'Hidden' Bible chapter rediscovered 1,750 years later with UV light

Explore More

Let there be UV light.

A “hidden chapter” of biblical text that is said to date back 1,750 years has been interpreted by an Austrian scientist, according to a study published last month in the journal New Testament Studies.

Grigory Kessel, a medievalist from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, used ultraviolet photography to analyze the Syriac translation of the Bible’s Matthew chapters 11 and 12 underneath three layers of text in a manuscript.

“The tradition of Syriac Christianity knows several translations of the Old and New Testaments,” Kessel said in a statement.

“Until recently, only two manuscripts were known to contain the Old Syriac translation of the gospels.”

Parchment was hard to come by in the Middle Ages, so when manuscripts were erased, the paper was often reused.

That appears to be the case for a scribe in Palestine, who reportedly erased a manuscript inscribed with a Syriac text about 1,300 years ago, according to the Phys.org news service.

The text is suspected to originate in the 3rd century before being copied in the 6th century.

Researchers say scholars were already aware of the manuscript in 1953. It was re-discovered in 2010 before being digitized in 2020. The natural light and UV images were added to the Digital Vatican Library.

Of the two manuscripts known to contain the Old Syriac translation of the gospels, one is kept in the British Library in London and the other in St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, the world’s oldest continually operating monastery.

The third was recently identified via the Sinai Palimpsests Project to use imaging to recover erased texts from manuscripts in the St. Catherine’s library.

Kessel’s breakthrough is being called the “fourth textual witness.”

Phys.org noted that while the original Greek of Matthew chapter 12, verse 1 reads: “At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and his disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat,” the newly found Syriac translation says, “[…] began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat them.”

Claudia Rapp, the director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, praised Kessel’s findings in a statement.

“Grigory Kessel has made a great discovery thanks to his profound knowledge of old Syriac texts and script characteristics,” said Rapp.

She continued, “This discovery proves how productive and important the interplay between modern digital technologies and basic research can be when dealing with medieval manuscripts.”

ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2Jlf3R7j21mamlfnbalsMSnZJuhkqGybq%2FHmqetnaJiv6awyKyaqK6Vp7KleZBwbGllqZqus7%2BMpZitnaJixKrAx2asr2WcnrSpwI4%3D