John the Baptist? Possibly So

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

6/15/12

 

There is an old joke about a guy in a monastery explaining that a reliquary contains the skull of John the Baptist as a boy. And it is true that a remarkable number of John the Baptist relics, including multiple skulls, are dispersed over a wide area of Europe and Asia. But who knows? Some of them might actually be genuine.

 

Two years ago, a sarcophagus was discovered under the site of an ancient Bulgarian monastery on a tiny island in the Black Sea, called Sveti Ivan (St. John):

 

 

An inscription on a box found next to the reliquary, which contained a knuckle, part of a leg bone, a fragment of skull and a tooth, suggested that they had formerly belonged to John the Baptist. A team from Oxford University set out to test the relics to determine whether that hypothesis could possibly be true.

 

 

(Snip)