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Ancient Text Of Gospel Uncovered

by | Sat, Apr 15 2023

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A researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences has discovered what’s believed to be a fragment of the oldest writing of the text of the Gospel of Matthew from the New Testament. 

The text was discovered hidden underneath three layers of text on an ancient piece of parchment.

It is written in Old Syriac and dates back at least 1,500 years.

Syriac was a dialect of Aramaic used by the Church in Syria and nearby regions from the first century until the Middle Ages.

Academy researcher and self-described ‘medievalist’ Dr. Grigory Kessel used ultraviolet photography to expose the translation.

Parchment was at a premium in the first millennium and often re-used multiple times in what is known as a palimpsest.

The Academy gave its account of what is believed to have happened:

“About 1,300 years ago a scribe in Palestine took a book of the Gospels inscribed with a Syriac text and erased it. Parchment was scarce in the desert in the Middle Ages, so manuscripts were often erased and reused.”

It explained that Dr. Kessel uncovered one of the earliest translations of the Gospels which was originally written in the 3rd century and copied in the 6th century.

The individual surviving pages of this manuscript covered the translation of Matthew 11:30 to Matthew 12: 26.

“As far as the dating of the Gospel book is concerned, there can be no doubt that it was produced no later than the 6th century. Despite a limited number of dated manuscripts from this period, comparison with dated Syriac manuscripts allows us to narrow down a possible time frame to the first half of the 6th century,” the Academy expounded.

“Until recently, only two manuscripts were known to contain the Old Syriac translation of the Gospels. While one of these is now kept in the British Library in London, another was discovered as a palimpsest in St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai. The fragments from the third manuscript were recently identified in the course of the Sinai Palimpsests Project.