Science and religion don’t always see eye to eye – but, in effort to uncover new details about Jesus and his descendants, a biblical scholar and a geneticist have teamed up in the search for Jesus’ DNA.
UG Christians News has learnt that the experts are tapping into the latest technology to analyze artifacts from sites around the world, including the Shroud of Turin, the Sudarium of Oviedo, and a newly discovered set of bones thought to belong to Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist.
A new documentary by the History Channel is following Oxford University geneticist George Busby and biblical scholar Pastor Joe Basile as they travel to Israel and the Black Sea hoping to find samples for their work.
“By extracting and analyzing samples of each of these holy relics, they hope to retrieve a sample of DNA that possibly belongs to Jesus or a member of his family. They believe that if they can find a strand of Jesus’ DNA it could help identify who among us today are descendants of Jesus and provide us with new insight into the man many consider to be the most important person in history, Jesus,” according to the History Channel.
Some of their findings were revealed on the History Channel documentary, The Jesus Strand: A Search for DNA, which debuted Easter Sunday.
One of the items inspected by the bible busting duo are the ‘bones of John the Baptist’ which were uncovered in Bulgaria in 2010.
“If we find other relics purported to be from John the Baptist, or a close relative of Jesus, then we could use genetics to compare the two to see if they are likely to have come from the same or related people.” the duo state.
“Also, we have growing collections of DNA sampled form people around the world, which we can use to make a guess on the geographical origins of the relics.”
The team also studied the Shroud of Turin an ancient cloth which is believed to have been wrapped around Jesus after he died.
They also analysed the ‘Sudarium of Oviedo’ which is a piece of cloth covered in blood and some ancient texts.
marvin@ugchristiannews.com
