Fragment of a 1,750-year-old New Testament translation discovered

Phys dot org ^ | Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften

[SunkenCiv]

Parchment was scarce in the desert in the Middle Ages, so manuscripts were often erased and reused.

A medievalist from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) has now been able to make legible the lost words on this layered manuscript, a so-called palimpsest: Grigory Kessel discovered one of the earliest translations of the Gospels, made in the 3rd century and copied in the 6th century, on individual surviving pages of this manuscript. The findings are published in the journal New Testament Studies...

The small manuscript fragment, which can now be considered as the fourth textual witness, was identified by Grigory Kessel using ultraviolet photography as the third layer of text, i.e., double palimpsest, in the Vatican Library manuscript. The fragment is so far the only known remnant of the fourth manuscript that attests to the Old Syriac version—and offers a unique gateway to the very early phase in the history of the textual transmission of the Gospels...

Claudia Rapp, director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the OeAW, says, "Grigory Kessel has made a great discovery thanks to his profound knowledge of old Syriac texts and script characteristics." The Syriac translation was written at least a century before the oldest Greek manuscripts that have survived, including the Codex Sinaiticus. The earliest surviving manuscripts with this Syriac translation date from the 6th century and are preserved in the erased layers, so-called palimpsests, of newly written parchment leaves.

[stylin19a]

Epstein is not going to kill himself.

[firebrand]

Thanks for that information.

I always do the same, recommend John first, and so do a lot of other people.

One wonders how John could remember those important sermons. Do you know if he wrote them down and kept them for all that time? It’s possible he could have remembered them. And then of course he had some help.