The Biblical Remnants Under the Bleachers: Religious Extraction, Philanthropic Hobbyists, and the Material Repositories of Religious Studies

ABSTRACT Scholars of American religion should be attentive to the ways in which academic Religious Studies in a US context have been implicated in the acquisition of sacred objects from religious communities abroad. This article illustrates these entanglements with a case study tracing the acquisition history of a collection of religious artifacts removed from the Samaritan community of Nablus in Palestine. It uses archival records to reconstruct the collection’s extraction by a group of Christian philanthropists connected to the World Sunday School Association, and its subsequent movements across spaces and owners in the United States. The story of this collection—now accessioned as the Chamberlain Warren Samaritan Collection and held in Michigan State University’s Library—is one example among many of a lively antiquities market for Western acquisition of artifacts out of Palestine during the 19th and early 20th centuries. What is especially informative about this case study for scholars of American religion, however, is that it illuminates how the concept of historical significance has functioned as a barometer for evaluating not only the worth of objects but also the religious communities from which they originate.