For anyone thinking of visitng Petra, try and allow more than a couple of hours. When we went it was for two days, going in and out each day. A lot of people just go down the entry canyon, take a look at the Treasury (the bit in Indiana Jones) and head back. But the site itself is much larger. If you are up for a decent walk there are parts that I thought were much more impressive and interesting up the hills. Some of the scenary around there is stunning.
Also, if you can do down in the evening, that's great too.
Jordan as a whole was a really interesting place to visit.
If you go, I can't recommended enough to hike in to Petra from Little Petra (Siq al-Barid). Little Petra is a small caravan stop about 8km away. The hike brings you in through the backside of Petra near the Monastery.
Also explore up the stairs carved in the rocks in Petra. They're somewhat hidden and most tourists do not venture up them. They lead to a sort of rock maze on top of the cliffs overlooking Petra with incredible views. I accidentally got lost up there at dusk and ended up hiking out the Al Siq canyon alone in the dark. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The stars and subtle desert night sounds felt like I had entered a time machine. One of those deeply transformative experiences that only occurs when venturing off the beaten path. Fortunately, the guards at the entrance were cool with my accidental trespassing.
When you hike in through the backside like that, is there a place where you buy a ticket and/or are scanned for tickets?
When I was there, we went through the official entrance in Wadi Musa, with tickets and all (which I don't mind!). We went early to have the time to make quite a large tour around the whole area, and as far as I could tell it looked like the area was simply open for anyone to hike in or out freely, except through the front entrance. As I said, I don't have any problem with buying a ticket, I'm just wondering if my observations are correct.
Good question. I don't remember how the tickets worked. We were in a small group and our guide took care of it. Also, the rules might have changed a bit. I was there over 10 years ago.
> Jordan as a whole was a really interesting place to visit.
Agree. I really liked Wadi Rum, which is where parts of 'The Martian' and 'Lawrence of Arabia' were filmed. Totally spectacular. When I went, years ago, the capital Amman was also a friendly city to walk around, even for an obvious westerner like myself.
Machu Picchu is like this. If you take the 3 day hike up the mountain to get there, you see some pretty awesome ruins. I did this in the early 90's and I'm sure the routes / ability has changed by now, but it was really cool back then.
Angkor Wat is the main attraction but it also has interesting nearby ruins as well. Rent a motorbike and get lost on the farming backroads, google maps works pretty well.
I did the 3 day hike about 8 years ago and I remember the ruins along the way where spectacular mainly due to there being no crowds. Holds a special place in my heart.
It's hard not to wonder if this was staged for the tv show "Expedition Unknown", which had an exclusive to film a show at Petra that Discovery Channel has been advertising for months now.
Given that 99% of excavations don't turn up anything of significance, were these artifacts already known to have existed and were just "discovered" on the show as the reveal?
I'm truly not trying to create conspiracy theories, it's just the coincidence of this being found on a tv show seems unbelievable lucky.
Finding 12 ancient skeletons in a place that was not previously known as a tomb is pretty stunning. Imagine if you found 12 bodies under your neighborhood bank- people would freak out, and it's not nearly as old as the Petra Treasury.
It's well known it was never an actual treasury; there's not much inside to it, and it's the first main "building" you see when entering through the canyon, designed to impress rather than store valuables. The name comes from rumour/legend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khazneh#Name. Most of the cliff structures are tombs.
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.
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.
There was lots of trade in lots of places and traditionally religions spread more slowly, not just one dude going a long distance. Yes, religion spreads along trade, that's not supporting, but that is not evidence that a single dude was primarily responsible. And the evidence that is true is mostly just internal local myth making.
Any christian community needs to boost is credibility, and hype up their own history.
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
Peter and Paul founded the church of Rome -- an inscription was found in the necropolis in proximity to a bone box during the excavations in Saint Peter's in 1950 as I recall -- "Peter is here".
It was always a point made from very early times that Rome was the church of Peter. As opposed to places like Alexandria for example whose status came from it being the see of a disciple of Peter.
Something else I seem to recall is that one of the leg bones was different -- what would be expected from a Galilean fisherman always putting one leg on the side of a boat to haul in a fishing net.
The final resting place of a number of Apostles is more or less known -- Ss Simon and Jude are in Saint Peter's, Saint Paul is buried in Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, Saint James the Greater is at Compostella in Spain, Saint Bartholomew is in a church on an island in the Tiber in Rome, Saints Philip and James the Lesser have their own church in Rome I think.
Granted untold resources have been expended in the endeavor, but it always amazes me that 2000yr later we can piece together all the evidince and say "yup, that's probably him" for someone who was not only not a head of state (or of comparable rank) but who's followers were actively marginalized by the state.
The concept that Peter and Paul founded the church of Rome is just a bunch of later myths. We don't have much solid evidence for that, even by standards of the time.
And things like 'Peter is here' is also far from conclusive. As figures like Peter were venerated by the later church. Just as 'Jesus is here' wouldn't mean its the grave of Jesus.
> what would be expected from a Galilean fisherman
The evidence that that the apostles even were fisherman isn't actually very good. Acting like its confirmed that we know Peter was a Galilean fisherman is ridiculous.
Also a fact like that can have 100s of explanations.
> final resting place of a number of Apostles is more or less known
Mostly based on church internal story (known to be completely incorrect in many cases) and association combined with later finds. Almost none of them have solid historical bases even by standards of the first century.
The problem is that Christian scholarship for 2000 years was utterly dominated by Christians and Christian institutions with a huge amount of believe in Church history. Independent study outside of those institution is 1:100 less resourced and for every issue they have to first fight this Christian status quo. Many 'scholars' of these topics have 'faith requirements' meaning they are not actually allowed to publish anything that would go against core doctrines. How much these are enforced depends on the institution but there are known cases where people got fired. This is still bad now but it was way, way worse 30-40 years ago.
People get their careers ruined over things like this, one professor was harassed at being gay (before that was accepted) and claimed that his research was 'gay propaganda' because it vaguely talks about Jesus sleeping with another dude.
So any claims about this soft of stuff, specially if not done in the last couple decades are highly questionable at best. So I take all of these claims with a huge grain of salt.
Catholic tradition has always held that Peter moved to Rome, taught there as a teacher, and then died there.
Other Christian circles, and a large swathe of historians, disagree on this front. However, it is one of the founding points of the Petrine Primacy, or the reason that Saint Peter is seen as the First Pope of the Catholic Church.
Any history touted by the Church should be taken with a grain of salt. There are plenty of examples of how they manipulated things in their favor, and are prime examples of history written by the winner theory
If think even more important of who wrote history, is who preserved it. We know of dozens of other version of Christianity just in the second century (already around the time our gospels were written), but their writing are simply no preserved. So the power to not preserve history is just as impactful as writing your own.
This is all unconfirmed and guessing. Non of that has any actual bases in good history. This all just church internal myth and legends. Just like the Romans were not actually people from Troy. Everybody like to make up stories like that.
So much of supposed 'Christian history' is myth making based on incredibly unreliable evidence just extrapolated from other unreliable evidence.
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.
Doubting the existence of the twelve apostles is about the height of obstinate prejudice and special pleading. No serious historian does.
> it seems unlikely that they'd all be buried in the same place [...] I would expect the 12 apostles would have died at different times, in different places, and wouldn't have been buried together.
It is common knowledge that they weren't buried in the same place. They were on an evangelical mission and traveled to different places[0]. All of them were martyred, except for John.
> Even if we assume the religious fairy tales are true
What nonsense. There are whole transitions of Christianity that don't agree with the '12 apostles'.
And there are plenty of historians that disagree that there is any solid bases for the claim that there were exactly 12 apostles. Even assuming that term had a specific meaning in the first century.
There is plenty of evidence that the very term apostles no is different then historically. Paul himself, literally the oldest source on Christianity we have, disagrees with the classic 12 apostles theory, as Paul claims he is an apostle.
So pretty much every serious historian disagrees that there is a clear cut '12 apostle' that were consistent and named since the time of Jesus. In the oldest document we have of the time period no '12 apostles' are mentioned.
There are so many serious issue with the whole idea of '12 apostles'.
> [0]
That's not a source. The majority of that 'history' is church internal history that has very, very thin bases that actual historians would accept.
The fact is we almost nothing first century sources that talk about this (and even what we have is heavily bias and unreliable). Pretty much all of this history is 2nd century at best (most of it later). And we have plenty of evidence that this is by far a long enough within religions to evolve a mythology.
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.
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 it’s funny how much effort has been expended finding ridiculous items like this and ignoring the message of Jesus or following what he said. Imagine Jesus’ response if you showed him a cup he used or a splinter of the cross he died on. “Okay…” But I get it, humans like relics and totems, I think it is hard coded in our DNA.
> and ignoring the message of Jesus or following what he said.
We have absolutely no idea what Jesus said.
If we have any evidence at all of what Jesus said it would be 'Romans GTFO' because that's what gets you actually curlicued (ignore the nonsense in the gospels).
We can't be certain about anything Jesus said but it's possible that some of the sayings attributed to him in the Gospels are roughly accurate. There are a lot of similarities between the Gospels, of course, and one of the theories put forward to explain some of the similarities is that several of the Gospel writers had access to a book, since lost, which consisted entirely of sayings attributed to Jesus, and that book was perhaps written by someone who followed Jesus around writing down some of what he said. Unfortunately, even if the words are quoted roughly accurately in some cases that doesn't really tell us what Jesus meant by them because a lot of context has been lost and the Gospel writers may have quoted rather selectively from the material they had access to.
Yes, that is the 'Q' source theory. However this is a very questionable theory.
When you have A and B that look pretty much the same. Then its much more likely that B simply copied from A, or A from B.
If you want to introduce a new source C (or in this case Q), then you need to have good evidence for why the other options were not picked. In case of the 'Q' source this isn't really the case.
The are multiple things that the Q source can't really explain. The modern reference book on this topic is 'The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem' if you are interested in that. There are just really big problems with the concept.
And even if 'Q' existed, its not really good evidence for it being the word of Jesus. We know for a fact that 'sayings of X famous person' were a common thing back then. We have 'Gospel of Thomas' that is likely a later version of that. We have this today with Quotes from people like Theodore Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. Any interesting sounding saying is simply attributed to whoever person.
So we have a potential source that we have 0 evidence of and no text that even references such a source. And then we have plenty of evidence that if it existed, it likely wouldn't say what people want it to say, because so maybe an earlier source existed but its a huge stretch to then say 'therefore this source was written by somebody who heard these things first hand'.
The idea that it is 'quotes' is simply because the majority of the things 'Matthew'/'Luke' insert into 'Mark' was speeches. I do think for sure earlier sources existed, maybe even earlier gospels. But we just don't have them (as far as we can tell).
I also think the actual reality is more complex then all the simple solution to the 'Synoptic Problem'. Reality all these scripts were revised over and over. And I think good recent work is being done on properly attributing the Gospels from Marcion original 'New Testament'. Marcion is critical in 'New Testament' development but very much understudied because he is a 'heritic'. The Gospel of 'Luke' is likely a strongly revised version of the gospel that was in Marcion. And potentially that version predates even 'Mark' but that is up for debate. Markus Vinzent is really great on this topic if you are interested.
That movie is full of insight. That whole 'nobody can hear Jesus talking' is a great point as well. Those speeches are just pure fiction, just as the speeches from Alexander and friends are. Real ancient historians even admitted that they just made up the speeches to add some flavor.
In fact that whole speech from the gospel was most likely simple something 'Matthew' (not actual Matthew the character from the bible, but some random author who's script was later titled 'Mathew' by the church) inserted into Mark. And funny enough in these speeches Jesus just happen to say some stuff that overrides a number of points from 'Mark'. Its almost as if 'Matthew' used Jesus to voice his own opinions.
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.)
Historians don't have a year 0, astronomers do. In fact the historical calendar is a bit messy for other reasons, e.g. the year beginning in April rather than January for a long time.
https://archive.md/p7rFr
For anyone thinking of visitng Petra, try and allow more than a couple of hours. When we went it was for two days, going in and out each day. A lot of people just go down the entry canyon, take a look at the Treasury (the bit in Indiana Jones) and head back. But the site itself is much larger. If you are up for a decent walk there are parts that I thought were much more impressive and interesting up the hills. Some of the scenary around there is stunning.
Also, if you can do down in the evening, that's great too.
Jordan as a whole was a really interesting place to visit.
For those who cannot travel, the Fall of Civilizations episode 15. The Nabataeans - The Final Days Of Petra has stunning visuals in 4K
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSfFq02pK4s
If you go, I can't recommended enough to hike in to Petra from Little Petra (Siq al-Barid). Little Petra is a small caravan stop about 8km away. The hike brings you in through the backside of Petra near the Monastery.
Also explore up the stairs carved in the rocks in Petra. They're somewhat hidden and most tourists do not venture up them. They lead to a sort of rock maze on top of the cliffs overlooking Petra with incredible views. I accidentally got lost up there at dusk and ended up hiking out the Al Siq canyon alone in the dark. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The stars and subtle desert night sounds felt like I had entered a time machine. One of those deeply transformative experiences that only occurs when venturing off the beaten path. Fortunately, the guards at the entrance were cool with my accidental trespassing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Petra
When you hike in through the backside like that, is there a place where you buy a ticket and/or are scanned for tickets?
When I was there, we went through the official entrance in Wadi Musa, with tickets and all (which I don't mind!). We went early to have the time to make quite a large tour around the whole area, and as far as I could tell it looked like the area was simply open for anyone to hike in or out freely, except through the front entrance. As I said, I don't have any problem with buying a ticket, I'm just wondering if my observations are correct.
Good question. I don't remember how the tickets worked. We were in a small group and our guide took care of it. Also, the rules might have changed a bit. I was there over 10 years ago.
If you're not going in person, it's captured fairly well on Google Streetview: https://www.google.com/maps/@30.322462,35.4515824,2a,90y,259.... Follow the canyon at the right of the view to see many more things.
> Jordan as a whole was a really interesting place to visit.
Agree. I really liked Wadi Rum, which is where parts of 'The Martian' and 'Lawrence of Arabia' were filmed. Totally spectacular. When I went, years ago, the capital Amman was also a friendly city to walk around, even for an obvious westerner like myself.
Machu Picchu is like this. If you take the 3 day hike up the mountain to get there, you see some pretty awesome ruins. I did this in the early 90's and I'm sure the routes / ability has changed by now, but it was really cool back then.
Angkor Wat is the main attraction but it also has interesting nearby ruins as well. Rent a motorbike and get lost on the farming backroads, google maps works pretty well.
I did the 3 day hike about 8 years ago and I remember the ruins along the way where spectacular mainly due to there being no crowds. Holds a special place in my heart.
Comment sounds like Angkor Wat is in Machu Pichu.
It's all just a pale blue dot, if you squint enough.
Agreed. Angkor Wat is in Cambodia.
Is it deep inside? I always wondered about the actual site from IJ. Or is it just a front facade?
Also try the donkey travel agency there ;DD.
I always try and build Petra in my desert city before the AI in Civ 6!
It's hard not to wonder if this was staged for the tv show "Expedition Unknown", which had an exclusive to film a show at Petra that Discovery Channel has been advertising for months now.
I'm not in the know but is it that terrible for an excavation to be funded by a TV show ? (Provided they don't fabricate anything)
Given that 99% of excavations don't turn up anything of significance, were these artifacts already known to have existed and were just "discovered" on the show as the reveal?
I'm truly not trying to create conspiracy theories, it's just the coincidence of this being found on a tv show seems unbelievable lucky.
For some reason, slow people always lie under the big boulder, shaped like mail stamps. Never over the rock.
That ground penetrating radar really delivers but what is the stunning part?
Finding 12 ancient skeletons in a place that was not previously known as a tomb is pretty stunning. Imagine if you found 12 bodies under your neighborhood bank- people would freak out, and it's not nearly as old as the Petra Treasury.
Many places we know now as tombs weren't known as such before, that is untill some skeletons were found.
If you wait around long enough anywhere becomes a tomb.
Throwaway120385’s Law: On a long enough timeline, all places are tombs.
What makes it unusual was this place was very well known as a treasury beforehand and has been a popular tourist attraction for over 100 years.
It's well known it was never an actual treasury; there's not much inside to it, and it's the first main "building" you see when entering through the canyon, designed to impress rather than store valuables. The name comes from rumour/legend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khazneh#Name. Most of the cliff structures are tombs.
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...
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
This is actually the most likely one considering all the trade between the Middle East and the Indian Malabar coast back then.
There was lots of trade in lots of places and traditionally religions spread more slowly, not just one dude going a long distance. Yes, religion spreads along trade, that's not supporting, but that is not evidence that a single dude was primarily responsible. And the evidence that is true is mostly just internal local myth making.
Any christian community needs to boost is credibility, and hype up their own history.
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
Isn't it thought that Peter never went to Rome? Did they collect his remains and move them?
Peter and Paul founded the church of Rome -- an inscription was found in the necropolis in proximity to a bone box during the excavations in Saint Peter's in 1950 as I recall -- "Peter is here".
It was always a point made from very early times that Rome was the church of Peter. As opposed to places like Alexandria for example whose status came from it being the see of a disciple of Peter.
Something else I seem to recall is that one of the leg bones was different -- what would be expected from a Galilean fisherman always putting one leg on the side of a boat to haul in a fishing net.
The final resting place of a number of Apostles is more or less known -- Ss Simon and Jude are in Saint Peter's, Saint Paul is buried in Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, Saint James the Greater is at Compostella in Spain, Saint Bartholomew is in a church on an island in the Tiber in Rome, Saints Philip and James the Lesser have their own church in Rome I think.
Granted untold resources have been expended in the endeavor, but it always amazes me that 2000yr later we can piece together all the evidince and say "yup, that's probably him" for someone who was not only not a head of state (or of comparable rank) but who's followers were actively marginalized by the state.
The concept that Peter and Paul founded the church of Rome is just a bunch of later myths. We don't have much solid evidence for that, even by standards of the time.
And things like 'Peter is here' is also far from conclusive. As figures like Peter were venerated by the later church. Just as 'Jesus is here' wouldn't mean its the grave of Jesus.
> what would be expected from a Galilean fisherman
The evidence that that the apostles even were fisherman isn't actually very good. Acting like its confirmed that we know Peter was a Galilean fisherman is ridiculous.
Also a fact like that can have 100s of explanations.
> final resting place of a number of Apostles is more or less known
Mostly based on church internal story (known to be completely incorrect in many cases) and association combined with later finds. Almost none of them have solid historical bases even by standards of the first century.
The problem is that Christian scholarship for 2000 years was utterly dominated by Christians and Christian institutions with a huge amount of believe in Church history. Independent study outside of those institution is 1:100 less resourced and for every issue they have to first fight this Christian status quo. Many 'scholars' of these topics have 'faith requirements' meaning they are not actually allowed to publish anything that would go against core doctrines. How much these are enforced depends on the institution but there are known cases where people got fired. This is still bad now but it was way, way worse 30-40 years ago.
People get their careers ruined over things like this, one professor was harassed at being gay (before that was accepted) and claimed that his research was 'gay propaganda' because it vaguely talks about Jesus sleeping with another dude.
So any claims about this soft of stuff, specially if not done in the last couple decades are highly questionable at best. So I take all of these claims with a huge grain of salt.
Catholic tradition has always held that Peter moved to Rome, taught there as a teacher, and then died there.
Other Christian circles, and a large swathe of historians, disagree on this front. However, it is one of the founding points of the Petrine Primacy, or the reason that Saint Peter is seen as the First Pope of the Catholic Church.
Any history touted by the Church should be taken with a grain of salt. There are plenty of examples of how they manipulated things in their favor, and are prime examples of history written by the winner theory
If think even more important of who wrote history, is who preserved it. We know of dozens of other version of Christianity just in the second century (already around the time our gospels were written), but their writing are simply no preserved. So the power to not preserve history is just as impactful as writing your own.
This is all unconfirmed and guessing. Non of that has any actual bases in good history. This all just church internal myth and legends. Just like the Romans were not actually people from Troy. Everybody like to make up stories like that.
So much of supposed 'Christian history' is myth making based on incredibly unreliable evidence just extrapolated from other unreliable evidence.
Or, that _could_ be Alexander the Great.
I think it was Martin Luther who said something to the effect that of the 12 apostles, 19 are buried in Germany.
the 12 apostles existed, not as a one-off, but a common practice. there is numerological signifigance to 12, that precedes christianity.
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.
> If the 12 apostles existed
Doubting the existence of the twelve apostles is about the height of obstinate prejudice and special pleading. No serious historian does.
> it seems unlikely that they'd all be buried in the same place [...] I would expect the 12 apostles would have died at different times, in different places, and wouldn't have been buried together.
It is common knowledge that they weren't buried in the same place. They were on an evangelical mission and traveled to different places[0]. All of them were martyred, except for John.
> Even if we assume the religious fairy tales are true
Sad and unnecessary snark.
[0] https://aleteia.org/2017/07/21/whatever-happened-to-the-twel...
What nonsense. There are whole transitions of Christianity that don't agree with the '12 apostles'.
And there are plenty of historians that disagree that there is any solid bases for the claim that there were exactly 12 apostles. Even assuming that term had a specific meaning in the first century.
There is plenty of evidence that the very term apostles no is different then historically. Paul himself, literally the oldest source on Christianity we have, disagrees with the classic 12 apostles theory, as Paul claims he is an apostle.
So pretty much every serious historian disagrees that there is a clear cut '12 apostle' that were consistent and named since the time of Jesus. In the oldest document we have of the time period no '12 apostles' are mentioned.
There are so many serious issue with the whole idea of '12 apostles'.
> [0]
That's not a source. The majority of that 'history' is church internal history that has very, very thin bases that actual historians would accept.
The fact is we almost nothing first century sources that talk about this (and even what we have is heavily bias and unreliable). Pretty much all of this history is 2nd century at best (most of it later). And we have plenty of evidence that this is by far a long enough within religions to evolve a mythology.
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.
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.
And it’s funny how much effort has been expended finding ridiculous items like this and ignoring the message of Jesus or following what he said. Imagine Jesus’ response if you showed him a cup he used or a splinter of the cross he died on. “Okay…” But I get it, humans like relics and totems, I think it is hard coded in our DNA.
> and ignoring the message of Jesus or following what he said.
We have absolutely no idea what Jesus said.
If we have any evidence at all of what Jesus said it would be 'Romans GTFO' because that's what gets you actually curlicued (ignore the nonsense in the gospels).
We can't be certain about anything Jesus said but it's possible that some of the sayings attributed to him in the Gospels are roughly accurate. There are a lot of similarities between the Gospels, of course, and one of the theories put forward to explain some of the similarities is that several of the Gospel writers had access to a book, since lost, which consisted entirely of sayings attributed to Jesus, and that book was perhaps written by someone who followed Jesus around writing down some of what he said. Unfortunately, even if the words are quoted roughly accurately in some cases that doesn't really tell us what Jesus meant by them because a lot of context has been lost and the Gospel writers may have quoted rather selectively from the material they had access to.
Yes, that is the 'Q' source theory. However this is a very questionable theory.
When you have A and B that look pretty much the same. Then its much more likely that B simply copied from A, or A from B.
If you want to introduce a new source C (or in this case Q), then you need to have good evidence for why the other options were not picked. In case of the 'Q' source this isn't really the case.
The are multiple things that the Q source can't really explain. The modern reference book on this topic is 'The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem' if you are interested in that. There are just really big problems with the concept.
And even if 'Q' existed, its not really good evidence for it being the word of Jesus. We know for a fact that 'sayings of X famous person' were a common thing back then. We have 'Gospel of Thomas' that is likely a later version of that. We have this today with Quotes from people like Theodore Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. Any interesting sounding saying is simply attributed to whoever person.
So we have a potential source that we have 0 evidence of and no text that even references such a source. And then we have plenty of evidence that if it existed, it likely wouldn't say what people want it to say, because so maybe an earlier source existed but its a huge stretch to then say 'therefore this source was written by somebody who heard these things first hand'.
The idea that it is 'quotes' is simply because the majority of the things 'Matthew'/'Luke' insert into 'Mark' was speeches. I do think for sure earlier sources existed, maybe even earlier gospels. But we just don't have them (as far as we can tell).
I also think the actual reality is more complex then all the simple solution to the 'Synoptic Problem'. Reality all these scripts were revised over and over. And I think good recent work is being done on properly attributing the Gospels from Marcion original 'New Testament'. Marcion is critical in 'New Testament' development but very much understudied because he is a 'heritic'. The Gospel of 'Luke' is likely a strongly revised version of the gospel that was in Marcion. And potentially that version predates even 'Mark' but that is up for debate. Markus Vinzent is really great on this topic if you are interested.
I believe Brian wrote that in letters 30 feet tall before he was crucified
That movie is full of insight. That whole 'nobody can hear Jesus talking' is a great point as well. Those speeches are just pure fiction, just as the speeches from Alexander and friends are. Real ancient historians even admitted that they just made up the speeches to add some flavor.
In fact that whole speech from the gospel was most likely simple something 'Matthew' (not actual Matthew the character from the bible, but some random author who's script was later titled 'Mathew' by the church) inserted into Mark. And funny enough in these speeches Jesus just happen to say some stuff that overrides a number of points from 'Mark'. Its almost as if 'Matthew' used Jesus to voice his own opinions.
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"
Historians don't have a year 0, astronomers do. In fact the historical calendar is a bit messy for other reasons, e.g. the year beginning in April rather than January for a long time.
They have chosen wisely.
The "cup" looks more like the top of a bottle.
Your comment made my day!
That's the cup of a carpenter.