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John the baptist's relics. with their ongoing quest to trace how his relics were scattered, british researchers tom higham and george kazan have come to the nelson-atkins museum in kansas city, missouri. they want to analyze an ancient treasure reputed to be the finger of john the baptist. could it come from the same individual as the bulgaria find? >> this is containing the relic. it's gilt silver. it dates from about the year 1400. >> what's really exciting about the kansas baptist relic is for the first time we're going to be able to compare the carbon data relic with the one we've already ...

>> repent, herod, or you shall be punished! >> you know, you've done this before, and you know what you're doing. >> okay. well, we'll just have to see how it goes, i think. >> in kansas city, professor tom higham of oxford university is trying to figure out a way of drilling into a relic of john the baptist. >> i think it's best to go in here first. >> he hopes to date the carbon inside the bone and perhaps even get a dna profile that can then be matched against the first century relic he has already tested from bulgaria. >> it's the collagen part of the bone that we want to date. that's the ...

Show that the date from this particular bone is about six centuries later than it ought to be. >> we've tested now two relics of john the baptist. we had one date from the 1st century and one from the 7th or 8th century and we're just starting to get a feel for what there is out there. so it's very exciting. it gives us a bit of new information. i'm hopeful that we'll go from here and ask more questions and we'll test more relics. >> for tom and georges, the investigation goes on. with as many as 200 relics associated with john the baptist, they hope they may once again find a piece that could...

Treasure, that has connections with the german lord henry the lion. we know that he visited constantinople and requested relics. but it's possible that may have had origins much older than that. ♪ >> should we get the bone out and have a look at it now? >> sitting in an elaborate gilt housing dating back to the 14th century, for the researchers the challenge will be how to remove the bone from its precious casing. ♪ and when they try to extract the bone from its mount, there's a problem. >> the mount does not come off of the bone. >> oh, you mean i can't actually take the bone out? >> no. ...

Size if we're to extract the collagen for dating. >> with limits to how far he can drill, he can't be sure they've got enough to determine whether this bone could have belonged to john the baptist. in jerusalem, the more john the baptist denounces herod, the more he risks inflaming herod's anger, with all the danger that could follow. >> you could talk about repentance and judgment day and maybe not get into much trouble. but you start to attack herod antipas personally, and he's going to attack you personally. >> what's wrong? >> i see herod antipas as a really divided soul. he was really kin...