St. John the Baptist relics from Sozopol so far closest to biblical person profile

published on 8/9/12 11:03 AM

Photo: BGNES

From all supposed relics of St. John the Baptist kept in churches and museums across Europe, the fragments from human remains found in Bulgaria, stand closest to the profile of a biblical person. This has been proven in tests held at the radiocarbon laboratory at Oxford. The entire process of testing the relics found near the Black Sea town of Sozolol, has been recorded in detail by a team from the National Geographic Channel. The film dedicated the unique find will attract the attention of millions of viewers worldwide.

In 2010 during digs in the St. John Island near Sozopol, a team of Bulgarian archeologists came across a sealed reliquary made from alabaster. It contained a tooth, parts from hand bones and facial bones. No one could still imagine that a major breakthrough was in the offing in the Bulgarian and the world’s biblical archeology. Consequently researchers established that the reliquary found in the altar section of the earliest church on the island, dates back to 5 c. and they could even decode an inscription placed on the object. It reads that in 5 c. someone called Thomas moved the holy relics to the island exactly on St. John the Baptist’s birth anniversary. The news about the rare find hit the headlines in Bulgarian media. A few controversial commentaries were published and a public discussion started on the authenticity of the find. The relics were moved to the Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church in Sozopol that has seen a rising flow of religious tourists ever since. In the meantime the bones have been sent for laboratory analysis abroad. “National Geographic has offered full financing of this research in a laboratory selected by us, and we chose Oxford University”, explains Prof. Kazimir Popkonstantinov, head of the archeological expedition that found the relics. The results from the tests are stunning:

“The isotope analysis made at the Oxford laboratory suggests that the bones belonged to an individual who lived in the early 1 c. AD, a period that corresponds to the biblical story of St. John the Baptist”, Prof. Popkonstantinov says. “Researchers have even been more specific by pointing to a bracket in time from the 5th to the 75th year AD. Besides, the colleagues have successfully restored the full mitochondrial DNA genome of three of the bones and have confirmed that they belonged to the same individual, who was male. What is more, the experts have identified a family group of genes which is among the most common ones in the Middle East, the region of St. John the Baptist.”

Of course this research data is not enough to prove that the bones in question belong to the biblical figure of John the Baptist. Scholars however argue that these are the first relics believed to have belonged to St. John the Baptist, found in an authentic archeological environment and more notably in a reliquary. These are the first relics that have been subject to DNA analysis.

“The interest in the find is fully justified”, Prof. Kazimir Popkonstantinova explains. “And there is keen interest despite the claims of other countries that they own relics of St. John the Baptist. With out involvement in the National Geographic project we challenge institutions such as the museum Topkapi in Istanbul claiming they have the head and hand of the saint, and the City of Amiens in France. Unlike us, the finds kept by those places have not been tested in a laboratory. And this serves their interests, because analysis might debunk their mythology about St. John the Baptist”, concludes archeologist Prof. Kazimir Popkonstantinov.

Translated by Daniela Konstantinova

По публикацията работи: Veneta Nikolova

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