Comment by lubujackson
1 day ago
Not to get all Indiana Jonesy about it, but 12 skeletons? From right around year 0? And they even show a picture of a weathered, ceramic cup?
The article plays it straight, but I'm pretty sure this = Holy Grail confirmed.
The cup they show isn't dated; it just says, "An ancient ceramic item discovered at the Treasury site". It's not even clear the cup was discovered during this particular expedition, or where it was found. It could be newer or older, and need not be related to the 12 skeletons.
If the 12 apostles existed, it seems unlikely that they'd all be buried in the same place, in what may have been a "prestigious" tomb. Jesus isn't exactly described as a particularly popular figure in his time when it came to the authorities, and I would expect the 12 apostles would have died at different times, in different places, and wouldn't have been buried together.
The time range is pushing it, too: between 400 BCE and 106 CE, though that's just the roughest of estimates based on when the city was founded and when it was annexed by the Romans, not based on any inspection of the remains. It feels more likely that this tomb was built, used, and sealed up well before Jesus and the disciples/apostles supposedly lived.
Even if we assume the religious fairy tales are true, this doesn't pass the smell test: it's vanishingly unlikely that these are the remains of those men, or that any of this is related to the Holy Grail mythology.
They are not all buried in the same place. Mark is famously in Venice.
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/where-are-the-12-apostles-no...
Peter is apparently underneath the Vatican. I’m not religious but I love history - they run a tour under the current city and it’s really quite cool if you’re into that sort of thing
http://www.scavi.va/content/scavi/en/ufficio-scavi.html
5 replies →
Doubting Thomas went to India:
Christianity is India's third-largest religion with about 26 million adherents, making up 2.3 percent of the population as of the 2011 census.[1] The written records of St Thomas Christians mention that Christianity was introduced to the Indian subcontinent by Thomas the Apostle, who sailed to the Malabar region (present-day Kerala) in 52 AD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_India
Or, that _could_ be Alexander the Great.
the 12 apostles existed, not as a one-off, but a common practice. there is numerological signifigance to 12, that precedes christianity.
I think it was Martin Luther who said something to the effect that of the 12 apostles, 19 are buried in Germany.
The cup they show isn't even a cup. It looks more like the top part of a broken bottle, photographed upside down. The narrow end looks too narrow for a cup's base, it would not be very stable.
Tell me you missed the Indiana Jones joke without telling me you missed the Indiana Jones joke.
The ending of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade used Petra as the outside shot for the ancient temple where the story ended.
The article says the skeletons date to 400-100 BC, so, no. Year 0 doesn't exist (1 BC is followed directly by AD 1), and the holy grail would have to date from AD 33 or so, because Jesus didn't die in the year of his birth.
> The article says the skeletons date to 400-100 BC...and the holy grail would have to date from AD 33 or so
It says "between 400 B.C. and A.D. 106". That encompasses all relevant dates.
Romans were like, what is this 0 you're talking about?
It's roughly 753 ab urbe condita, big nose!
How accurately can skeletons be dated? Within 100 years? 10 years? a year?
They didn't actually date the skeletons, because they haven't excavated the site to physically examine them. The time range given by the article is just from the date the city was founded, until it was annexed by the Romans.
It's a pretty safe assumption that they were buried there before the Roman annexation. My guess would be they were buried much closer to 400 BC than to AD 106.
> And they even show a picture of a weathered, ceramic cup
A cup that looks a _lot_ like the grail prop from the film.
It's freaking identical. Definitely Spielberg's games.
The "cup" looks more like the top of a bottle.
Year 0? I thought Petra was much much older than that.
If year 0 is correct, these people were buried long after Petra was a bustling city then?
Yeah that bit doesn't pass the smell test. Petra had been around for about 400 years by the time Jesus supposedly held his last supper.
It seems much more likely that these 12 skeletons date back to the earlier days of the city.
(Nitpick: there was no year 0; 1 BC goes right into AD 1. And Jesus' supposed death was around AD 33, not AD 1. Sometimes people think "AD" means "After his Death", but it's really "Anno Domini", or "the year of the/our Lord", when he was supposedly born.)
Alternatively we can parse AD as "Advancing Dates" and BC as "Backward Counting"
In movie reality, this is definitely the Holy Grail. In real reality (for those not familiar), the grail is a legend invented in the middle ages.
They have chosen wisely.
Your comment made my day!
That's the cup of a carpenter.