The doors to the special exhibition ‘Body.Cult.Religion’ will open for the last time on Wednesday (26 February). There will be guided tours in the Archaeological Museum at 12 noon, 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., for which there is no need to register. The Bible Museum is open until 8 pm, the Archaeological Museum until 10 pm.

Admission is free from 6 pm. Then the finissage starts with greetings from the curators in the foyer of the Fürstenberghaus. The programme also includes an initial evaluation of the hands-on stations, where visitors' attitudes to bodies, cults and religions were surveyed.

The extensively illustrated catalogue costs only 19 euros on this day.

In the latest episode of the podcast ‘News from the Ancient World’, the curator of the Bible Museum, Dr Jan Graefe, is our guest. He talks about the treasures he looks after in the Bible Museum and the challenges he faces. For him, the highlights of the exhibition are a Luther Bible with a dedication by the reformer from the last days of his life, a Sumerian clay tablet from the second millennium BC and a brick from the Tower of Babel.    

In conversation with Pina Klemme and Christoph Müller, Graefe describes how the Bible Museum manages the balancing act between religious and scientific object and what consequences it has for the exhibition that only one page of a Bible can be shown at a time in a display case. The podcast is part of the study programme ‘Ancient Cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean (AKOEM)’ and can be streamed on all common podcast platforms and on the internet.

On Sunday (26 January), there will be the last opportunity to take a look behind the scenes with one of the creators of the special exhibition ‘Body.Cult.Religion’. Dr Helge Nieswandt, research associate at the Archaeological Museum, will be explaining the four stations of the exhibition, which deal with ‘Divine Figures’, ‘Gender Roles’, ‘Religion and Healing’ and ‘After Death ...’ in the Archaeological Museum from 2 pm. The tour then continues to the Bible Museum in Pferdegasse, which houses the three stations ‘Purity of the Body’, ‘Rituals of Life’ and ‘Disembodiment’.

The tour itself is free, admission to the museums is six euros, concessions three euros. Students of the University of Münster can take part free of charge. Registration is not required.

On Friday, 10 January, at 4 pm, there will be a dialogue walk through our exhibition ‘Body. Cult. Religion’ will take place. The curators of the exhibition Achim Lichtenberger (Classical Archaeology), Angelika Lohwasser (Egyptology) and Holger Strutwolf (Protestant Theology) will provide insights into the background and debates surrounding the presentation of the complex relationship between religion and the body in a museum context and the issues and concepts addressed in the interdisciplinary exhibition.

The meeting point for the Dialogical Walk is the Archaeological Museum, later the walk continues to the Bible Museum. Participation is free of charge. Regular admission to the exhibition is six euros, concessions three euros. Young people under the age of 18 and students of the University of Münster can visit the exhibition free of charge. Registration is possible at veranstaltungenEXC@uni-muenster.de.

After the guided tour, admission is free for all visitors as part of Long Friday from 6 pm. The Archaeological Museum is open until midnight.

The British Bible Society distributed three million copies of the Holy Bible around the world in 1903 alone. These included many translations, including into the languages of the colonies at the time. Who taught the missionaries the vocabulary and grammar? Contemporary catalogues usually do not even mention the native speakers who were often significantly involved. This is what Dr Felicity Jensz, head of the ‘Global Bible (GloBil)’ research project, is trying to find out, using archival finds, some of which are widely scattered, to make the complex translation process visible. An article on the project, which will be presented at the Bible Museum next year, has been published in the current issue of the university newspaper.

On Sunday (8 December), you will once again have the opportunity to take a look behind the scenes with one of the makers of the special exhibition ‘Body.Cult.Religion’. On the second Advent, Dr Jan Graefe, curator of the Bible Museum, will shed light on the human body as an object and expression of religious ideas. The exhibition is based on the results of the inter-epochal, inter-religious and interdisciplinary research of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ on the relationship between religion and the body. Many disciplines are involved, such as ancient studies, Jewish studies, Arabic studies, Christian and Islamic theologies, religious and social sciences, sinology and ethnology, as well as the university's Brazil Centre.

The tour starts at 2 p.m. in the Archaeological Museum, registration is not required. Admission costs six euros, concessions three euros. Students of the University of Münster do not have to pay.

Mourning for Prof. a.D. Dr phil. Dr theol. h.c. Barbara Aland D.D. (USA), D. Litt. (USA) (1937-2024)

The former long-standing director of the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, Prof. Dr. Barbara Aland, passed away in the early hours of Sunday morning. Barbara Aland headed the Institute from 1983-2002 and was managing director of the Hermann Kunst-Foundation. She remained closely associated with the INTF, the Bible Museum and the Foundation. Our thoughts are with her family. She will be missed by us and by the scientific community.

Fasting, high-performance sport, trance dance or meditation: in many practices, one's own body is used to feel spiritual resonance or achieve mental clarity by controlling thoughts and suppressing physical needs. On the panel ‘Crossing the boundaries of body and mind’ on 12 November at 6.15 pm, dance scientist Sevi Bayraktar, pastor and marathon runner Hans-Jürgen Drechsler, director of the China Centre at Kiel University Angelika Messner and professor of sports science and theologian Stefan Schneider will talk about the connection between body and mind and about overcoming mental and physical boundaries with the aim of fulfilling religious beliefs.

The panel is part of the supporting programme for the exhibition "Body. Cult. Religion ‘ and will take place in lecture theatre JO1 of the Cluster of Excellence ’Religion and Politics ‘. Admission is free, registration is not required.

On 15 and 16 November, a dance workshop will be held to accompany the exhibition ‘Körper. Cult. Religion’ at the Archaeological Museum and the Bible Museum. The workshop approaches the content of the Cluster of Excellence's theme year ‘Religion and Politics’ through dance as a physical form of thought and perception. Using different types of dance, participants can experience the relationship between body and spirituality and the objects in the exhibition from a different perspective - that of their own body.