Theme Park Bibles: Trinity Broadcasting Network's Holy Land Experience and the Evangelical Use of the Documentary Past

Abstract

Trinity Broadcasting Network's (TBN) Holy Land Experience (HLE) is a bible-themed amusement park in Orlando, Florida, that also is home to one of the world's largest collections of biblical antiquities. This article contributes to the efflorescence of scholarship on biblical geographies by considering what it means to encounter an old bible in an unconventional place. Using HLE's theatrical presentation of its bible collection as a case in point, I show how ancient and pre-modern material bibles are recruited to serve as authorizing agents of televised evangelism. Specifically, I argue that the theme park grafts TBN into the lineage of the Bible and, in doing so, enacts a fundamental revision to the definition of “biblical literacy.”

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