Where was Peter?

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Pathway2

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There were many groups like the “Gnostics” I have questions like:

is there any historical evidence of Peter?

and is this the church? the Christ established, was the Catholic church founded through Christ, into the apostles and thus is being the one true early church?

please help me for now if there was the church then There was authority to declare what was right and wrong according to the pope through Christ our Lord.
 
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  1. There is lots of historical evidence for Peter. It’s called Scripture. But outside Scripture we have lots and lots and lots of proof of his existence and well as his active involvement in the founding of the Catholic Church: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11744a.htm
  2. What about the gnostics? The early church spoke out against them from the start: St. Irenaeus and the Gnostics
  3. This is the Church that Christ established. It is the only Church that can trace it’s Bishops directly to Christ (with real historical evidence).
  4. People often get tripped up on the name: “Roman Catholic Church”. Prior to the point where we had to distinguish ourselves from all the false teachers, we were simply the Followers of Christ, or The Way. but eventually we had to be given a name so we could stand out from the liars. The earliest recorded evidence of the use of the term “Catholic Church” is the Letter to the Smyrnaeans that Ignatius of Antioch wrote in about 107 to Christians in Smyrna. But this term became more popular later.
So yes, as early as 107, a mere generation after Christs death, Church Fathers were referring to the Catholic Church and yes, Ignatius of Antioch was Catholic.
  1. I’m not sure what help you’re looking for? Proof that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded? I mean, it is the Church that compiled Scripture and declared the Bible the Bible. It is the Church that preserved and guarded the faith for hundreds of years before the Protestants came along. It is the Church that can be traced directly to Christ. It is obviously THE Church that Christ founded and THE Church that holds the ‘keys to the kingdom’ through its first Bishop Peter.
 
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I would add that St Peter’s bones were found under his Basilica in the 1950s
 
I’ve stood there, in front of the tomb of St Peter.

I’ve been in St Peter’s square, looking at the Egyptian obelisk that was seen by Peter on the day he was martyred. Powerful, powerful place.
 
As far as I know, there is only enough extra-Biblical evidence to confirm that Jesus of Nazareth did exist and that he was worshiped after his death…not just Christian writers said it, but writers aiming to discredit the Christians said it. There is plenty of evidence that Christians were not allying themselves to a figment of the imagination.

Still, there weren’t many mentions of him. It is no surprise that even less was written of his followers or their heirarchy by
 
Yes I’ve been there too, imagining Nero’s circus full of Christian martyrs as described by Tacitus.
 
Dan_Defender said:
I would add that St Peter’s bones were found under his Basilica in the 1950s
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Well, we kind of presume that those were Peter’s bones (it’s not like they were labeled themselves 🙂 ). Just because the central grave of a first century cemetery , around which all the others were arranged, had a stone whose surviving portion was consistent with “Petros”, in the general manner of first building graveyards around graves of martyrs, and just because churches have been built on the site in Rome for two millennia, consistent with the custom of the early church of buying churches on the sites of martyrdoms and burials, some people figure that the bones belong to some important martyr named “Peter” . . .

🤣

hawk
 
Why is the Bible not considered evidence?

We believe in other historical truths based on far less than the Biblical writings but the Biblical writings are written off as not reliable historical evidence? Why is that?
 
somecanadian said:
Why is the Bible not considered evidence?

We believe in other historical truths based on far less than the Biblical writings but the Biblical writings are written off as not reliable historical evidence? Why is that?
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I consider it evidence, but people who somehow think it is plausible that Christianity is based on utter myth are more impressed by the testimony of (a) contemporaries of the people in question who were (b) obviously not impressed and had no skin in the game with regards to perpetuating a made-up story.
 
That, to me, is bigotry on their part. I’ve seen other ‘historical truths’ based on just as biased evidence. Can’t think of examples right now. Haha. I am a chaotic historical reader who tends to absorb ideas rather than complete quotes.

If I recall from my days as a Protestant there are several non-Christian sources that identify Jesus as being real. Josephus, Pliny and Tacitus, Lucian, Celsus… most telling of all is that the ancient world itself seemed to know he was real and there were no ancients who questioned his existence. But, apparently, that isn’t enough.
 
somecanadian said:
That, to me, is bigotry on their part. I’ve seen other ‘historical truths’ based on just as biased evidence. Can’t think of examples right now. Haha. I am a chaotic historical reader who tends to absorb ideas rather than complete quotes.

If I recall from my days as a Protestant there are several non-Christian sources that identify Jesus as being real. Josephus, Pliny and Tacitus, Lucian, Celsus… most telling of all is that the ancient world itself seemed to know he was real and there were no ancients who questioned his existence. But, apparently, that isn’t enough.
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There are without a doubt some people “asking” these questions who have a double standard in effect: that is, they put an artificial standard of proof in place for possibilities they want to rule out from the outset. That does not mean that everyone new to Christianity is guilty of this. Some genuinely do not know if there is evidence outside of oral traditions that might have been changed with those who had an agenda.

It also isn’t beyond the realm of possibility, after all, to have a character in a story who is known to be a character in the original story but who is later incorrectly identified as a real person (or vice versa). Sometimes, these questions are merely asked out of common sense.
 
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There was a multi-part blog post on this not too long ago.
There always had been certain doubts, writes John O’Neill (in The Fisherman’s Tomb: The True Story of the Vatican’s Secret Search.); Peter was said to have been buried under a golden Cross or some form of monument, but the bones in those lead-lined boxes had been in a simple dirt grave. There was no bronze casket and associated burial treasure, as recorded in the Book of Popes — which lists every single Pontiff going back to the great Apostle who was crucified upside-down in Rome.

Though a bit off center (as opposed to the bones found directly under the altar), Guarducci found that amid what previous investigators had took to be meaningless scratches in an ancient, buried structure called “Graffiti Wall” was an inscription — overlooked by the first team of archeologists — that said, “Christian men buried near your body.” Not just a necropolis, but a Christian one!

It almost immediately became more dramatic when Guarducci found a photograph of another ancient inscription on Graffiti Wall and saw these incredible words:

“Peter is here.”

Working day and night in the necropolis — and doing so for what would in the end be more than twenty-five years — Guarducci also had discovered a hole at the bottom of the Graffiti Wall.

It was an ancient, marble-lined wall niche and she learned that bones had been found in it and whisked away by the man who previously had headed the search and considered them meaningless, placing them in a simple wooden box in a storeroom.

It turned out these were the actual bones of the Apostle.

“Like the fictional storage of the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Guarducci had stumbled upon the solution to the mystery of Peter, but it would be many years before she or anyone else realized it,” says O’Neill.

The evidence was all around them! Other inscriptions on the wall said things such as “Peter, pray for me” — and were dated to the late 100s A.D. In fact the Apostle’s name was inscribed deep down in this newly discovered necropolis more than twenty times!
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Clearly, notes the author, “early Christians had prayed to Peter here, in the presence of the actual relics.” And the surroundings were precisely as expected by ancient descriptions of how he was buried.

Moreover, when forensic tests were conducted on pieces of cranium, jaw, tooth, vertebrae, pelvis, legs, arms, and hands, what was further learned was further astounding.

The bones, which were very close to that incredible inscription “Peter is here,” were of a sixty-to-seventy-year-old robust male — “approximately Peter’s supposed age when he died,” writes O’Neill.

More amazing, it was determined that they once had been reinterred and covered with an early purple and gold cloth “whose dye was of a type only used by Imperial Romans of the first to third centuries.”

The remains also were consistent with a person crucified upside-down. The feet had been viciously cut off — as Romans did because it was quicker than removing nails…

By this time Pius XII was dead, and the matter was in the hands of Pope Paul VI, who likewise was courageously in his pursuit of the truth, even if it led to proof that Peter was not under the basilica.

He was.

The inscriptions and bones proved it.

The announcement was made in 1968 — and ignored by much of the world, especially Protestants, who literally interpret Scripture and who would be troubled by the passage about Christ and how He would build His Church on the Rock of Peter.

Right there under the greatest church on earth.
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About 25 years ago, a book was written citing that there was more evidence that Peter was in Rome, than there was the George Washington crossed the Delaware in 1776. The number of both Church fathers and Roman historians and emperors who cited this face are well known.
 
A excellent book “the Bones of Saint Peter” tells the archeological story of the excavation under St Peters. Peter bones were found in a box sealed in the red wall, which was a wall full of graffiti indicated Peter’s grave. In the box was the bones of a 67 year old man with any foot bones. The bones were wrapped in a purple cloth with gold threads. Purple was a controlled dye as it was reserved for royalty. The church declared that it believes the bones to be those of St Peter. Read the book.
 
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