The possibility that a tomb discovered under the confessional f
har at St. Peter's in Rome may be that of St. Peter himself, and the bones found therein actually the Apostle's bones, is manifestly of great interest, though an archaeological rather than ecclesiastical interest. Nothing in the belief of any Christian body would be changed if the authenticity of the discovery were either definitely proved or definitely disproved. Nothing, in fact, is 'known about the death, much less the burial, of St. Peter. There was a fairly early Church tradition (Tertullian A.D. 155-202) - that Peter and Paul were both crucified at Rome in the Neronian persecution of A.D. 64; but tradition is one thing and history another. There are grounds for putting the First Epistle of Peter as considerably later than 64, so that if that book was written by St. Peter, as there are good reasons for thinking it was, the crucifixion story mould lapse. New discoveries estab- lishing new facts are always possible, but-it does not seem that the recent excavations at St. Peter's have done more than add a little plausibility to existing tradition—if, in fact, that.
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