Just unearthed: A 1750-year-old 'lost' section of the Bible's New Testament

While one of these is now kept in the British Library in London, another was discovered as a palimpsest in St. Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai. The fragments from the third manuscript were recently identified during the "Sinai Palimpsests Project."

What does it say?

In the Vatican Library manuscript, Grigory Kessel used ultraviolet photography to identify the tiny manuscript fragment as the third layer of text, or double palimpsest. It is currently thought of as the fourth textual witness.

The fragment provides a unique window into the very early stage of the history of the textual transmission of the Gospels because it is the only known piece of the fourth manuscript that attests to the Old Syriac version.

While the original Greek of Matthew chapter 12, verse 1 says: "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," the Syriac translation says: "[...] began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat them."

The finding was published in New Testament Studies.

Study abstract:

Vat. iber. 4, a membrum disjectum of the manuscript Sin. geo. 49, contains on two of its folios the Syriac Gospel text as the lowest layer (scriptio ima) within a double palimpsest. Comparison with known Syriac versions of the extant text – Matt 11.30–12.26 – shows that the text represents the Old Syriac version, and is particularly akin to the Curetonianus (Syc). On palaeographic grounds, the original Gospel manuscript can be dated to the first half of the sixth century. The fragment is so far the only known vestige of the fourth manuscript witness to the Old Syriac version.