"The animal bones are the biggest of the group, and they may have just been put there to bulk up what looks like a pretty minimal collection of bones. Tests showed they were about 400 years older than the human remains. Unfortunately, all of the attention has resulted in the theft of a rib bone, and, Higham said, the local bishop has issued an edict saying "hell and damnation will rain down from God, not only on the person who stole it but also on his family and anyone else who knows about it, and even the village where it was taken."Ĭuriously, three animal bones-from a sheep, a cow, and a horse-were also part of the cache. Entombed in a small marble sarcophagus, the bones had been buried beneath the church altar.įor the time being, they'll remain in Bulgaria as property of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and are currently being showcased in the country's capital, Sofia. The relics were found during an excavation on the island of Sveti Ivan-"St. (Also see "Lost Gospel Revealed Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him.") The scientific analysis of the bones hasn't yet been submitted to a journal, though the results are featured in the National Geographic documentary Head of John the Baptist, airing Thursday in the U.K. ( Video: Watch part of the testing of the purported John the Baptist relics.)
(National Geographic News is a division of the Society.) But we were surprised when they turned out to be much older than that," said Higham, whose work on the bones was funded in part by the National Geographic Society's Expeditions Council. "And we thought that perhaps these bones would be fourth or fifth century as well. "We thought that, since this church dates to the fifth century, this gives us a minimum age for this material," Higham said. The fate of John the Baptist's remains is a topic of much speculation among biblical scholars, but what is known is that, in the third and fourth centuries, reports began to appear of his bones being housed in various churches as holy relics to attract pilgrims-not an uncommon fate for the supposed remains of biblical figures. (Related: "Jesus' Tomb Claim Slammed By Scholars.") "It's really stretching it to think that material from the first century can end up all the way in this church in Bulgaria and still be there for archaeologists to excavate," Higham said. "Īs such, the current study can't confirm-or for that matter, disprove-that the bones belonged to John the Baptist. "We don't have a solid, reliable piece of bone that belongs to. "The problem is we don't have a baseline for comparison," said study team member Thomas Higham, an archaeological scientist at the U.K.'s University of Oxford. and so could conceivably have belonged to the "forerunner of Christ," who baptized Jesus, scientists say.ĭiscovered in 2010 among the ruins of a Bulgarian church, the remains include six human bones: a knucklebone from the right hand, a tooth, part of a cranium, a rib, and an ulna, or forearm bone.ĭNA and radiocarbon testing of collagen from the knucklebone show that the remains likely belonged to a Middle Eastern man who lived in the first century A.D., which fits with the story of John the Baptist.Īccording to the Bible, John was a cousin of Jesus Christ, so the finding means scientists might have DNA from a relative of the Christian savior himself-although proving it is likely impossible. Purported skeletal remains of John the Baptist have been dated to the first century A.D.
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