The latest episode of CNN’s FINDING JESUS series was titled
THE TRUE CROSS and was pretty sad.
Most of the series showed dramatizations of what may have
happened when SAINT HELENA, the mother of the Roman emperor CONSTANTINE THE
GREAT traveled to Jerusalem and found the three crosses used to crucify Jesus
and the two thieves crucified with him.
The story goes that she then had the cross all chopped up
and pieces sent all around the world as relics.
CNN had one of the relics tested by carbon dating. This
relic was given to an Irish king by the then pope in the year 1100 AD; the test
showed that the wood dated to 1100 AD which means the pope just gave the king a
piece of wood from a tree growing in his back yard.
The “relics” business was a huge business and churches with
a relic were made famous by what relic they possessed. The selling of relics
also was a factor in the Protestant Reformation as Catholic clerics enriched
themselves by selling relics as well as indulgences; get your mother out of
purgatory for $5.
Helena went to Jerusalem in 326 AD which would as if I went
to Boston today and tried to find something from 1689 AD; good luck.
What made her finding the “true cross” more specious was the
fact that crosses were re-used by the Romans and Jerusalem had physically
changed a great deal from the time of Jesus so even locating where the Hill of
Golgotha where Jesus was crucified, was practically impossible.
Helena was historically instrumental in making the symbol of
the cross a symbol of Christianity.
Her son Constantine was also extremely instrumental in
making Christianity a worldwide religion by making it a legal Roman religion.
Without Constantine, Christianity would have probably died out as another
religious movement.
As for CNN’s efforts at making this episode sound like a “documentary”
in finding physical proof of Jesus on earth, I give them an F.
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