How a billionaire’s holy mission fuelled a scandal of biblical proportions
Change of pace today, inspired by the coming of Easter. If only because by the time you’ve finished reading this, you’ll understand why Jesus’ middle name is “Fucking.”
And, yes. Consider yourself warned. If that poor-taste joke upsets your sensibilities, perhaps skip this week’s newsletter.
Because today, I’m bringing you true crime of biblical proportions.
It’s the tale of an unholy alliance between Christian fundamentalists and Muslim extremists… where cash channelled out of the coffers of one of America’s wealthiest Trump-supporting evangelical Christian families ended up in the hands of Islamic terrorists.
A disclaimer, first.
I’m a committed agnostic. Not atheist, meaning “no god.” Agnostic. As in “no idea what’s going on… pretty sure there’s something bigger than us, but yet to find anyone who can explain what it is.”
How agnostic?
My son once asked me whether Jesus was a zombie.
Reasonable question, given the whole ‘rising from the dead’ thing.
And the way things are going, I’m OK with that position.
Less “turn the other cheek” than “an eye for an eye.”
While hypocrites in the White House brandish crucifixes like weapons, and co-opt prayer as hate speech, everything’s feeling a bit too Old Testamenty for me.
Maybe that’s it. So much “eye for an eye-ing” is going on, they’ve all gone blind. Because even I can see that if their Christ were to reappear anytime soon, he’d run himself ragged, what with all the smiting and overturning of tables in the temple they have coming to them.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who wonders how the paid-up members of Happy Clappers Inc can justify their worship of the most false of all idols currently occupying the White House.
As far as I can see, Trump’s only observance of the Ten Commandments is to see how many times he can break them all before taking his afternoon nap in the Situation Room.
But Evangelical Christians are not your garden-variety church-goers.
I worked that out for myself while I was working on a TV series I created and wrote a little while ago. One of the stories I investigated put the god-botherers front and centre.
Loot, or Looting History as it was called when it was screened internationally, is my take on the multi-billion-dollar black-market nobody wants to talk about. As a one-time archaeologist, this one was personal.
Nobody wants to think too hard about the source of the ancient treasures adorning the walls of the fabulously wealthy or perched on podiums in the world’s greatest museums.
Ancient treasures are ripped from the soil at a rate that beggars belief, from the cradles of Western civilisation in the Middle East, to the ancient cultures of Greece, Rome and Egypt and the empires that flourished in Africa, Asia and the Americas.
The trade in stolen antiquities is a major source of income for criminal syndicates, gangs, and terrorists across the globe. It’s a crime wave where the cash ends up in the pockets of the world’s worst criminals.
Everybody from Islamic State terrorists to Chinese triads and the Calabrian mafia have muscled in on the act.
But, in their defence, they’re just crooks being crooks. If there’s a market in something dodgy, they’ll go there.
Human beings. Drugs. Weapons. Antiquities. Same-same.
That’s why my fury is reserved for the billionaires, tastemakers, and art dealers who fuel demand.
Because no demand, no looting. And looting means stealing history.
It’s also a vile crime committed against the people who call these regions home. I’ll write about the impact on them another time. There’s not enough space here to cover it.
Today, it’s a story about the toxic sense of entitlement that so often seems to go hand-in-hand with the new breed of Christian.
What makes antiquities so appealing for criminals?
Well, think about it. You’ll never see a child slave on display in a Fifth Avenue art gallery, or a brick of cocaine on a Sotheby’s podium.
But a Roman marble bust? Sure. Why not? It’s ART, after all.
When ancient treasures are ripped fresh out of the ground, or hacked off a wall, they’re different because there’s no knowing where they came from. Once an artefact is given a good spit polish and passed through the elaborate network that creates a backstory for stolen treasure, it can migrate from the black market to pride of place under the spotlight.
What was black market loot, becomes a priceless treasure. And cashed-up collectors can turn a blind eye and buy it with a clear conscience. Provided they don’t ask the right questions. Which they rarely do.
An unholy alliance.
It was a routine day for the customs officials at Memphis airport when they pried open a crate labelled ‘tile samples.’
What they found inside was a priceless collection of antiquities stolen from archaeological sites and museums across ancient Mesopotamia, the kingdom that once straddled modern Iran, Iraq and Syria.
The discovery kicked off a wild chase across continents to the source of the loot—Muslim extremists in Iraq. The scandal that followed shook the foundations of one of America’s most powerful business dynasties.
It seemed like a righteous idea… at first.
A fancy new home dedicated to the Good Book, just a stone’s throw from Washington’s National Mall. The Museum of the Bible. It was to be home to the Green Collection: “the newest and largest private collections of rare biblical texts and artefacts in the world.”
But the museum would be plagued by a PR disaster of biblical proportions.
All hell would break loose when the most important commandment of all was overlooked.
Thou shalt not steal.
The story begins with a man named Steve Green.
Steve is an Evangelical Christian and the Museum’s founder. He is also richer than Croesus.
Ironically, he has America’s flower-power movement of the 1970s to thank for his vast wealth. When his parents, David and Barbara, opened their first arts-and-crafts store in Oklahoma City in 1972, the hippy craze for beads, macramé, and tie-dying everything that didn’t move made him a fortune.
That first shop became the Hobby Lobby empire.
With over 1,000 stores across America that sell such gems as Jesus cross-stitch kits, and posters that read: “This Girl Runs On Cupcakes and Jesus,” today Steve’s family controls a fortune just shy of US$14 billion.
The Green family uses that money for “good works”. Things like supporting anti-LGBTQ legislation and winning a long-running legal fight that gave God-fearing companies the right to deny their employees medical coverage for contraception.
In 2016, family scion David Green wrote an op-ed in USA Today that backed Donald Trump: “For Americans who value freedom of religion, we must elect a president who will support a Supreme Court that upholds not only this freedom, but all that have emanated from it. That president is Donald Trump.”
As for Steve, dude has lots of hobbies, beyond meddling in women’s rights.
He probably should have stuck with macrame.
Not that Steve was worried about it at the time. Because Steve has God on his side. That’s what Steve’s Pentecostal faith tells him, anyway. The Green family has prospered thanks to the grace of God.
Here’s his father’s view on that. Steve Green’s father, I mean. Not God’s. Pretty sure God didn’t have a father.
According to his reading of the Holy Book, money in the bank means God’s smiling upon you. Pentecostal believers hold that capitalism and Christianity are intertwined. It’s called the prosperity gospel.
Because Jesus = cha-ching.
Evangelical Christians like the Green family also believe that the Bible is a truthful, and literal, account of historical events.
Jesus, as described in its pages, with the walking on water, raising the dead, and turning water into wine (got to admit, that would be a very good party trick) happened exactly as written.
Logical next step for a true believer like Steve was to acquire a collection of biblical artefacts that prove its factual basis. How else could he sway non-believers and doubting Thomases like me?
And the best place to find biblical artifacts? You got it… the place the Bible is set. The Middle East.
It ain’t called the Holy Land for nothing, after all.
But Steve Green had a business to run. He didn’t have time to chase after biblical treasures.
Enter Scott Carroll.
Carroll was not a run-of-the-mill academic. According to media reports, his peers described Carroll as a “circus act”; more ringmaster than scholar. No prizes for guessing the dial tone on his phone: the Indiana Jones theme.
But Carroll was a true believer. That’s all that mattered to Steve Green.
A very excellent, big idea
This was the man Steve Green put in charge of bringing his very excellent, big idea to life. Because Steve wanted a museum of his own to house all the biblical treasures he planned to accumulate. And like all the great museums of the world, he wanted it to be big.
But he was man in a hurry. Divine salvation waits for no man, after all.
He let Scott Carroll off the leash.
The Hobby Lobby feeding frenzy was big news.
The good word spread. Scott Carroll was waylaid by strangers trying to hustle artefacts in restaurants, lecture halls, and even supermarkets.
It was a feeding frenzy for antiquities dealers and looters alike.
It was less curating, than a shopping spree.
Scott Carroll was on a mission from God.
And Steve Green left everything in his hands. He was the expert, after all.
Big mistake. Because Scott was about to lead Steve and his museum into an unholy mess.
The trouble began in Dubai.
Over five-and-a-half-thousand antiquities were spread on the floor, stacked on top of each other on a coffee table, and packed loosely in cardboard boxes.
Alarm bells should have been ringing.
Steve flew home and consulted with Hobby Lobby’s lawyer. Before they committed, he wanted to hear from an expert in cultural property law from Chicago’s DePaul University.
Even putting aside the pretty fucking serious ethical considerations of stealing ancient treasures from their rightful home, it was illegal to export antiquities out of Syria and Iraq.
Why? Because the money changing hands was funding the insurgents who were killing American troops.
Professor Gerstenblith put her concerns in an email to Hobby Lobby’s lawyer.
“I warned him,” Gerstenblith later said, “and he proceeded anyway.”
The lawyer would later say that Gerstenblith’s email was not passed on to Steve Green.
Steve Green and Scott Carroll were not asking the right questions.
Or, if they were, they weren’t paying enough attention to the answers.
Yeah. Right. It was a provenance with more holes than a colander.
But in December 2010, Steve Green signed a purchase agreement for the collection.
The final price?
It was a steal. Literally.
When the invoice arrived, it falsely identified the artefacts’ source country as Israel.
There were more red flags waving than at a semaphore convention. Even the pathologically optimistic Scott Carroll was beginning to have doubts.
With the deal signed, the tricky part began…
Getting the loot into the country.
Any shipment over US$2000 had to be sent to Hobby Lobby’s broker to clear US customs. Steve Green’s executive assistant sent the Israeli dealers instructions to split the collection and keep the value of each under $2000.
The dealers had their own twist: they used multiple addresses for the shipments to put customs off the scent.
The parcels arrived in the US in January 2011.
The first three made it through.
The others? Not so much.
The connection with Israel would have been a red flag to customs agents.
As the only country in the region that allows antiquities sales, it’s known as a clearance point for loot from other Middle Eastern countries.
So, there was a reason that the dealers Steve Green met in Dubai said the collection dated to the 1960s. Israeli law mandates that objects bought before 1978 can be bought and sold.
“Tile samples”?
Back in the US, when it was discovered that the “tile samples” were not destined for splashbacks and bathroom floors, the wheels of justice started turning.
News of the seizures first surfaced in The Daily Beast in 2015.
When judgement day came in April 2017, Steve Green was forced to forfeit the antiquities he bought in Dubai, and Hobby Lobby copped a $3 million fine. Given the scale of the Green fortune, it was chump change.
At the time, Green said that “the company was new to the world of acquiring these items and did not fully appreciate the complexities of the acquisitions process. This resulted in some regrettable mistakes.”
But then there’s this.
As put by the anti-illicit-antiquities-trade crusaders at Chasing Aphrodite, “Green and his advisors were given detailed guidance from one of the leading legal minds on antiquities acquisitions, and then chose to ignore it.”
Professor Patty Gerstenblith later had this to say “I can’t rule out it was all the opposite…that they used my advice to evade the law as opposed to follow the law.”
The news couldn’t have come at a worse time.
It hit the headlines just before the Museum of the Bible’s grand opening.
Steve Green tried to hose down the scandal, delivering a public mea culpa: “We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled… We have accepted responsibility and learned a great deal.”
The scandal didn’t seem to dint the museum’s enthusiastic reception, though. Guests paid a staggering $50,000 a table to attend the black-tie gala fundraising event.
As for where the launch of the “non-political” museum was held”? … The ballroom of Washington’s Trump Hotel.
It was a controversial choice.
The museum denied it was trying to curry favour with the Trump administration. But Eric Trump and then-wife, Lara, turned up to lend their support anyway. Charlie Kirk was there as well, along with Judge Jeanine Pirro.
In 2025, Donald Trump gave the museum the Bible he used to take his oath of office in 2025.
Heavy hitting support like that counts for a lot. Because events like that are the lifeblood of the museum sector.
Never forget that the megastar-studded Met ball isn’t just about making a splash on the red carpet. It’s a massive money-spinner for the museum.
And the Museum of the Bible needs all the help it could get. It’s housed in a $450 million, eight-storey building that, at almost half a million square feet, is as big as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Museums like that don’t just build themselves. And they certainly don’t keep the doors open with entry fees alone.
They need donors. In the US, museums have a powerful weapon in their arsenal to bring big collectors on board.
Tax write-offs.
Let’s take the heavily discounted collection Steve Green bought in Dubai as an example. Theoretically, if it had made it into the Museum of the Bible, the Greens would have written off the full value of the antiquities: $12 million… a collection Steve Green acquired for just $1.6 million.
According to the authors of the best-selling book, Bible Nation: the United States of Hobby Lobby, the financial perk was the thing that convinced the Greens to start their own biblical antiquities collection in the first place.
The other downside for the world in general is that those tax perks mean that cut-price, stolen loot with dodgy provenance can be more appealing to collectors than legitimately acquired antiquities. They buy an undervalued object, then claim a tax break for the full price.
But it doesn’t end there.
The difference between Steve Green and collectors who donate antiquities to other not-for-profit American museums is that when the Green family donates to the Museum of the Bible, they’re donating to their own non-profit organisation, with Steve Green at its helm.
If an antiquity’s value jumps after its purchase, the tax-write off balloons.
According to the authors of Bible Nation, it’s one of the main reasons the Greens launched a project they called their Scholars Initiative.
The research program of over a hundred academics across fifty universities study the 40,000 objects in what was then known as the Green Collection. If those scholars discover something significant about any of those objects, guess what? That object’s value goes up.
Oh, did I mention that the scholars who sign up for it are compelled to sign non-disclosure agreements?
I’m sure it’s all just being done in the interest of furthering knowledge and scholarship though…
Steve Green wanted the focus of the Museum of the Bible to be on the Lord’s word.
Only everyone was more interested in the hot-take on his collecting activities.
So, strategic decisions were made to distance the Green name from the Museum of the Bible.
The museum’s deputy director said the board felt short-changed on the facts. They weren’t told about the government investigation until Hobby Lobby was close to signing the settlement.
The director at the time said it felt like the museum was paying for the sins of the father.
So, Steve learnt his lesson, right?
Well, let’s just put it this way. There is a coda to this story.
As federal investigators continued to pick over the collection, there’s one artefact Steve was absolutely sure would pass muster.
It was a highpoint of his collection. And it certainly didn’t come from a cardboard box delivered by a trio of shady dealers in a hotel conference room. It came from Christie’s, no less.
Meet, the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet.
It’s not much to look at…
… a clay tablet the size of a paperback. It’s also three-and-a-half-thousand years old. And at $1.7 million, that single object cost more than the entire collection from Dubai.
But in the world of biblical antiquities, it’s a superstar.
It is another chapter in the Epic of Gilgamesh; a five-thousand-year-old tale that may be the oldest written story on the planet, complete with gods, beasts, and prophecies.
The Mesopotamian saga gets biblical scholars excited because it has many parallels with the Old Testament, including its own version of Adam and Eve, and Noah and the Flood. The similarities are so close, it’s been suggested they draw from the same sources… though Gilgamesh got there a thousand years before the Bible.
By the time he bought it, Steve’s shipments from Dubai had been seized. So, he must have been feeling a little gun-shy.
But this was Christie’s… what’s not to trust, right?
Wrong.
Because here’s the catch. Auction houses are best known for selling antiquities through public auction.
The Gilgamesh tablet was offered for sale privately.
That meant it never appeared in a public catalogue. Unless word trickled out, very few people would even know it was on the market.
For many in the know, that often means one thing.
Don’t touch it with a barge-pole.
It turned out to be a masterclass in how loot makes it to market.
The tablet was unearthed in 1853 in the ruins of an Assyrian king’s library in northern Iraq. Sometime after the First Gulf War in 1991, it was snatched from an Iraqi museum.
From there it made its way to London, where a dealer allegedly saw it in an apartment belonging to Jordanian antiquities trader, Ghassan Rihani.
After buying the tablet from Rihani in 2001 for $50,000, the dealer posted it to the US. Needless to say, he didn’t declare it to customs.
In the US, an unnamed professor at Princeton worked on it while the dealer concocted an allegedly fake provenance letter saying the tablet came from a Butterfield & Butterfield auction in 1981.
A journal article written by a foremost scholar then gave the tablet its academic legitimacy… and in 2007 it turned up for sale at a Californian bookseller.
The asking price? Almost half a million dollars.
Next stop? Christie’s in 2014 … at more than three times that price.
“I trusted the wrong people.”
There’s no suggestion that Steve Green and Hobby Lobby set out to buy stolen antiquities. As Steve put it himself, he “trusted the wrong people to guide me, and unwittingly dealt with unscrupulous dealers.”
But as the Bible puts it, the simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps.
In 2019, US Homeland Security investigators seized the Gilgamesh dream tablet from the Museum of the Bible.
Two years later, law enforcement officials officially returned the tablet to the people of Iraq.
Then-director-general of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, said: “This exceptional restitution is a major victory over those who mutilate heritage and then traffic it to finance violence and terrorism.”
It was just one of many. Steve Green has since been in the process of repatriating eleven-and-a-half thousand stolen antiquities to the Iraqi and Egyptian governments.
Steve Green had big dreams.
He wanted the Museum of the Bible to tell the story of the good book.
But he wasn’t thinking about the impact his holy quest was having on the people born in the lands that were home to his Bible.
For the people living in these archaeologically blessed conflict zones, the damage caused by the loss of their cultural heritage is beyond measure.
If buyers like Steve Green started to think about ancient artefacts the same way they think about ivory, or blood diamonds, then demand will dry up.
And the looting will stop.
What would Jesus do?
Definitely not this.
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