A historian from the Austrian Academy of Sciences has again managed to make the lost words in a layered manuscript legible. This ancient version of a chapter in the Bible is said to have been hidden for over 1,500 years.
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Medievalist and historian Grigory Kessel used ultraviolet photography to visualize the third layer of the text. The material analyzed was a double palimpsest, which he says he made his discovery via a surviving manuscript kept in the Vatican Library.
He announced the discovery in March via an article published in New Testament Studies, a journal published by Cambridge University Press.
The manuscript written under three layers of words written in a palimpsest – a manuscript format that authors used to write over other words – revealed an unpublished translation. At the time, palimpsests were preferred due to the scarcity of scrolls.
Whereas in the original, in its Greek version, Matthew chapter 12, verse 1 says, “At that time Jesus went through the cornfields on the Sabbath; and disciples of his became hungry and began to pluck and eat,” the Syriac translation expresses, “[…] he began to pluck the ears, rub them in his hands, and eat them.”
It is commented by medieval research experts that the Syriac translation was written at least a century before the Greek manuscripts.
Finally, the discovery may be an opportunity for researchers to better understand accurately the early stages of the textual evolution of the Bible, as described by the communiqué to the press.
It is a form of electromagnetic radiation, invisible to the human eye, located in the electromagnetic spectrum between visible light and X-rays. Thus, UV waves have shorter wavelengths and higher energy than visible light, and can be categorized into UVA, UVB and UVC. They are naturally emitted by the sun, but can also be produced artificially, being known both for its harmful effects, such as sunburn, and for useful applications, such as sterilization.
