A new translation of a chapter of the Bible has been unearthed by scientists after applying UV light to a manuscript housed in the Vatican Library.
A small manuscript fragment was masked behind two layers of writing on parchment paper and dates back to the 6th century. Experts say the text could provide new insight into how Christian texts and the New Testament have changed over the last 2,000 years.
The manuscript, written in Syriac, the official liturgical language of the Syriac Orthodox Church, comprises a translation from the Gospel of Matthew 11-12 from the New Testament.
Researchers say the text was originally produced in the 3rd century and copied in the 6th century and was then erased by a scribe in Palestine, a common practice because the parchment was made of animal skin and was hard to come by. The practice of rewriting, or writing over the original text, creates palimpsests, which are manuscripts comprising multiple layers of the script.
The new translation was discovered by Grigory Kessel from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and was found as part of the Sinai Palimpsests Project, where researchers use ultraviolet photography to see whether original texts on the parchment paper have been written over or reused between the 4th and 12th centuries. So far, researchers with the Sinai Palimpsests Project have deciphered 74 manuscripts using this method.
The complete findings of the study have not been published yet, but the Austrian Academy of Sciences has released parts of the translation on its website. For example, the original Greek version of Matthew chapter 12 says: “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,” and the Syriac translation says “[...] began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat them.”
This translation provides new insights into the Gospel text and early translations of the Bible.
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