Toto

Ha - now at least the Washington Post is putting scare quotes around the claim that scientific tests "seems to confirm" that the bones are Paul's.

Ian St. Ian

If Paul was beheaded, why don't they exhume the whole skeleton and see if it's missing a head?

arnoldo

Yes. For an explanation of that title see the following; Eusebius the Liar?

Amaleq13

The notion that test results dating the bones to the "first or second century" are able to "confirm" tradition that they are Paul's is obviously absurd.

andrewcriddle

If the remains are authentically those of Paul then the expensive cloth would probably come from a later reburial.

It would be interesting if the cloth remains were shown to be a few centuries later than the bone fragments.

Andrew Criddle

Toto

arnoldo Did you just raise this topic just so you can try to defend Eusebius ? There is no need to rehash the whole debate over Eusebius. For reference, here is the 2004 thread: Eusebius the Liar, which links to a previous thread, in which a number of participants failed to convince each other.

The best that Eusebius' defenders can say is that he repeated sources uncritically. No one seriously contends that there is any verifiable history about Paul available in Eusebius.

Back Again

Tradition has it that the body was moved in the 4th century to the current sarcophagus and the head somewhere else. I suspect that there won't be a head there no matter whose body it is. It might be possible to see signs of a beheading as opposed to the disarticulation of a corpse.

Who knows though? Maybe someone else's claim to Paul's head was crudely harmonized with the sarcophagus burial and there is, in fact, a head in Paul's tomb.

arnoldo

Perhaps you overlooked this previous comment;


Is Caius also not credible?

Toto

No I didn't - that was a response to your first post on Eusebius.

Are you seriously trying to say that a second hand report of public veneration of the alleged remains of Sts Peter and Paul at the beginning of the third century is evidence of events alleged to have happened in the middle of the first century?

Be careful if anyone tries to sell you a bridge.

aileron

Who wrote the documents listing the claims of Caius? Could it have been Eusebius? :constern01:

Anyway, back to the forensic evidence. I'm still puzzled why they didn't address what others have mentioned here. Why was an itinerant preacher who supposedly lived an austere life buried with clothing that would seem to be from someone in a high Roman office? Why would they conclude that the dating of the bones means much at all if they knew the site has been venerated for that long anyway? The issue was never the age but the identity, so the date helps little but the clothing casts doubt.