According to Phys, a new technology has enabled the discovery of biblical content from 1,750 years ago that had been overwritten.
About 1,300 years ago, a scribe in Palestine obtained a Gospel book written in Syriac and erased it. During the Middle Ages, parchment was scarce in the desert, so old texts were often erased and reused.
A medieval scholar from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) has recently made the lost words on this palimpsest (written on sheep skin) clear. Consequently, Grigory Kessel has discovered one of the earliest translations of the New Testament in history thanks to the remaining pages of this manuscript.
According to this discovery, the original New Testament text dates back to the 3rd century and was later copied in the 6th century. This finding has been published in the journal New Testament Studies.
Under ultraviolet light, the layers of overwritten text have emerged. (Photo: Phys).
Medievalist Grigory Kessel stated: “The tradition of Syriac Christianity is known through several translations of the Old and New Testaments. However, prior to this, only two manuscripts were known to preserve the ancient Syriac gospel translation.”
One manuscript is currently held in the British Library in London, UK, and the other text has been discovered in the form of sheep skin at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Mount Sinai, Egypt. In the project researching the Sinai sheep skin documents, scientists recently uncovered some remnants from a third manuscript.
Now, a small new manuscript page, which can be considered evidence for the fourth text, has been identified by Grigory Kessel using ultraviolet photography. Accordingly, Kessel has identified the third text layer translating the New Testament in a manuscript from the Vatican Library. This evidence adds to the corpus of ancient biblical texts in Syriac and opens a pathway for historical research on the dissemination of the Gospels in written form.
For example, while the original Greek text of the Gospel of Matthew chapter 12, verse 1 states: “At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; and his disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat,” the Syriac translation is also closely aligned, saying, “[…] began to pluck heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat.”
Claudia Rapp, the director of the Institute for Medieval Research at OeAW, commented: “Grigory Kessel has made a remarkable discovery thanks to his extensive knowledge of ancient Syriac texts and the characteristics of the script.”
This Syriac translation was written at least a century before the oldest surviving handwritten Greek Bibles, including the most complete ancient Bible, Codex Sinaiticus.
Claudia Rapp also affirmed: “This discovery demonstrates the importance and effectiveness of the interaction between modern digital technologies and fundamental research when handling medieval manuscripts.”
