I guess I’m not going to live long enough for humanity to outgrow this kind of foolishness after all. Once every few years some scholar who should know better makes an absolutely ridiculous claim to have discovered some artifact from the biblical story that will vindicate Christian claims about Jesus.
Archaeologists working in Turkey believe they have found a piece of the cross that Jesus was crucified on.
While excavating the ancient Balatlar Church, a seventh-century building in Sinop, Turkey, on the shores of the Black Sea, they uncovered a stone chest that contained objects that may be directly connected with Jesus Christ.
Excavation head Professor Gülgün Köroğlu definitively stated:
We have found a holy thing in a chest. It is a piece of a cross, and we think it was [part of the cross on which Jesus was crucified]. This stone chest is very important to us. It has a history and is the most important artifact we have unearthed so far.
Okay, here’s the thing. They found a fricking piece of wood that might be a cross. If it were a cross, that would not prove the cross is from Jesus’ time. If it were a cross from Jesus time, it still would not prove this is Jesus’ cross. Even if it were a piece of wood from Jesus cross, it still would say absolutely nothing about the truth of Jesus’ claims.
Jesus did not tell us to worship his cross but to take up a cross of our own. In other words to be willing to suffer for the world. Relic worship or belief is some theory of the atonement are completely beside the point. The essence of Christianity is not a belief in Jesus but in love.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/jesus-cross-found-archaeology_n_3691938.html
can’t help but wonder if it in fact proves to be what they claim, if it doesn’t, based on where it was found, do more to underpin the theories put forth in the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
http://www.amazon.com/Holy-Blood-Grail-Michael-Baigent/dp/0440136482
Book Description
Release date: January 15, 1983
Is the traditional, accepted view of the life of Christ in some way incomplete?
• Is it possible Christ did not die on the cross?
• Is it possible Jesus was married, a father, and that his bloodline still exists?
• Is it possible that parchments found in the South of France a century ago reveal one of the best-kept secrets of Christendom?
• Is it possible that these parchments contain the very heart of the mystery of the Holy Grail?
According to the authors of this extraordinarily provocative, meticulously researched book, not only are these things possible — they are probably true! so revolutionary, so original, so convincing, that the most faithful Christians will be moved; here is the book that has sparked worldwide controversy
.