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New Bible chapter found in 1750-year-old text
Historian Gregory Kessel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences found a new chapter of the Bible in a 1750-year-old translation of the Gospel of Matthew. The hidden text was found as part of the Sinai Palimpsest Project. The researchers participating in it seek to restore manuscripts that were erased and rewritten by scribes in the 4th-12th centuries AD.
Leather sheets from which earlier text had been washed or scraped off were quite common due to the scarcity of writing implements. However, centuries later, the texts stored in the Vatican Library can be restored by illuminating the pages with fluorescent light, which the researchers did by deciphering 74 manuscripts.
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| © Vatican Library |
The text appeared under ultraviolet illumination.
The latest find was special because it contained an older translation of the Codex Sinaiticus. This translation was first written in the 3rd century AD and copied in the 6th century, and has not yet been published in full, but it contains more details than the Greek translation of Matthew 12. Thus, the original verse states: “At that time Jesus was passing through the sown fields on the Sabbath; His disciples became hungry and began to pluck the ears and eat” (12.1).
In a more ancient text, between the 11th and 12th chapters, it is written : “At that time Jesus was passing through the sown fields on the Sabbath; His disciples became hungry and began to gather grain, grind it in their hands and eat it. These differences prove that ancient Christianity was not fixed, but different versions of the Jesus stories circulated in the early church. It is possible that in the end Kessel will find other differences as he studies the ancient manuscript.