Researchers have uncovered a 400-year-old burial vault after they found a hidden staircase and followed it to its destination. This amazing archaeological find was discovered at the Church of Saint Philibert which is located in Dijon, France. The French National Institute of Preventative Archaeological Research (Inrap)said the building itself is dated to the second half of the 12th century. Anything that helps complete a piece of Christian history is precious, as that is part of our inheritance of the faith.
“In the transept, a vault, probably from the 15th-16th centuries, has been identified. In it, the deceased, children and adults, are buried in coffins, the bones of each individual being pushed to the sides to make room for the last deceased,” a press release from Inrap said, according to The Christian Tribune. The vast majority of the human remains found in the vault belong to adults dressed in shrouds and placed inside of wooden coffins.
The archeological organization said, “Very few objects were found in the tombs apart from rare coins and two rosaries.” According to researchers, the foundation of the vault measures about 9 feet in depth, and slab tombs that were discovered date from the 11th through 13th centuries. While digging at the site, six sarcophagi were unearthed. The St. Philibert church is the only Romanesque from the 12th-century church left in Dijon, according to The Institutional Repository for the University of Notre Dame (CurateND). Research posted by this organization states that “during the Revolution, the church was abandoned in 1795. It was given to the city which razed the two chapels and apse of the church to expand the present Rue des Vieilles-Ovens in 1825.”
We reported last year on another important Christian archeological discovery. A third-century artifact is creating major problems for skeptics who argue that Christ’s deity was “invented” in the fourth century. The Akeptous Inscription, as it has become known, was uncovered in northern Israel and dates to 230 A.D. Doubters have long made the argument that Christians viewed Jesus as a prophet but not divine until the council of Nicaea in 325.
You can see the Akeptous Inscription as part of a mosaic that is now on display at the Museum of the Bible. The artifact was found in the northern part of Israel and was officially dated to 230 A.D., which almost a hundred years before the council. It makes reference to a woman named Akeptous who the inscription says was lovingly devoted to “God Jesus Christ.”
The inscription reads The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.” This indicates that early Christians believed in the divinity of Christ.
Popular Christian apologist Sean McDowell recently conducted an interview with Christopher Rollston, who serves as an epigrapher at George Washington University where the two men talked about the significance of the artifact. McDowell went on to say, “I can’t believe more attention is not being paid to this. It’s that significant.” Rollston replied“It’s really consequential.” The two scholars went on to explore the impact of this finding on common arguments against the church.
The Georgetown academic noted how “really fascinating” how archeology “often dovetails with textual material” He went on to explain how “This inscription… makes the declaration very clearly and emphatically that Jesus was divine,” Rollston said. “… Not all Christians believed in the divinity … but it was the predominant view among early Christians that Jesus was divine. And this inscription, therefore, is fascinating because it’s pre-Nicaean.”
It’s because the world is full of sin and darkness and doesn’t like the idea of its wickedness being exposed to the light. An artifact like this shoots holes through a lot of theories unbelievers use to debunk the idea people, reasonable people, believed that Jesus was God even in ancient times. Proving otherwise means that the faith has truly been preserved for millennia and that the first Christians believed in Christ because they knew for a fact He rose from the dead.
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