A new chapter of the
The hidden text was found as part of the
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
“The tradition of Syriac Christianity knows several translations of the Old and New Testaments,” Kessel said in a
The translation – first written in the 3rd century CE and copied in the 6th century CE – 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 reads “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,” while the Syriac translation discovered by Kessel ends “began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat them”.
“Grigory Kessel has made a great discovery thanks to his profound knowledge of old Syriac texts and script characteristics,” Claudia Rapp, director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences added. “This discovery proves how productive and important the interplay between modern digital technologies and basic research can be when dealing with medieval manuscripts.”
You can view the newly found fragment
An earlier version of this article was published in April 2023