St Paul's tomb unearthed in Rome

[hunter]

St Paul's tomb unearthed in Rome

By Christian Fraser
BBC News, Rome

St Paul's Outside the Walls is one of the largest churches in Rome

Archaeologists working for the Vatican have unearthed a sarcophagus containing what they believe are the remains of St Paul the Apostle.

The tomb dates back to at least AD390 and was found in a crypt under a basilica in Rome.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6219656.stm

So, who's inside St. Paul's sarcophagus?

[SaveElmer]

1. Grant?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when I read your post!

ROFL!!!!! :rofl:

[Demeter]

4. Naughty, Naughty!

Far too erudite for the common herd.

[hunter]

5. John Paul Jones.

Or some other guy.

[JuniperLea]

9. And how many do you think you sent scurrying to

http://www.m-w.com/

With your post?



:rofl:

[TechBear_Seattle]

21. To answer the implied question, "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?"

Two possible answers.

1) No one. Inside the tomb is a sarcophagus, which sits above ground and thus is not buried.

2) Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, both, are within the sarcophagus not buried in Grant's Tomb.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. They won't really know

unless they search inside the sarcophagus or do some sort of testing--is there anything there that they could carbon date? If it's just marble slabs, then the answer would be no.

[Az]

6. Without a source to compare to

Its going to be tricky to declare much of anything beyond dates from this.

[Igel]

18. DNA could provide some decent probabilities.

They have DNA samples from the Levantine and other areas, and genetic markers could say whether any remains most likely hailed from some part of the E. Mediterranean, from N. Africa, from N. Europe, Iberia, the Balkans, or Italy. The DNA can't say, "They buried Paul," but could say, "This guy's from Iberia."

[JuniperLea]

7. Do you know what St. Paul would be doing if he were alive today?

Scratching at the inside of his sarcophagus!!

[Sapere aude]

8. Why did they do this? Maybe the inventory of relics is getting low.

Get some pieces of bone and touch something else and get 2nd degree relics. Think of the money to be made off the faithful!

[kenny blankenship]

10. He would have been 28 if

[no_hypocrisy]

11. Starting to sound like a plot for "The DaVinci Code Part II". n/t

[xchrom]

12. cool.

i love it when they do stuff like this.

[Peace Patriot]

13. It's actualy Paul McCartney!

Old fogies will get it. (Remember "Paul is dead"?)

---------

But, really, folks, St. Paul was the Newt Gingrich of his day. He did more to damage to the egalitarian message of the earliest Christians than any other of the male powermongers in the first centuries after Jesus. That's why they're dragging his decrepit bones out now. It's to bolster this male monarchy in the church at a time when it is becoming more and more obvious to people how ludicrous it is.

---------

(I didn't mean to slander the one and only Paul--who never was dead. It was just a thing John was going through.) (They made it up later. Listen to "Back to the Egg"/Paul, 1980.)

[CTyankee]

14. I was just in Rome a few weeks ago. Would've love to have seen it!

But we were on a mission to see all the Caravaggio's in Rome so it was a different mission!

I did an independent study on Caravaggio in grad school, so I was interested in seeing all of his Rome paintings. What a great mission that was! It was a long day's trek but we saw a lot of those great paintings!

To me, Rome was New York with Vespa's!

[Zhade]

15. ...yeah. Wake me when they find evidence it's him.

NT!

[hunter]

16. My John Paul Jones post above...

There is no certainity that the body in U.S. Revolutionary War Naval hero John Paul Jone's sarcophagus is him, and Navy spokesmen say "Speculation alone is not reasonable cause for us to disturb the sanctity of the sarcophagus."

Now this is not a religious question (well maybe it is if you think of U.S. nationalism as a religion, which is not an unreasonable point of view) but it gives you some idea about the scope of the problem facing the Vatican.

I don't think anyone describes Paul as a myth, any more than they might describe John Paul Jones as a myth. But both men illustrate the interplay between myth and some hypothetical historical "accuracy." History is very mutable. Our explanations of how and why things happened change like the weather.

Personally, I would much like to visit Paul's tomb, but then again, when our family travels our kids tease us unmercifully when my wife and I stop at such places. Why would anyone want to see where some dead person's body ended up?

[Finder]

17. I do not think Paul existed as the traditional story portrays him.n/t

[hunter]

19. How about Nero? What's the "traditional story" on him?

Nero fiddled while Rome burned... that's clearly a falsehood.

The politics of that time would not be unfamiliar to any politically astute person living today.

It shouldn't make anyone uncomfortable, believer or non-believer, that the history of Christianity is much clearer than the "traditional stories."

There are too many atheists and too many Christians who see this history as a closet they don't want to open. Both sides would rather obscure things in myth.

[Finder]

20. I think the history of christianity is fascinating...

and I do agree there are way too many myths by both sides accepted as fact.

I also agree 100 percent that those who are politically astute will see many parallels.