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Vatican archaeologist: Paul really is buried where the church said he is
Giorgio Filippi, a archeology specialist with the Vatican Museums, says a sarcophagus containing the remains of the apostle Paul has been discovered in the basilica of San Paolo Fuori le Mura (St. Paul Outside the Walls).

"The tomb that we discovered is the one that the popes and the Emperor Theodosius (379- 395) saved and presented to the whole world as being the tomb of the apostle," Filippi told Catholic World News (partial reprint) after a brief item appeared in an Italian news report Wednesday.

"An initial survey enabled archeologists to reconstruct the shape of the original basilica, built early in the 4th century," Catholic World News reported. The article continues:

A second excavation, under the main altar of the basilica, brought the Vatican team to the sarcophagus, which was located on what would have been ground level for the original 4th-century building. Under the altar was a marble plaque was still visible, dating back to the 4th century, and bearing the inscription: "Apostle Paul, martyr." Filippi remarks that surprisingly, "Nobody ever thought to look behind that plaque." When the Vatican team looked, they found the sarcophagus.

We're still feeling the fallout from the last time we got all excited about an archaeological link to the early apostles. Weblog will let the pros debate this one for now. But it's worth noting this section from Christianity Today sister publication Christian History and Biography's special issue on Paul:

The New Testament doesn't tell us [how and when Paul died]. Acts ends with the cliffhanger: Paul under house arrest in Rome while awaiting trial. What happened next, the writer didn't say. Perhaps he figured his readers knew.

Christians, in fact, did know. Early Christian writers agree that Paul was martyred in Rome. The first person we know of who said this was a Roman bishop, Clement, writing to the Corinthians in 96, roughly 30 years after Paul's execution. Gaius, a second-century church leader in Rome, said he could point out the grave monuments of Paul and Peter …

Paul's monument was on the Ostian Way (Via Ostiensis), about two miles from the center or Rome. St. Paul's Outside the Walls was built on the spot Gaius mentions. The Catholic Encyclopedia reports, "Under Gregory XVI [1765-1846], the sarcophagus of St. Paul was discovered, but not opened. Its fourth-century inscription bears the words PAULO APOST MART (Paul, Apostle and Martyr)."

So, uh, is this news after all? Or is it kind of like saying "Grant said buried in Grant's tomb"?

Someone wake up The Wall Street Journal editors
Last month, Peggy Noonan's column on Bush's inaugural address was titled "Way Too Much God." But while Noonan called it "a God-drenched speech," her critique was that the speech was "over the top" in its ambitions of "perfection in the life of man on earth."

Today is a bit odder. An article titled, "The New Evangelicals" has the deck "They don't think like Billy Graham." Ooh. That's promising. How are new evangelicals different from Graham, pretty much considered the guy (along with Carl Henry) who catalyzed the neo-evangelical movement?

The problem is that Edith Blumhofer's article has nothing to do with that subject. It's about ethnic evangelicals, and the only reference to Graham is that ethnic evangelicals are influenced by Graham, if not by other 24 names on Time's most-influential list.

Huh. There are some nice observations in the brief piece, though the final line (The 20th-century global explosion of evangelicalism has come full circle: Evangelicals from everywhere rub shoulders in the U.S. Not that the media have really noticed) seems added by a Journal editor rather than something that was part of Blumhofer's original. The article is worth a read. The headline isn't.

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February (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49