Posted on 04/12/2023 9:13:18 AM PDT by Twotone
Ultra-violet light has revealed a hidden fragment of a Syriac Christian New Testament translation dating back 1,750 years, according to a study published by the Journal Of New Testament Studies.
Grigory Kessel, a medievalist from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, was able to decipher a lost fragment of the Gospels that had been written in Syriac text 1,750 years ago. Because parchment was scarce in the Middle East at the time, manuscripts were often erased and reused. By using UV light on a 6th century manuscript, Kessel was able to uncover one of the earliest translations of the New Testament thought to have been erased 1,300 years ago, according to Phys.org.
The foundations of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, “can be traced back to the very dawn of Christianity” when followers of Jesus Christ were dubbed Christians in the city of Antioch. “The tradition of Syriac Christianity knows several translations of the Old and New Testaments,” Kessel explained, according to the outlet.
The discovery of the hidden text, an Old Syriac translation of the New Testament, is significant because “until recently, only two manuscripts were known to contain the Old Syriac translation of the gospels,” Kessel told the outlet. As American biblical scholar Bruce Metzger reported in 1977, ‘[e]xcept for the Sinaitic and Curetonian manuscripts no other copy of the Gospels in the Old Syriac version has been identified with certainty,” according to the Journal of New Testament Studies.
The Syriac translation uncovered by Kessel is believed to have been written “at least a century” before the oldest Greek translations of the New Testament.
“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 told Phys.org.
“This discovery proves how productive and important the interplay between modern digital technologies and basic research can be when dealing with medieval manuscripts,” Rapp continued.
When do we get to see the translation? There’s been a lot of news, but I have yet to find what it actually says.
It will say what all other manuscripts say. Jesus died for our sins because the Father accepted that perfect sacrifice. Amen
What this tells us can corroborate dating for early copies of the New Testament which can be dated no later than around this time.
Mind you that is, “translated copies,” not when the original was first written.
I wonder if it was actually a fragment from the Diatessaron.
If you go to phys.org site and follow the links to the New Testament Studies publication you see its not even two pages. A fragment estimated to be 0.6% of the New Testament. Not a lot to read. What the NTS pub article presents in translation is not a too different translation (word use & arrangement somewhat different context pretty much the same!)from what you are familiar with.
It wouldn’t kill them to at least tell us what section of the New Testament is represented here— is it from the Gospels? From one of St Paul’s or St John’s epistles? What?
OK, I missed that it was from the Gospels, possibly from Matthew since the actual Phys.org site cites a text from Matthew to show the slight differences between the Syriac text and our more familiar Greek texts.
Matt 11:30 to Matt 12:26.
Thank you much for the clarification.
This sentence strikes me as something of a non sequitur -- or, at least, confusingly put -- insofar as the New Testament autographs were themselves written in Greek. This suggests that the writer of this article has a somewhat shaky grasp of her subject. Does she mean "... before the oldest extant Greek manuscripts"?
And even that wouldn't be altogether accurate, since the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, a fragment of the Gospel of John, is understood to be far older than this recently discovered Syriac witness.
Keep your fingers crossed. With luck, they will find an Old Syriac translation of the Pentateuch which is at least a century older than the Hebrew translation.
Original Greek of Matthew chapter 12, verse 1: ‘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.’
Syriac translation: ‘At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath and his disciples became hungry, began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat them.’
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