Mysterious Bones May Belong to John the Baptist



Bones claimed to be of John the Baptist that were analysed by the research team. Clockwise from top left, the
knucklebone, ulna, part of cranial bone and molar (together) and rib.

 By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

A small handful of bones found in an ancient church in Bulgaria may belong to John the Baptist, the biblical figure said to have baptized Jesus.

There's no way to be sure, of course, as there are no confirmed pieces of John the Baptist to compare to the fragments of bone. But the sarcophagus holding the bones was found near a second box bearing the name of St. John and his feast date (also called a holy day) of June 24. Now, new radiocarbon dating of the collagen in one of the bones pegs its age to the early first century, consistent with the New Testament and Jewish histories of John the Baptist's life.

"We got some dates that are very interesting indeed," study researcher Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford told LiveScience. "They suggest that the human bone is all from the same person, it's from a male, and it has a very high likelihood of an origin in the Near East," or Middle East where John the Baptist would have lived.

German Researchers Reveal Date of Christ's Death

The U.S. and German geologists claim they had discovered the exact date when Christ was crucified, the International Geology Review reported.

According to the report, published in the academic journal this week, the scientists discovered that Christ had been crucified on Friday, April 3, 33 AD.

Jefferson Williams from the U.S. Supersonic Geophysical together with his German colleagues, Markus Schwab and Achim Brauer analyzed seismic activity near the Dead Sea and the earthquakes’ descriptions in the New Testament’s first book, Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew’s Chapter 27 says that as Jesus lay dying on the cross “the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.”

The scientists, who had detected the signs of two earthquakes in the soil samples from the Dead Sea, revealed that the latter earthquake had occurred between 26AD and 36AD, at the time when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea and when, as all four canonical gospels say, Jesus was crucified.

By putting together several clues from the Gospel of Matthew, combined with the Jewish calendar and astronomical data, the researchers revealed the date of the crucifixion with a fair degree of precision, the journal said.