A scientist examining texts within the vatican library has found hidden text underneath an over 1500 year old text.
Grigory Kessel, a historian with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, announced the discovery earlier this year in an academic journal published by Cambridge University Press.
Using ultraviolet photography to see earlier text under three layers of words written on palimpsest an ancient manuscript that people used to write over other words often leaving traces of the original text behind.
Palimpsest was used in ancient times due to the scarcity of parchment paper. Words were written over existing text repeatedly until the existing layers of words underneath were covered.
Kessel said the existing text was a previously unseen version of chapter 12 in the book of Matthew that was originally part of the Syriac translations of the Bible, over 1500 years ago.
The manuscript offers researchers a unique gateway to understand the earliest phases of the Bible's textual evolution. Some differences in text are shown from the modern version based on the original Greek version of Matthew 12:1 (commonly used for translations). The newly discovered Syriac version is slightly different, saying “..began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat them.”
