A long-lost chapter of the biblical text has been discovered nearly 1,500 years after it was initially written.

According to the study published in the journal New Testament Studies, the previously hidden segment is one of the earliest translations of the gospels.

The medievalist Grigory Kessel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences unearthed the concealed chapter beneath three layers of text using ultraviolet photography.

“The tradition of Syriac Christianity knows several translations of the Old and New Testaments,” Kessel said in a statement. “Until recently, only two manuscripts were known to contain the Old Syriac translation of the gospels.”

One of these lives in London’s British Library and the other was a palimpsest discovered at St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai.

The small manuscript fragment was identified by Kessel using ultraviolet photography as the third layer of text, or double palimpsest, in the Vatican Library manuscript.

Researchers said the revealed text is an interpretation of Matthew 12, originally translated as part of the Old Syriac translations about 1,500 years ago.

They said the fragment is so far the only known remnant of the fourth manuscript that attests to the Old Syriac version, offering a unique gateway to the early phase in the history of the textual transmission of the gospels.

The text also shows differences in the information given from the various translations.

The researchers are yet to reveal a full translation written in ancient Syriac but shared some details, for example, that the Greek version of Matthew 12.1 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”, whereas the Syriac translation reads, “[…] began to pick the heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat them.”

“As far as the dating of the Gospel book is concerned, there can be no doubt that it was produced no later than the sixth century,” scientists assert in the study.

They continued, “Despite a limited number of dated manuscripts from this period, comparison with dated Syriac manuscripts allows us to narrow down a possible time frame to the first half of the sixth century.”

Due to a lack of writing parchment in the region during the period the text was written, pages often had to be reused, resulting in the removal of previous biblical texts.

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