which is not to say hidden away, either, but it is not to be left in hotel rooms in hopes the "magic" of the book will reach the heart of the reader.  Without a community to interpret it it's more likely to sow confusion than enlightenment; then again, without an English class or two, who would tackle Moby Dick today, or Eliot's "The Waste Land," or even Yeats' "The Second Coming," yet what do you miss without someone to help you interpret what you read there?  But that flaw is baked into the design of the Museum, it's not a fault of the WaPo critic.

The claims of the Museum are not the claims of all Christians in the world, nor of all Christians in America; and the claims made by Dom Crossan or the Jesus Seminar (one of my seminary professors was a member; and yes I'm dating myself now) are not heresies held by no one but atheists and agnostics (I have no doubt there are several Christians who would consider me a member of both classes).  I have a dream that one day all people in America will understand the rich complexity of Christianity in America, and not automatically assume we are all either "nones" or unqualified supporters of what the Museum of the Bible means to represent about Christianity.

A guy can dream, can't he?