Christ's Foreskin. The Circumcision of Jesus. Where'd it go? Potential for Christ CLONES?

Evidently there's a whole NatGeo special on the hunt for the foreskin of Christ, which until only 1900 was a wildly popular relic within the Church.

Quest For The Holy Foreskin

Of course, with growing facilities in Science, concerns started to arise in the Church.
What would happen if the foreskin was put under a microscope?

In 1900 the foreskin was taken off display and it became canon that anyone who even mentioned its existence was at risk for excommunication.

I thought the whole thing was a joke when I first saw a link for it, like, perhaps something of a Monty Python piece, but, it would seem this is a valid, serious issue.

One serious question out of it: If Jesus was God incarnate, then, we could look at the DNA of God.

For some folks this could very well be quite the frightening thing.
A step beyond that; what if we could CLONE Jesus from that bit of foreskin?



That might could be just what's going on.
According the link above:

For centuries, the relic of the Holy Foreskin was considered by believers to be the only piece of Jesus’ flesh to remain on earth after he ascended to heaven, and thus was among the most sacred relics in Christendom.

Then, on New Year’s Day 1983, in a tiny village in the Italian countryside, Father Don Dario announced to his expectant flock that their beloved relic had been stolen.

New York Times writer David Farley goes on a quest to unravel the story of this mysterious crime.

Thus, the foreskin has been stolen!

This was in 1983?
Let's give a year to extract enough genetic information for an attempt at cloning ...
1984
Why does that year sound familiar?
a Christ Clone would maybe have been birthed around 1985-86, so, if there's a Christ clone wandering around somewhere, it's possible he, or, wait, even SHE could be what, 28? Maybe a little Younger?

It's something certainly of interest to think about.

Seeing how they didn't believe Jesus was the messiah why would they keep his foreskin? Is it part of their faith to keep the foreskin? Sounds like someone got scammed to me.

It probably went missing because with advances in investigative techniques forced the church to take their forgery and bury it. I know that they couldn't gene test it back then but say it was comparable to say idk some kind of animal penis or something very odd that was all shriveled up and old that was beginning to look well like a fake? I read sometime ago about false relics being all around to raise money to pay for churches that and indulgences so my gut tells me it was removed because it was an obvious fake.


I thought the beginning of the video was kind of awkward especially when the cartoon guy was bobbing his head like he was jamming to his ipod and drops the bloody holy foreskin into the disembodied hand I was like GTFO

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


I actually read the book that the guy who was investigating this wrote, but it was more about him and his adventures in the tiny village where he moved to get the story than it was about the foreskin. Kind of a travelogue and diary combined. I don't remember if he got to talk to the priest who had the object stolen from his custody or not, but he keeps trying.

4 July 2006
Gnome-speakernotes UnNews Audio (file info)
Listen to this story!
Circumcision set

The set of circumcision tools used to mutilate circumcise Jesus and the box containing the Holy Foreskin.
DULUTH, Pennsylvania -- Italian special police say they've broken the back of a gang of anarchist alchemists, Unione dei L'Alchimia Anarchici della Toscana (Tuscan Union of Anarchist Alchemists), whose goal is to create a potion which grants eternal life and to bring down the Catholic Church. A key ingredient of this alleged formula is,

“the Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin (Latin præputium), is one of several relics purported to be associated with Jesus.”
~ Wikipedia on the Holy Foreskin

The Holy Prepuce, along with stolen mercury, lead, and 72 dead echidnas, were recovered in a raid on the Tuscan Union's back-alley "laboratory" in Genoa. Calcata once housed the Prepuce in a reliquary, which was paraded through the streets of this Italian village as recently as 1983 on the Feast of the Circumcision...
UnNews Logo Potato
This article features first-hand journalism by an UnNews correspondent.
“which was formerly marked by the Catholic Church around the world on January 1 each year. The practice ended, however, when thieves stole the jewel-encrusted case, contents and all. Following this theft, it is unclear whether any of the purported Holy Prepuces still exist. In a 1997 television documentary for Channel 4, British journalist Miles Kington travelled to Italy in search of the Holy Foreskin, but was unable to find any remaining example.”

SOURCE


Thought this is relevant, actually kind of made me laugh a little bit too


Found a Clue

If this went missing in 1983 I am having a hard time finding pictures of either the foreskin in question or its jeweled carrying case, apparently it used to get marched around Italy around the new year up until then, there should be a pic somewhere. Ugh off to Italian Press searching.

If one believes in the Christian god, then the DNA of god is everywhere on this planet, in the form of those he supposedly created in his image. We are the DNA of god. Christ's DNA would look no different from our own. Except maybe in terms of purity. But even that is debatable.

Great attempt at humor. Still spluttering into my soda. Its like one of those wild headlines some tabloids get off on. The foreskin of Jesus has never before crossed my mind and the idea of cloning Jesus is a real classic, perfect ingredients for a chuckle.

Given the glut of Holy Foreskins, churches made efforts to have their foreskin authenticated by Church leaders as the sole genuine article. In the early 12th century, the monks of San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome asked Pope Innocent III to rule on the authenticity of their foreskin, but he declined to do so. Later, the monks of Charroux claimed their foreskin to be the only real one, pointing out that it apparently yielded drops of blood. This convinced Pope Clement VII (1523-1534) who declared theirs to be the authentic thing.

Some medieval theologians argued that all the Holy Foreskins necessarily had to be frauds since the actual Holy Foreskin had, they asserted, ascended into Heaven with Christ. The 17th century theologian Leo Allatius speculated in his essay De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba that the holy foreskin had ascended into heaven at the same time as Jesus, and had become the rings of Saturn.


Leo Allatius
The Catholic Church eventually sought to extract itself from the Holy Foreskin controversy, deciding that it was rather unseemly for so much attention to be paid to Christ's private parts. It adopted the view that all the rival foreskins were frauds, and in 1900 made it a crime punishable by excommunication to write or speak about the Holy Foreskin.

Link

Outside scholarly circles Allatius is perhaps best known today for his De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba (A Discussion of the Foreskin of Our Lord Jesus Christ), a minor essay mentioned in Fabricius's Bibliotheca Graeca (xiv. 17) as an unpublished work.[13] According to an unconfirmed nineteenth-century source,[14][15] its thesis - which to many modern readers appears unintentionally humorous - is that the rings observed around the planet Saturn are the prepuce of Jesus.

Link

In 1900, the Roman Catholic Church resolved the dilemma by ruling that anyone thenceforward writing or speaking of the Holy Prepuce would be excommunicated.[5] In 1954, after much debate, the punishment was changed to the harsher degree of excommunication, vitandi (shunned);[5] and the Second Vatican Council later removed the Day of the Holy Circumcision from the Latin church calendar, although Eastern Catholics and Traditional Roman Catholics still celebrate the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord on January 1

Link



So what I gather the church decided to squash the foreskin issue along time ago, some peoples assumptions about them all being a fake back then meet my assumption it was a fake. Can't comment much on the rings of Saturn deal here but if true lots of astronomers been seriously fooled. Apparently it is also been made an ex communicative offense to reference the holy foreskin which again sounds to me like they just wanted to get rid of the relic (IMO false relic)

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


For some folks this could very well be quite the frightening thing.
A step beyond that; what if we could CLONE Jesus from that bit of foreskin?


Well, depending on your view, the upside to this is if they do indeed find "it", you have a great argument for Intelligent Design.

reply to post by Brotherman


Your post seems to report everything was recovered.
I wonder what happen to everything.

I would suspect the piece in question may have gotten disappeared into a Vatican secret vault somewheres.
We can't have anyone either discovering it's a fake, or manufacturing their own personal jesus clones for sale on the free market.

reply to post by Klassified


Certainly, but, the Jesus figure itself has all sorts of fetish value to many the adherents to this mythology.

Can you imagine if this DNA got on the market, How many people would PAY not only to play surrogate mother to a Jesus clone, but, how many churches and cults would PAY and How Much for their very own Jesus clone trained up and indoctrinated in whatever faith they might be attempting to give more legitimacy?

As the Jewish tradition was to bury it - what makes you think it was kept?

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


See my post above, apparently from what I gathered one was deemed the real thing but there was also a bunch of other foreskins floating around being taunted off as the real deal. Eventually some Pope at some point was presented a foreskin that would produce blood and said it was the real deal only to later excommunicate (back in the day and then again in the 1950s) anyone to write or talk about it. To me it sounds like they were all fakes. I wonder if there was an authentic Holy Foreskin and it did bleed all the way into the 12th century or whatever, I wonder were Mary kept that bad boy hidden if it never stopped producing blood? Sounds kind of IDK insane if true.

Communion: a Christian sacrament in which consecrated bread and wine are consumed as memorials of Christ's death or as symbols for the realization of a spiritual union between Christ and communicant or as the body and blood of Christ.

Perhaps the foreskins missing because Father Don Dario or someone else decided to make the ultimate communion to Christ and partake of his body, literally.

As stomach turning as the notion is I'm being serious.

hellobruce
As the Jewish tradition was to bury it - what makes you think it was kept?

On a personal note: I personally don't think the Jesus Character even existed as a real person.
I personally think the Jesus character is an amalgamation of the Buddha as well as other figures of the time which would have been convenient vehicles for the perpetuation of a prophecy fulfillment event.

By extension, a Jesus foreskin would thus be impossible, but, for those that actually DO take stock in this mythology, the whole foreskin question, and faith in such a thing, to them, could very well be an important issue.

Religion and all things religion are vehicles of Faith. There's very low standards when it comes to passing off any number of preposterous impossible magically superstitious dream stuff.
Thus, if someone, or any group of people were sufficiently convinced of their faith in a holy foreskin, and they made clones from it, and by extension sold the jesus clone mythology to the right market audience, there could be some "money", or theological bank in such a gambit.

Let me try again...this time staying on topic with zero humor imparted. Seeing how there's no imperical evidence that say's Jesus ever existed in the first place..then the foreskin is part of that same..There's no imperical evidence aspect. meaning if Jesus did'nt exist, neither did his foreskin, circumcised or not. You cant clone a story. Until there's imperical evidence proving in fact Jesus did exist, and there isnt. Then his foreskin is also a story with no imperical evidence to support it. IMHO[snip]

TheLieWeLive
Communion: a Christian sacrament in which consecrated bread and wine are consumed as memorials of Christ's death or as symbols for the realization of a spiritual union between Christ and communicant or as the body and blood of Christ.

Perhaps the foreskins missing because Father Don Dario or someone else decided to make the ultimate communion to Christ and partake of his body, literally.

As stomach turning as the notion is I'm being serious.

And what, praytell, did he use for sacramental wine?

reply to post by openyourmind1262


I think I addressed this question in my previous post.

Empirical evidence, or no, this article is an article attached to an institution of Faith.

For people like me, and others who require such stringent standards, especially so where we're not adherents to this mythology, it's really only a bit of curiosity.

People of faith, however?
We've a whole new different level of interesting.
How many people will line up for how long and pay how much just to see and pray in front of a piece of toast that might possibly have something vaguely resembling the Mother Mary burnt on it?

Now imagine something just reported to be an actual relic of skin from the Christ character itself.

Extend that into cloning.

To be extremely ghoulish, as was mentioned previously by another member, extend that cloning into simple protein growth cultures to sell as Jesus Meat which people could then claim (to whatever legitimacy) the wafers they partake of in communion actually ARE from the body of Christ.

Faith has caused wars, atrocities, witch hunts, and all sorts of nutter behavior.

I'm fairly certain if anyone were to get sample enough to grow an actual clone, or Jesus Meat cultures, it'd make for big money somewhere regardless of whether Jesus actually existed or not.
So long as there's people of faith that have faith that the thing is real, then, to them, that's all that matters.

The Catholic Encyclopaedia itself recognises that many relics are "doubtful", but fails to admit that probably all of them are fakes: "Many of the more ancient relics duly exhibited for veneration in the great sanctuaries of Christendom or even at Rome itself must now be pronounced to be either certainly spurious or open to grave suspicion [...]. Difficulties might be urged against the supposed 'column of the flagellation' venerated at Rome in the Church of Santa Prassede and against many other famous relics." [The Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. 12, p. 737] So much for the infallibility of Papal pronouncements!

How, then, is this discrepancy explained? The Catholic Encyclopaedia continues: "[...] no dishonour is done to God by the continuance of an error which has been handed down in perfect good faith for many centuries. [...] Hence there is justification for the practice of the Holy See in allowing the cult of certain doubtful ancient relics to continue." In other words, it is acceptable to believe a lie.

Link


The above link believe it or not has a bang up read in it not only talking about the holy foreskin but all relics in general along with cited material.