Remains of St. Paul may have been found

Sounds to me like more Hype being stirred up by the church, but only time will tell. You can read the story here

Indeed it does sound like marketing of the
Glastonbury type.

The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least A.D. 390, I guess Paul got to live long enough to be able to be buried over 300 years after Jesus death.

Hum, they have been excavating since 2002? will the church allow scientist to do the dating?

Or they will use their own experts.

Originally posted by marg6043
The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least A.D. 390, I guess Paul got to live long enough to be able to be buried over 300 years after Jesus death.

Hum, they have been excavating since 2002? will the church allow scientist to do the dating?

Or they will use their own experts.

Well, Paul did supposedly arrive on the scene some 100 years after Jesus, but still does not explain how he was an expert, unless Jesus really did blind him and his donkey on the road . Still doesn't explain the 390 ad. Silly if you ask me.

Originally posted by kleverone
Sounds to me like more Hype being stirred up by the church, but only time will tell. You can read the story here

lol this is like the troops and saddam thing...

if you're losing support for 'your' war... find someone dead that 'was' important .... or kill someone who is/was important.. and people become interested again..

I would be more interested if they had Irrefutable proof that they found Peter's
peter. Or the real " Bone of Contention."

Or possibly as a verse from Randy Travis says, ABOUT ATS: Vulgarity and The Automatic ATS Censors Please review this link.)



[edit on 12/12/2006 by Umbrax]

Originally posted by marg6043
Hum, they have been excavating since 2002? will the church allow scientist to do the dating?

Probably. The RCC has gotten over its dark age hangups and embraced science, at least as much as a faith based church can do. Pope John Paul the 2nd had an astronomical observatory installed in his Papal Apartments, and held annual scientific conferences.

Or they will use their own experts.

The RCC can hire qualified researchers for these purposes, it doesn't mean that they are in the churche's pocket.

kleverone
Still doesn't explain the 390 ad. Silly if you ask me.

All that means is that the material they have so far can only be reliably dated as around 390 ad. It could be that the remains were held in another location, or in another receptacle, until placed into the one they found now, in 390 ad. Infact, it'd make sense that the materials were moved around that time, when christianity would've been bigger and more popular.

Honestly, there's really no reason to think that the apostles didn't exist. Whether or not they were divinely inspired is a matter of faith. But the evidence that we have does seem to suggest they did exist. They might've been jibbering whackadoos or con-artists, but that doesn't mean that they didn't exist, or that their followers, be they faithful or deluded dupes, preserved their remains.



As far as testing the remains, we of course don't have anything authentically known to be paul. We could, perhaps, find out if the remains have the genetic markers indicative of people from tarsus, or at least asia minor, at the time of the proported events. But, realistically, even if they don't, it could simply mean that he was from tarsus, but not a tarsian.

It might help us clear some things up though. SOme have suggested that Paul wasn't a jew living in asia minor, that he was perhaps a pagan, perhaps specifically a follower of the cult of Mithras. So perhaps, if the church beleives that these are infact his bones, and they don't have hebrew markers, but rather have native asia minor markers, or italic markers, than that might settle the jew or not issue. That'd have implications for Pauls theology. Even if we still accept paul as 'the gospel truth', so to speak, the fact that he came from a pagan, and not a jewish, context would be important.