The text showed up when illuminated by UV light. | Photo credit: © Vatican Library.
(IFL Sciences) — A new chapter of the Bible has been found hidden in a 1,750-year-old translation from the Gospel of Matthew. The chapter was found by a medievalist, Gregory Kessel, who used ultraviolet photography on manuscripts in the Vatican Library.
The hidden text was found as part of the Sinai Palimpsests Project, where researchers aim to recover texts that were erased and written over by scribes in the 4th-12th centuries CE. Palimpsest manuscripts – where earlier text has been washed or scraped off, then reused – were fairly common due to the scarcity of writing materials. However, centuries later text can be recovered by illuminating the manuscripts with fluorescence or different wavelengths of light.
Using these methods, researchers have already deciphered 74 manuscripts, but the latest find was particularly special, containing a translation a century older than the oldest Greek translations, including the Codex Sinaiticus.
“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.”
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Jason Jeth Newshub 
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