Bay City pastor shares 4,000 years of biblical history at local museum

A view of some of the framed ancient manuscripts in Rev. José Maria Cabreras collection in Bay City, Mich., on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. Cabrera, a pastor and vicar for clergy at All Saints Parish, collects copies of ancient Bibles, some items dating back 4,000 years, and gives tours to the community to teach others the origin story of the Bible. I love to share my love of the Bible with people, Cabrera said.

BAY CITY, MI – A Bay City pastor is teaching congregants and visitors about the historic roots of Christianity through a museum featuring texts spanning thousands of years.

The All Saints Parish Bible Museum was established by Fr. José Cabrera, who has been with the church for 11 years.

The museum is in the All Saints Parish’s St. James Rectory, located at 710 Columbus Ave. in Bay City.

“What I have here in my collection is 4,000 years of biblical history,” Cabrera said. “I love to share my love for the Bible with people.”

Cabrera’s passion for the scriptures began as a young child when his mother gifted him a pictorial Bible.

He began developing plans for the museum in 2012, shortly after returning from about three years of biblical studies in Rome, Italy.

Rev. José Maria Cabrera, who is a pastor and vicar for clergy at All Saints Parish, shows his collection of ancient manuscripts in Bay City, Mich., on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. Cabrera collects copies of ancient Bibles, some items dating back 4,000 years, and gives tours to the community to teach others the origin story of the Bible. I love to share my love of the Bible with people, Cabrera said.

One of his teachers, Father Pisano, would bring different copies of the Bible to the classes.

“I was fascinated by that because always what I say is that when people hold their Bibles in their hand, that’s kind of the final product,” Cabrera said. “I love to show the process. You can go and get a meal in a restaurant, but it’s another thing to actually put the ingredients together and have the fun of it.”

In addition to studying biblical texts and operating the museum, Cabrera teaches scripture through the Diocese of Saginaw’s lay ministry program. He also teaches scripture to the diocese’s deacon candidates and delivers speeches and lectures on the matter.

A view of the Codex Sinaiticus in Rev. José Maria Cabreras collection of ancient manuscripts in Bay City, Mich., on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. Cabrera, a pastor and vicar for clergy at All Saints Parish, collects copies of ancient Bibles, some items dating back 4,000 years, and gives tours to the community to teach others the origin story of the Bible. I love to share my love of the Bible with people, Cabrera said.

The Bible Museum is filled with facsimile copies and some original prints of biblical texts from across the world. The museum features Cabrera’s personal collection of 165 items.

“They make pretty darn good copies of them, and nowadays with high printing technology, you look at the original and a copy and it’s almost the same,” Cabrera said. “We can see in one place the most important manuscripts of the history of the Bible in one room.”

Cabrera purchases items for the museum on various websites offering copies of biblical texts such as Amazon.com, eBay.com, and etsy.com.

“They make these copies for collectors,” Cabrera said. “I’m a collector and not a hoarder.”

The museum also contains texts Cabrera wrote himself, including passages from Isaiah in Hebrew. He noted that the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew.

Cabrera has also written the entire Gospel of John in Greek. He completed the project during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it took him nearly a year to finish.

“The only reason why we have a Bible is because it was copied,” Cabrera said. “People are very surprised at that.”

A view of Saint James Catholic Church in the All Saints Parish located at 710 Columbus Ave. in Bay City, Mich., on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025.

A major benefit of the museum, according to Cabrera, is that it allows visitors to actually interact with physical copies of biblical texts, rather than just reading the original scriptures behind glass.

Rev. José Maria Cabrera, who is a pastor and vicar for clergy at All Saints Parish, shows the New Testament Roman Catholic Version Bibles in his collection of ancient Bibles in Bay City, Mich., on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. Cabrera collects copies of ancient Bibles, some items dating back 4,000 years, and gives tours to the community to teach others the origin story of the Bible. I love to share my love of the Bible with people, Cabrera said.

“You don’t have to wear gloves,” Cabrera said. “You can flip pages, and if it breaks, I’ll go to eBay and buy another one. Normally we read the word with our eyes, but I want them to read the word with their hands.”

Rev. José Maria Cabrera, who is a pastor and vicar for clergy at All Saints Parish, shows the Gutenberg Bible in his collection of ancient manuscripts in Bay City, Mich., on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. Cabrera collects copies of ancient Bibles, some items dating back 4,000 years, and gives tours to the community to teach others the origin story of the Bible. I love to share my love of the Bible with people, Cabrera said.

During tours, visitors learn how the four gospels went from being scattered to unified as one text in the New Testament, which Cabrera finds fascinating.

“I love history, so my best friends have been dead for hundreds of years,” Cabrera said. “And I would love to talk to them in the kingdom one day, especially the ones that were behind all these manuscripts, just to ask them questions.”

Rev. José Maria Cabrera, who is a pastor and vicar for clergy at All Saints Parish, shows one of the Bibles in his collection of ancient Bibles in Bay City, Mich., on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. Cabrera collects copies of ancient Bibles, some items dating back 4,000 years, and gives tours to the community to teach others the origin story of the Bible. I love to share my love of the Bible with people, Cabrera said.

Among some of the older Bibles in the museum featuring a complete copy of the four Gospels is the Book of Kells, which is from the eighth century. The original Book of Kells is kept at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.

A view of the room where ancient manuscripts are stored in Rev. José Maria Cabreras collection in Bay City, Mich., on Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025. Cabrera, a pastor and vicar for clergy at All Saints Parish, collects copies of ancient Bibles, some items dating back 4,000 years, and gives tours to the community to teach others the origin story of the Bible. I love to share my love of the Bible with people, Cabrera said.

“This is the national treasure of Ireland,” Cabrera said.

The museum also features the Gutenberg Bible, the first Bible ever printed. The Bible dates back to 1454 and highlights the significance of the introduction of the printing press about 14 years earlier.

“Up to 1454, we had been copying the Bible by hand, but now we have a machine, a huge technology to produce the Bible in massive quantities,” Cabrera said. “Before, books were the privilege of few.”

The museum includes artifacts showing Christianity’s history in the United States, which include a copy of a 1599 edition of the Geneva Bible brought to the country by pilgrims on the Mayflower.

“That’s the very first Bible in English that came in 1620, one year before the first Thanksgiving,” Cabrera said.

The museum also contains a copy of former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson’s Bible.

“He took four Bibles in four different languages because they are in Greek, in Latin, in French and in English, and he literally cut and pasted from those Bibles all the moral teachings of Christ,” Cabrera said. “He didn’t put the divine aspects of Christ.”

The museum contains some local history as well, including a Catholic Bible printed in Bay City in 1884 featuring a photo of Pope Leo XIII, whose name was adopted by the current pope, Pope Leo XIV.

In addition to copies of ancient manuscripts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are more than 2,000 years old, the museum includes copies of cuneiform tablets. One of the tablets features a calculator originally created about 3,600 years ago, while another would have been used as a receipt for a beer delivery, dating back to the 15th century BC.

“We call this vandalism when you’re scratching walls or surfaces, but this was actual writing back then,” Cabrera said.

The museum contains modern Bibles as well, including a dyslexia and attention deficit disorder-friendly Bible printed in 2025.

“After a certain amount of text, they put a little space or they put a line because with people with dyslexia, the words flow, so it’s very hard to concentrate,” Cabrera said. “The first tour that I gave was all about contemporary Bibles.”

The museum will be open for tours from 6-8 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 14. The theme for the tours will be “The Christmas Story in the Manuscripts.” Sunday also marks the museum’s 13th anniversary.

Tours on Sunday will feature biblical texts connected to the birth of Jesus Christ in celebration of Christmas, including the oldest Christmas story manuscript, which dates back to 350 AD, according to Cabrera.

“It will be nice to see the Christmas story but in the most ancient Bibles that are out there,” Cabrera said.

Museum tours on the theme: “The Passion of Christ in the Manuscripts” will take place from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on Feb. 12, 2026.

Additionally, guests can stop by the museum from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on April 21 for post-Easter tours focused on the theme: “The Resurrection and the Manuscripts.”

Tours typically last about two hours and tour groups at the museum usually include about 15 people. The museum’s visitors have included students from All Saints Catholic schools.

“I make it interactive,” Cabrera said. “I show videos and things like that. My goal is that when they go home, they appreciate their Bible even more.”

Anyone interested in scheduling a tour can contact Cabrera by calling All Saints Parish at 989-893-4693. Tours are free.

“Everyone is welcome,” Cabrera said. “Just bring your friends and experience it.”