After paying $44 to get in for my fiancée and I, the description on the exhibit read as follows: “believed to be one of Marie Antoinette’s dresses believed to be made from her dressmaker.”

And that was only late 18th century.

The proof of St. Paul’s bones have the same “wishing it were so” mentality and motive; validation of their beliefs, and making money.

With all fairness to the Church they’ve pulled one out of where the sun doesn’t shine …

So, while an assertion that this has all been scientifically ‘proven’ would absolutely be bogus, no such assertion has been made. Stating that experiments do not conflict with a current theory is no problem. As long as no attempt is made to make that analysis ‘prove’ an assertion, I see no problem saying “hey, we had this theory, which might have been proven wrong right here. it wasn’t, so that’s something!”

Except that any idiot can read the passage in Acts and see that the vision was a justification for allowing Gentiles to become Christians, not a call for Jewish Christians to throw out their dietary laws. The use of unclean foods was a metaphor for allowing Gentiles into the community – it’s embedded right in the middle of the story of the Roman Centurion Cornelius calling on Peter to become a Christian and Peter even says flat out that he’s been shown a vision that God wants him to allow “unclean” people (Gentiles) to become part of the Christian community. The fact that this gets read as a license for throwing out Jewish dietary laws rather than as a call to accept anyone into the Christian community no matter how “unclean” they seem to be makes me laugh at anyone who insists that they read the Bible “literally” and still persecutes gay people. It’s right there in Acts – the writer of Acts clearly says “cut this shit out – anyone can be a Christian”.

For one, I didn’t.

It would be convincing if and only if the church’s tradition about Paul (in this case, specifically his death, burial, and resting place) had more grounding in extra-biblical documents. I posted a link earlier that summed up the post-NT historical attestations to Paul, his death, and his burial. I don’t think they’re very convincing. There are a few church fathers here who hint at some early speculation, but nothing definitive.

So, no, I don’t think this test lends any support to the tradition, and it’s certainly nothing definitive. We know we have some bones from the first to second century. Big deal.

But, if, for example, we had a tomb with an inscription from the first or second century that claimed these were Paul’s remains, and we had some historical attestation, and then we had this test (and some of the tests Aor mentioned), then I think it would be reasonable to think these are likely Paul’s remains.

Even if they were Paul’s remains, it would make little theological/spiritual difference to anyone outside the RCC, anyway, because we Protestants wouldn’t venerate them regardless. It might make for some interesting academic work or something, but little more than that.

You gotta admit that this “reasoning” (and I use that word very loosely here) is amazingly vacuous. (”someone from the first century”??? And that means it is…Apostle Paul…which means the bible is literally true, I suppose…). Even christians here will not defend this argument, right?

(Don’t flame me – I’m joking, right? Except about drinking a beer at the picnic area at Waterloo.)

Talk about throwing up a brick shot.

Jesus appears to Saul while on the way to Damascus in Acts.

Peter has a vision, the result of which lets Christians eat unclear meat.

Personally I’m wondering about the purple cloth they supposedly pulled out. Purple was restricted to Senators and Emperors and was expensive. I very much doubt Paul was originally buried in purple. However it is likely these bones have been disinterred and rewrapped (did they do carbon dating on the purple cloth?). Possibly the cloth might have been pushed through even later by some pilgrim.

Also it is my understanding that carbon dating results are usually given as a year +- a margin of error (e.g., 110CE +_40 years). I very much doubt the result was announced as 100AD +- 100 years so what was it.