Recent Archaeology Find of Alleged Remains of Saint John the Baptist Causes Controversy

reply to post by Danbones

naw, I aint buying.

Tacitus lived from A.D. 55 to A.D. 120. He was a Roman historian and has been described as the greatest historian of Rome, noted for his integrity and moral uprightness. His most famous works are the Annals and the Histories. The Annals relate the historical narrative from Augustus’ death in A.D.14 to Nero’s death in A.D. 68.

Tacitus affirms that the founder of Christianity, a man he calls Chrestus (a common misspelling of Christ, which was Jesus’ surname), was executed by Pilate, the procurator of Judea during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberias. Tacitus was hostile to Christianity because in the same paragraph he describes Christus’ or Christ’s death, he describes Christianity as a pernicious superstition.

Jesus' surname was not chrestus meaning Christ...
un like my self romans could spell.

people want this stuff to be real to justify all sorts of stuff...
the message maybe was important,
but the property deeds,
and the tyth collecting rights,
and the temporal authority,
are just so contrary to the meaning of the message,
that it sounds pretty unlikely to me.

the john the babtist if he existed according to some, would even be more important then Jebus, some even claim Jebus was invented to kill the cult following he had,

The Myth of Nazareth meticulously reviews the archaeology of the Nazareth basin from the Stone Age to the present, and shows that the settlement of Nazareth came into existence in the early second century C.E., well after the time of Christ.

www.nazarethmyth.info...

[edit on 4-8-2010 by Danbones]

[edit on 4-8-2010 by Danbones]

[edit on 4-8-2010 by Danbones]

reply to post by Danbones


pfff. That really is not relevant to the discussion. The point is that there were thousands of people following Christ by the earliest writings about him. This does not just simply happen. Yea we can all know about Scientology. But Scientology had only about 600 followers at its peak. In fact, if we calculate the number of people to have existed ever, some 106 billion, and then consider that only one farmer-carpenter has ever done anything claiming to be God and succeeded, we get 9.433962264150943e-12 % chance of that.

yes many have claimed to be God. Yes many have had many followers with them. But there is a key difference. Osiris? Zoroastrianism? etc etc. They all had this after they had thousands following them. Christ flat out began claiming this.

Something happened back then. Now you can say it was aliens or a legit God on Earth. But at the end of the day, Christ did come and he had thousands of followers within a few years of his ascension, and continued to grow afterwards. No one else has had that happen. So to claim he did not exist is folly, as thousands saw him. I'd be happy to talk about how he did what he did, but to say he never was is simply wrong.

reply to post by Danbones


But your sources and opinions. Are there actually any official ones with credited works?

[edit on 4-8-2010 by Gorman91]

reply to post by Aeons


Interesting, I wonder just how close you could get with DNA and how well it is documented as to who are true decendents of John.

Originally posted by lost in the midwest
reply to post by Aeons

 

Interesting, I wonder just how close you could get with DNA and how well it is documented as to who are true decendents of John.

I don't know enough of this history, but it wouldn't be a big stretch that he was married. Rabbis often were.

You could rule these remains out of contention by testing for Y-DNA Kohan/Levi lineage. Not being Y-DNA Haplogroup J1, J2 would take these remains out of contention.

Originally posted by GAOTU789

Wow. If this turns out to be true than it would be a huge gain for Christianity. One of the original founders of Christianities bones being discovered at this place would turn the church they are housed in into a over night beacon for Christians world wide, especially since it claims to also house a piece of the Cross.

It may be a huge gain for this particular church but I can't see how it would be a huge gain for christianity in general.

For Catholics and Orthodox maybe, they see the value in relics...an orthodox church in my hometown has a piece of the skull of Jesus' grandmother...wtf...

It is very hard to determine if relics are real as many were faked...Every time something roughly 2,000 years old is found they claim it to be of Jesus or his apostles or John the B...

As a Protestant, I don't really care...if they found the ark of the covenant, noah's ark, the cross, the tomb, and all the bones of every apostle it still wouldn't really make much of an impact on my Faith

Originally posted by Aeons

Originally posted by lost in the midwest
reply to post by Aeons

 

Interesting, I wonder just how close you could get with DNA and how well it is documented as to who are true decendents of John.

I don't know enough of this history, but it wouldn't be a big stretch that he was married. Rabbis often were.

You could rule these remains out of contention by testing for Y-DNA Kohan/Levi lineage. Not being Y-DNA Haplogroup J1, J2 would take these remains out of contention.

John the Baptist lived in the wilderness eating locusts and honey, wearing a camel fur tunic...I doubt he was married He was also arrested and beheaded...According to Luke he was probably pretty young when he died, perhaps around 30

reply to post by AnonymousMoose


Catholics need proof. It's how we are raised. It's why so many of us become atheists by the end of highschool, like me. Luckily I got back into my faith via protestants like yourself. lol.

reply to post by Gorman91

you are asking me to prove a negative Gorman
second line.

ps we don't have to go back to John the Baptist for proof we can simply go back to what we can prove:

In his later years, Luther became strongly anti-Judaic, writing that Jewish homes should be destroyed, their synagogues burned, money confiscated and liberty curtailed. These statements have made Luther a controversial figure among many historians and religious scholars.

en.wikipedia.org...

Both the Catholics and the Protestant churches In Canada took Tax dollars to commit the Genocide of residential schools...

so IMHO these claims of legitimacy like the church claiming to have the bones of John the Baptist are spurious attempts at earthly sado masochistic gain



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[edit on 5-8-2010 by Danbones]

reply to post by Danbones


Not really. If I asked you to prove God does not exist then yes it would be true, as there is no evidence God exists or does not on a purely relative field of observation. But Jesus as a person having existed is what I am asking you to prove as false. The simple fact is that there IS proof that Jesus lived. And there is none that says he did not live. Now there is not a whole lot of stuff left from that time period in terms of records. But if a Roman historian says that the Christians are a cult who worship a man condemned to die in the era of a Roman emperor, then this means that there were records of such a man at that time. Because the Romans did not make up people. They were very keen to record defeats and victories. And they would happily make fun of Jesus as nothing more than a man. To the Romans, it was like worshiping Oprah after she died. There would be records of the person existing, or they would dismiss it as a non-existent cult. And indeed the Romans did just that for the early competition of the Christians.

At the end of the day, the Romans said he existed. They hated Christians because they would not fight and would not worship the emperor. It's as simple as that. Just like the US government does not like it when you don't worship their leaders. You saw the face of Nanci Pelosi when the dude yelled" you lie!".

History repeats.


What you are facing is simple. Proof that Jesus existed versus no proof he did not. This is not proof of God, because there is none either way.

Originally posted by Danbones
I have a grilled cheese sandwich which looks like its bleeding....
ooops ..sorry, my bad....it's ketchup
never mind.
Carry on.

I had a fundie tell me the other day that they had so proven Jesus existed.
I said prove it....

*sigh*
Im glad I never let him borrow any of my good tools.

[edit on 4-8-2010 by Danbones]

[edit on 4-8-2010 by Danbones]

You put ketchup on grilled cheese? Outrageous!

How did John end up in Bulgaria? When he was beheaded in ancient Israel?

reply to post by Centurionx


It's common to transport bodies around that are relics if they are found. COuld really be anyone. The Muslims recognize him as a prophet. They could have tossed him away to some place in the Black Sea region a long time ago.

reply to post by lestweforget


I'm taking your post as a joke.

Seriously, as a true christian, you should operate on knowledge. Not faith.

Faith implies doubt and hope. Knowledge states a firmer stance.

Do I believe that J the B was real? Most likely but i take it as faith. At this point, he is an important archetype.

Do I have KNOWLEDGE that God exist's? Absolutely. All I have to do is walk across the house and look at my daughter ,go outside and look at the sky, or just look at a tree.

The use of "relic's" was for a dog and pony show in the early church.
I do not support much of the early church. It was more political than it was now as was one schizm after another. Read "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". It talks extensively about this toward the end.

Maybe its the difference between mainstream christianity and my gnosticism. dunno.

I have a question about these "remains". IS THERE ANY SIGN OF BEHEADING?

reply to post by felonius


Well again, there is considerable proof that Christ lived discussed earlier. But imagine it this way. God knows that intervention ruins free will. So what better way then to have a host of fully human prophets with authority to have godly powers, but whom all pretty much abused said power, and then introduce a fully human, and fully God fellow who shows the right path. This way we learn that humanity is not perfect, God is, and the middle grounds is a perfect human archetype.

Originally posted by network dude
and they are St. John the Baptist's bones because..........the church said so.

I think it would be great to know for sure that this is indeed the case, but knowing that there can never be any certainty to this, just seems so.....hocus pocus like. I can take a lot on faith, but I refuse to blindly believe whatever I am told just because of who said it.

I do appreciate the significance of a brother mason posting this information.

So Christianity can't tell you who those bones belong to, but evolution can tell us that a piece of wood is 6 trillion years old and where it came from...

reply to post by mattias


...

yes.

Also not trillion. Carbon dating doesn't go back that far. Carbon dating is good for a few thousand years, then we use phosphate dating, and other longer decaying molecules.

Isn't it nice that God gave us brains and a working machine of a universe to tell these things?

I have no idea how they intend to prove that these remains are who they say they are, but i remain hopeful and when im in that area would love to visit them.

There are other parts out there that could be matched by testing.

Other Relics of the Body of John the Baptist

St Maria Assunta Cathedral, Siena [Italy] -- The Arm of John the Baptist was presented to the Cathedral of Siena on May 6, 1464 by Pope Pious II.

Monastery of Cetinje [Montenegro] -- The Serbian Orthodox monastery houses the right hand of John the Baptist. Legend says that the relic, along with fragments of the Holy Cross, came from Jerusalem, via Constantinople, to the hands of the Crusaders in Rhodes and then Malta. In 1799 the relic was presented to the Russian Czar Paul. The relic left St Petersburg [Russia] with the Russian revolution. After being preserved for some time in Copenhagen [Denmark], it was presented to the Serbian monarchy. Until 1941 it was in Belgrade [Serbia], then in the monastery of Ostrog, then in the State Treasure, until it eventually ended in possession of the Monastery of Cetinje.

The Briton village of Saint-Jean-du-Doigt owes its name to a relic housed in its Flamboyant Gothic church (1513)--part of the index finger of John the Baptist.

St Lawrence, Viterbo [Italy] -- The reliquary of the Chin of John the Baptist is now housed in the Museo del Colle del Duomo at Viterbo.

Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Florence [Italy] -- A finger of John the Baptist.

Cathedral of St Lawrence, Genoa [Italy] -- Ashes

Monastery of Loana (near Savona) -- Ashes

Chiaramonte Gulfi (RG) -- Ashes and some bone fragments

Originally posted by mattias

Originally posted by network dude
and they are St. John the Baptist's bones because..........the church said so.

I think it would be great to know for sure that this is indeed the case, but knowing that there can never be any certainty to this, just seems so.....hocus pocus like. I can take a lot on faith, but I refuse to blindly believe whatever I am told just because of who said it.

I do appreciate the significance of a brother mason posting this information.

So Christianity can't tell you who those bones belong to, but evolution can tell us that a piece of wood is 6 trillion years old and where it came from...

Yeah,

I bet if they said these were the bones of some ancient pagan god these guys would be saying "great find". But since it's Christian related it just can't be true.

Personally I don't think these are the bones of John the Baptist, but the inscription does say "St. John" but of course that could be anyone, there were many John's back then so who knows.

reply to post by RealTruthSeeker


this makes a lot of sense, John is an extremely common name & the status of sainthood certainly doesnt indicate that this is Saint John The Baptist specifically.