John the Baptist's Bones have been found -- again!

This morning's papers are full of another new story about the discovery of a Biblical figure's bones.  This time it is John the Baptist's bones and the story has the standard marks of modern-day relic hunting according to which some detail will in some way link the relic(s) to the first century.

The story appears in several news sources, e.g. MSNBC's Science pages and Live Science, but a nicely illustrated version is the Daily Mail's one here:

'Found', bones of John the Baptist: Tests on knucklebone provide support to extraordinary claim
By Chris Brooke

When archaeologists claimed to have found the bones of John the Baptist amid the ruins of an ancient Bulgarian monastery experts were understandably sceptical. 

But carbon dating tests carried out at Oxford University have provided scientific evidence to support the extraordinary claim. 

A knucklebone has been dated to the 1st Century AD - a time when the revered Jewish prophet is believed to have lived.

If the story sounds familiar, it may be because it had an earlier incarnation in 2010, e.g. on Discovery News (see Robert Cargill's post).  What is new is some carbon dating of one of the bones, carbon dating that dates the bones to the first century.

How, though, do the researchers know that these are the bones of the baptist?  According to the Daily Mail article:

The ‘key’ clue to the relics’ origins was a tiny sandstone box found alongside the reliquary with a Greek inscription: ‘God, save your servant Thomas. To St John. June 24.’ The date is believed to be John the Baptist’s birthday.

Well, that's the date of his feast day.  We have no idea when his birthday was.  I'd like to see the actual Greek inscription, but I can't find any pictures of it on the web at present and so, of course, any remarks are provisional.  From the translation here, the only thing that would connect these bones to John the Baptist (rather than any other St John) is the feast day.  However, that is probably too late to provide any serious link to the first century.

According to the article, the radiocarbon research was carried out by Oxford professors Thomas Higham and Christopher Ramsey.  Also mentioned is "Dr Hannes Schroeder, who carried out the research", who is quoted as saying, "Of course, this does not prove that these were the remains of John the Baptist but nor does it refute that theory."

I will watch the story with my usual mixture of interest and scepticism.  It may perhaps be worth mentioning that the only reports we have about John's body post-mortem is the report of his disciples burying his body (Mark 6.29).  Perhaps later on, after his secondary burial, some of the same disciples saved a few bones for posterity to be carried half way across Europe a few centuries later, no doubt leaving a few bones in each of several other countries too, Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Italy.

Oh, and it's all connected, of course, to a National Geographic TV documentary this weekend.

Update (10.18): Comments from Michael Heiser on PaleoBabble, John Byron on The Biblical World (very funny) and Jim West on Zwinglius Redivivus.

Update (13.30): See now the superb and authoritative response by Christopher Rollston, John the Baptist and the Reliquary of ‘Sveti Ivan’ : Methodological Reflections.

Update (Sunday, 00.29): Round-up from James McGrath on Exploring our Matrix.