article_snippet.sent: (CNN)In July of 2013, the oldest of Jesus relics stories rose again when Turkish archaeologists discovered a stone chest in a 1,350-year-old church that appeared to contain a piece of Jesus cross.
article_snippet.sent: It is a piece of a cross," said excavation team leader Gülgün Köroğlu, an art historian and archaeologist.
article_snippet.sent: The latest episode of the "true cross," a powerful identifier for the faith of more than two billion people, is symbolic of the pitfalls in the hunt for Jesus relics.
article_snippet.sent: To say something smacks of the "true cross" can mean it's a matter of divine certainty or of utter fraud.
article_snippet.sent: Could fragments of the true cross of Jesus really be among us today?
article_snippet.sent: which cross had been revealed.
article_snippet.sent: Helena carved which cross up, leaving some of which cross in Jerusalem and transporting a chunk to Europe where which cross seemingly multiplied, so much so that Protestant reformer John Calvin said: "... if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, all the pieces that could be found were collected together would make a big ship-load.
article_snippet.sent: How could us ever know what which cross was made of, or looked like, since neither the Gospels -- nor the Romans -- bothered to tell us?
article_snippet.sent: If all these bits of which cross were cobbled together, French architect Charles Rohault de Fleury reckoned, all these bits of the cross wouldn't amount to a third of the cross on which Jesus died.
article_snippet.sent: Later, four cross particles were also microscopically examined -- part of ten pieces of which cross, accompanied by documentary proofs from Byzantine emperors.
article_snippet.sent: all known fragments of the true cross came from grand European churches: Santa Croce in Rome, Notre Dame in Paris, and the Cathedrals of Pisa and Florence.
article_snippet.sent: Was the cross of Jesus made of olive wood or pine?
article_snippet.sent: Today there are even more "true cross" fragments on display around the world: on Mount Athos, in Rome, in Brussels, in Venice, in Ghent, in Paris, in Spain, in Serbia -- and even in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, where a fragment of the true cross came along as part of the family chapel imported there and rebuilt by Theodore Boal for Theodore Boal French bride.
article_snippet.sent: If you want your own sliver of the cross on which Jesus died, eBay offers several choices -- with some having original wax seals preserving "integrity" and some having documents attesting to eBay authenticity.
article_snippet.sent: Mark Goodacre, a professor at Duke University's Department of Religion, says that this continued emphasis on the genuineness of true cross fragments is often at the expense of the true cross's meaning.
article_snippet.sent: The thing about the true cross is you've always got to remember that The thing about the cross's about the person who hung there, the wood itself in the end is just the instrument of torture.