A young chapter of theBiblehas been found , obscure inside a 1,750 - year - former rendering from the Gospel of Matthew . The chapter was detect by medievalist Grigory Kessel , who used ultraviolet photography on ms in the Vatican Library .
The hidden text was found as part of theSinai Palimpsests Project , where researchers drive to retrieve texts that were wipe off and write over by scribes in the 4th-12th C CE . Palimpsest manuscripts – where early textual matter has been washed or scrape up off , then reused – were fairly common due to the scarceness of drop a line cloth . However , centuries later schoolbook can berecoveredby illuminating the manuscript with fluorescence or different wavelengths of light .
Using these method , researchers have already decipher 74 manuscripts , but the latest find was particularly particular , containing a interlingual rendition a 100 old than the oldest Greek translations , include theCodex Sinaiticus .
" The tradition of Syriac Christianity knows several translations of the Old and New Testaments , " Kessel said in astatement . " Until of late , only two manuscript were sleep together to contain the Old Syriac transformation of the gospels . "
The translation – first written in the tertiary century CE and replicate in the 6th century atomic number 58 – has not yet been released in full , but offers slightly more detail than the Greek translation of Matthew chapter 12 . In verse 1 of the Greek translation , a sentence say " at that time Jesus snuff it through the grainfields on the Sabbath ; and his disciples became thirsty and began to pick the head word of caryopsis and consume , " while the Syriac translation learn by Kessel ends " began to pick the heads of grain , rub them in their hands , and eat up them " .
" Grigory Kessel has made a great find thanks to his profound noesis of old Syriac schoolbook and book characteristics , " Claudia Rapp , Director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences bring . " This uncovering proves how rich and important the interplay between modern digital applied science and basic research can be when dealing with medieval manuscript . "
