A reliquary (stone box containing sacred relics) was discovered back in 2010 on the Black Sea island of Sveti Ivan (which means "St. John") off the coast of Bulgaria. Inside were eight pieces of bone, including pieces of a skull, face, and a tooth. Because there is a monastery on the island which claims John the Baptist as its patron saint, the excavation leader, Kazimir Popkonstantinov, suggests that the bones might belong to the Baptist. The possibility is strengthened, he suggests, by the fact that found alongside the reliquary was a small sandstone box with a Greek inscription that said, “God, save your servant Thomas. To St. John. June 24.” June 24 is the date celebrated by Christians as the birthday of John the Baptist, and the inscription suggests that a pilgrim had come to the monastery to seek the Baptist’s blessing in the place where, he believed, John’s bones resided. Alternatively, Thomas may have been the patron who built the monastery and, as an act of sanctification, donated the bones of John the Baptist to the monastery as a sacral gift.
The claim to authenticity was enhanced this week when a researcher from Oxford University subjected one of the bones (a knucklebone) to radiocarbon dating. Thomas Higham's findings, published this week (click to read the story), added credibility to the claim that these bones belonged to the Baptizer: "We got some dates that were very interesting indeed," Higham said. "They suggest that the human bone is all from the same person, it's from a male, and it has a very high likelihood of an origin in the Near East."
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