The Ark of the Covenant
On Friday, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia was reported to have planned to announce to the world that the Ark of the Covenant, which he claimed has been kept hidden in a church in Ethiopia for millenia, would finally be unveiled for the world to see!
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=102119
Unfortunately, it appears that he later retracted this announcement, stating:
“I am not here to give proofs that the Ark is in Ethiopia, but I am here to say what I saw, what I know and I can attest to. I didn’t say that the Ark would be revealed to the world. It is a mystery, an object of veneration.”
You can read more about this at: http://nazret.com/blog/index.php?title=ethiopia_ark_of_the_covenant_not_to_be_r&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Also, read more about the tradition that the Ark is in Ethiopia at the Smithsonian.com:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/ark-covenant-200712.html
Remains of the Apostle Paul?
In other news, Pope Benedict announced that bone fragments from the Apostle Paul have been found in St. Paul’s Basilica (I guess that would be a good place for them to be):
Pope Benedict announced on Sunday that fragments of bone from the first or second century had been found in a tomb in the Basilica of St Paul in Rome, which he said confirmed the belief that it housed the apostle’s remains.
“This seems to confirm the unanimous and undisputed tradition that these are the mortal remains on the Apostle Paul,” the pontiff said at St Paul’s-Outside-the-Walls, on the eve of the Feasts of St Peter and St Paul celebrated on Monday.
For more on this, see here: http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/st_paul_pope_basilica/2009/06/28/229488.html?s=al&promo_code=825B-1
5 Comments
Of course, the Pope’s pronouncement was theological rather than scientific. It’s hardly a smoking gun. Just because you find the bones of someone headless in the catacombs under Paris that dates to the reign of terror does not mean that it is Marie Antoinette. They didn’t find his wallet in the sarcophagus with his driver’s license in it.
Very good point, hawkgrrrl. I certainly agree with you. How could you ever prove that they belong to Paul? It is interesting to wonder why the Vatican would do this now. Is this a means to stir up religious fervor? I’m certain it will for many.
I wondered that, too – why make a pronouncement that it was proven to be Peter when it clearly can’t be proven to be so? Next, I’d like them to tackle St. Mark’s relics in Venice, since Venice was founded a few hundred years after his death. And perhaps they could do some carbon dating on the crown of thorns in Notre Dame.
The university I will be attending claims to have the relics of St Andrew. I saw them myself in the church of St Salvatore in St Andrews! Relics were a big business back in the day, attracting thousands and thousands of pilgrims. I thought that that type of thing had died out a couple hundred years ago, or that it survived only informally — I guess the Pope is trying to bring it back! We’ll see if it really stirs any excitement in today’s more skeptical society.
Maybe they could compare the remains to Paul’s dental records. Or do some fingerprinting or DNA testing.