This ancient Christian burial ground shows that Peter died and was buried in Jerusalem, which is easily understandable since neither history nor the Bible tells of Peter’s having been in Rome. It is called, “Gli Scavi del Dominus Flevit”, printed in 1958 at the Tipografia del PP. Further, the Simon, son of Jonah, ossuary was found just meters away from a tomb just outside of Bethany containing a single ossuary with two indviduals: Mary and Martha, and nearby another, inscribed Lazarus. The clear evidence is there.” I did not doubt the evidence, but what surprised me was that these priests and monks believed that which was against their own religion and on top of that, to admit it to others was something out of this world. I showed him the pictures found in this article, but being with him for only a few minutes I therefore could not show him the wealth of material that you have before you in this article. For a fuller treatment, accessible to the non-specialist, see Jack Fingegan’s The Archaeology of the New Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, reprt 1979), pp. Some Clues From Science. St. Peter's tomb is near the west end of a complex of mausoleums that date between about AD 130 and AD 300. The dilemma was terrible.…It was a choice of claiming these bones championed by Prof. Margherita as fake, or claiming as fake the skull accepted by hundreds of Popes as that of St. Peter. It is this very tropaion of Peter which excavators believe they have found buried under St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome during an archaeological dig that lasted from 1939 to 1949. I think the legendary martyrdom of Peter in Rome under Nero has scant historical support, despite the more recent claims of the Vatican to have verified his tomb, and the relics therein, under St. Peter’s Basilica, see “Pope Puts ‘St Peter’s Bones’ on Display at Vatican.” I agree with the work done by Nicola Denzy Lewis, a summary of which you can read here: “The Apostle Peter in Rome?”. I quote, “I regard Father J. T. Milik as a first class scholar in the Semitic field.” He added, “I do not consider that names on ossuaries are conclusive evidence that they are those of the Apostles.” Nelson Glueck. Saint Peter's tomb is a site under St. Peter's Basilica that includes several graves and a structure said by Vatican authorities to have been built to memorialize the location of Saint Peter's grave. Their careful independent conclusions fell short of the Pope's flat statement.' To make matters more clear, the Bible tells us that Peter was the Apostle to the Jews. With that knowledge I approached another priest who warily asked me where I had acquired that information. The relics were discovered during excavations begun under St Peter's Basilica in the years following the death in 1939 of Pope Pius XI, who had asked to be buried … It appears that she was protecting her 'Peter's bones' from another possible disaster, which a wrong age would have caused. Usually a Catholic, either because he is brainwashed or stubbornly doesn’t want to see anything only that which he has been taught, will not allow himself to believe anything against his religion, much less to admit it to others. Peter is not mentioned again until the Jerusalem conference in 49 AD (Acts 15:7). One of their members was spading the ground on this site in 1953, when his shovel fell through. This is actually not all that far-fetched a claim. It must, therefore, be concluded that if the whole subject is faced with detached objectivity, the conclusion must inevitably be reached that Peter was never in Rome. You can see then, how the Christians would be inclined to have their burial ground on the Mount, for here also, had been a favorite meeting place of Jesus and His disciples. The first show an excavation where the names of Christian Biblical characters were found on the ossuaries (bone boxes). (Excerpts from personal account by F. Paul Peterson). The initial of Christ in Greek was written there which would never have been found in a Jewish, Arab or pagan cemetery. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. You can also see this for yourself on the Mount of Olives on the Franciscan Convent site called, “Dominus Flevit”. Volume I: Jerusalem: Part 1. Pfann reads the name of the father as BarZillai, the name of a priestly family known to us from the time of David and mentioned in Ezra 2:61. Indeed, according to this way of thinking there must have been another family, with those very names, buried very near “another” Simon bar Jonah. A part of the shin bone or a rib would be sufficient. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Saint Peter’s Tomb: The Discovery of Peter’s Tomb in Jerusalem in 1953. It fell upon them in this manner, as I was told by a Franciscan monk of the monastery of “Dominus Flevit”. To make matters more clear, the Bible tells us that Peter was the Apostle to the Jews. Great article, and only come upon it by chance looking for information that Peter was buried elsewhere such as Jerusalem. "Then in 1965, an archaeologist at Rome University, Prof. Margherita Guarducci, tells of a new set of bones belonging to Peter. John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls: A “Cosmic Messiah” Who Raises the ... 99.99% of Humanity Will Burn in Hell Forever, and Ever, and Ever…, Happy New Year!–at least on the Biblical Hebrew Calendar. "While visiting a friend in Switzerland, I heard of what seemed to me one of the greatest discoveries since the time of Christ—that Peter was buried in Jerusalem and not in Rome. If you want to understand what's going on in the world today, you must first understand God's plan and prophecies. Is human life the end result of blind evolution, devoid of any purpose? One of the editors, Haggai Misgav, prefers the reading: Shimon son of Lollia, a Latin name, noting that a second Latin name, Secunda or Verecunda, is found in the same burial complex. More recently, various scholars, including Emile Puech and most lately Stephan Pfann have questioned the suggestion by Bagatti and Milik (who was a bit more cautious) that the reading of this ossuary fragment is indeed: Shimon bar Jonah–presenting the possibility that Simon Peter, who is known by this rather unusual name in Matthew 16:17, may have been buried in Jerusalem rather than Rome. But what makes the possibility of error more remote is that the remains were found in a Christian burial ground, and more yet, of the first century, the very time in which Peter lived. Peter’s sepulchral chamber is located at the bottom of the exedra, in a niche decorated by a mosaic from the ninth century with “Christ in the middle of the Princes of the Apostles,” and closed by a gilded bronze gate flanked on the sides by two metal statues of St. Peter and St. Paul. To view & Hear Reviews. Before Jesus died, he entrusted his mother Mary to the beloved disciple (John 19:26–27), who is most widely believed to be John.. And yet, even that is unmistakenly recorded in the three words in Aramaic of the ossuary, Simon Bar Jona. Before things had gone very far, I had been quite discouraged for I could get no information from the many priests with whom I had talked. This Aramaic father/son name is attested nowhere else, neither in inscriptions nor in literature. It is also very interesting and highly significant that priest Bagatti, in his attempt to neutralize his original statement and the consternation the discovery had and would have if it were generally known, says in reference to the name Simon Bar Jona (St. Peter), “It may be some other relative of St. Peter, because names were passed on from generation to generation.” In other words he says that Peter’s name, Simon Bar Jona, could have been given him from a relative of the same name of generations before him, or, could belong to a relative generations after St. Peter…First of all, it could not refer to a relative before St. Peter for the Christian burial ground could only have come into being after Jesus began. He certainly became one of the boldest witnesses for the faith. "When Pope Pius XII declared the Assumption of Mary to be an article of faith in 1950, the Catholic Church in Jerusalem then quickly sold the tomb of Mary to the Armenian Church. Dr. Glueck, being Jewish, and having been to Jerusalem, no doubt, is fully aware of the fact that for centuries the Catholic Church bought up what were thought to be holy sites, some of which did not stand up to Biblical description. The Baptism Series Booklet is available on request or via download. Francescani, in Jerusalem. 16:7). These trophies marked the apostles’ graves or places of martyrdom and their victory over death. Was Peter buried in Rome? Nonetheless, given the rather narrow chronological window represented by limestone ossuary use in Jerusalem in the one hundred year period before its destruction in 70 CE such identifications with personages mentioned in our New Testament records are possible if not probably. Eusebius, one of the most learned men of his time, wrote the Church history up to the year 325 A.D. They rejected the past rather than expose themselves to the ridicule of the present.' It is called Gli Scavi del Dominus Flevit printed in 1958 at the Tipografia del PP. "Mark you, all the priests agree that the Vatican and St. Peter's were built over a pagan cemetery....You realize surely that Christians would never bury their dead in a pagan cemetery, and you may be very sure that pagans would never allow a Christian to be buried in their cemetery. With permission I reproduce this edited version of an article on this ossuary written in 1960 by F. Paul Peterson just when the discovery of the cemetery complex with its interesting clusters of names had caused a stir in certain quarters of the Protestant Christian world. Origen says that Peter felt himself to be unworthy to be put to death in the same manner as his Master . Paul tells us that three years after his conversion in 36 A.D., he 'went up to Jerusalem to see Peter' (Galatians 1:18), and in 49 A.D., fourteen years later, he again went up to Jerusalem (Gal. Since the circulation of this article, they do not allow anyone to see this burial place. This name, Lollius or Lollianos was a short form of Alexandros. The Archaeology of Earliest Christianity: The First Hundred Years, The Best Survey I Know of the Jewish Roman World of Jesus, My University Web Site Available to All: The Jewish Roman World of Jesus, Bible & Interpretation: A Richly Informative Resource, Sorting out the Jesus Family: Mother, Fathers, Brothers and Sisters. ." In all the cemetery, nothing was found (as also in the Catacombs in Rome) which resemble Arab, Jewish, Catholic or pagan practices. No other book has all of the correct dates concerning Jesus’ life and ministry. Then I asked, “But what does the Pope think of all this?” That was a thousand dollar question and he gave me a million dollar answer. People who lived in Jerusalem all their lives and official guides who are supposed to know every inch of the city, however, knew nothing of this discovery, so well was it withheld from the public. A person who has seen this Christian burial ground and knows the circumstances surrounding the case could never doubt that this truly is the burial place of St. Peter and of other Christians. History, likewise, would not have been silent on the subject, as they were not silent in the case of the Apostle Paul. However, he quickly recognized the Aramaic words to be “Simon Bar Jona”. Finally one priest dropped some information. It was written by P. B. Bagatti and J. T. Milik, both Roman Catholic priests. To make matters more clear, the Bible tells us that Peter was the Apostle to the Jews. It contains 704 inscriptions, on ossuaries and other surfaces, that date to the area of Jerusalem in the 1st century BCE/CE. Dr. Glueck, being Jewish, is not fully aware, no doubt, that such a discovery is very embarrassing since it undermines the very foundation of the Roman Catholic Church. He said that Peter never was in Rome…. Churches were built over the graves of famous people; and the Apostle Peter is buried in this church’s basement, with a supposedly legible and unambiguous inscription, and no one knows about it for nearly 2,000 years until a dude from Indiana gets upset about it? Then the article continues, 'The hundreds of Popes and millions of Roman Catholics who have accepted and venerated the other skull were innocent victims of another early tradition.'. When the bones were found there was little importance placed upon them and they were filed away as such. … "This ancient Christian burial ground shows that Peter died and was buried in Jerusalem, which is easily understandable since neither history nor the Bible tells of Peter's having been in Rome. Mat 16:17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. His body was buried two miles away from the place of his martyrdom, in the sepulchral area along the Ostiense Way, owned by a devout Christian woman named Lucina, which was part of a pre-existent burial place . I will give a lecture on this subject at the Biblical Archaeology Society, 15th Annual Bible and Archaeology Fest, November 16-18, 2012, Chicago, see here for details. Then there is a discrepancy in the date, for Peter was martyred around the year 62 A.D. and not 160 A.D.  Thirdly, why is it that they mention nothing about finding bones under or around the sign? It was the end of 1950, and a complex series of excavations under St. Peter’s Basilica had recently been completed. Email addresses are confidential. 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