I’ve written before on a few occasions about the Van Kampen Collection of ancient manuscripts, a kind of predecessor of the Green Collection. In fact, it was Scott Carroll, the main architect of the Green Collection, who was also the force behind assembling this collection for the evangelical investment banker Robert Van Kampen in the 1990s.

The Van Kampen Collection was formerly based in “The Scriptorium” in Grand Haven, Michigan before it was moved to Orlando, Florida to become “The Scriptorium Center for Biblical Antiquities,” a subsection of “The Holy Land Experience” theme park. Now the news has broken that the theme park is closing down (see the article in Christianity Today here, which also includes an interesting financial history of the park).

The Christianity Today story does not specifically mention the Van Kampen Collection of manuscripts, but I sent some queries to the contacts at the park, and I’m told that the collection was moved from the premises and is back in the care of the Van Kampen Foundation. I am not certain exactly where the items are physically located at present.

Among the items in the collection are the leaves formerly known as Mississippi Coptic Codex II, which form part of the same book as P.Bodmer 22. Together, they were once part of a parchment codex usually assigned to the fourth or fifth century that contained Jeremiah 40-52, Lamentations, the Epistle of Jeremiah, and Baruch in Coptic (LDAB 108176). I believe the Van Kampen leaves of this codex (now rebound in a modern binding) are the second book from the left in this image from the Orlando display: