UV light reveals hidden, never-before-seen version of the Gospel of Matthew on ancient parchment

two pages of hand written text written in a flowing font. the pages are tinted blue by the light — Ultraviolet photography revealed a hidden text containing part of the Gospel of Matthew written in Old Syriac. (Image credit: Image courtesy of Grigory Kessel)

A historian studying a text in the Vatican has discovered a hidden fragment of the Gospel of Matthew, written in Old Syriac, that differs from what is seen today in the Bible.

The alternate version of the gospel was revealed using ultraviolet (UV) photography. As parchment was scarce in the Middle Ages, scribes often reused parchments, writing over older texts, researchers said in a statement.

The most recent text on the parchment is written in Georgian, and there is an earlier text underneath it written in Greek. But when Grigory Kessel, a scholar who studies Syriac with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, examined UV images provided by the Vatican library, he found yet another layer hidden beneath the Greek text.

The Old Syriac text contains part of Matthew 12:1. Kessel speculated that someone copied the verse onto the parchment during the sixth century. Based on the language, Kessel estimates that the original may have been produced in the third century.

Today the passage 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," the statement noted. However, the recently discovered Old Syriac text says the disciples "began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat them."