Remains of John the Baptist Found? Unlikely…

A little less than a week ago, Bozhidar Dimitrov, Bulgaria’s minister without portfolio and a former director of the country’s National History Museum, announced that the remains of St. John the Baptist (JTB) have been found in monastery in Bulgaria.

St. John is a prolific figure in Christian history. He foretold the coming of Jesus and even baptised Jesus himself, according to scriptures.

John the Baptist

St. John was beheaded at the hands of King Herod shortly before Jesus is said to have died on the cross. His head supposedly served on a plate to Herod’s stepdaughter Salome.

So why do these Bulgarians think these bones, which include parts of a skull, jaw, arm and tooth, belong to THE John the Baptist?

Evidently, the urn in which the bones were found has the date June 24 inscribed on it, which is the day John was supposedly born and has been celebrated in the Mediterranean and Quebec.

Urn in which the supposed remains of John the Baptist are contained

That’s about it.

No carbon dating has been performed to determine the age of the bones, and no explanation as to how the urn came to the monastery has been given.

I personally find it interesting that the remains include pieces of a head and an arm. Seems strange that after beheading John the Baptist that King Herod would bother to put the head and body in the same place, particularly after the head was so callously served on a plate to Salome.

Of course, records from this time period are sketchy at best. And lets not forget that several other countries also claim to have the remains of John the Baptist, such as Istanbul, Egypt and Armenia.

Skeptics live by the credence that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This evidence is far from extraordinary.

So don’t be surprised if/when this find turns out to be totally bogus. Or the Bulgarian archeaologists simply don’t bother to investigate the remains further and keep shouting to the media that they found something great.