UV photography now indicates it’s from the Syriac translation

In 1977, Bruce Metzger reported that the Sinaitic and Curetonian manuscripts were the only known copies of the Gospels in the Old Syriac version. [i]

However, in 2016, Sebastian Brock discovered the extant part of a third manuscript based on multi-spectral images produced by the Sinai Palimpsests Project. [ii]

Six folios of a Gospel manuscript were found in Sin. syr. M37N, with another seventeen and a half folios identified in Sin. syr. M39N. According to Brock, the Gospel manuscript dates back to the 6th century. [iii]

Recently, a researcher from the Austrian Academy of Sciences discovered an essential additional piece of New Testament history – a tiny manuscript fragment of the Syriac translation. It was produced in the 3rd century and copied in the 6th century. [iv]

The segment contained Matt 11.30–12.26 in the Old Syriac version and was identified using ultraviolet photography. The discovery of this fragment is a critical contribution to the jigsaw puzzle of New Testament history and is one of the oldest textual witnesses of the Gospels. [v]

Parchment was scarce in the desert in the Middle Ages, so manuscripts were often erased and reused. About 1,300 years ago, a scribe in Palestine took a book of the Gospels inscribed with a Syriac text and erased it. A medievalist from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) has now made the missing words on this layered manuscript, a so-called palimpsest, legible again. [v]

The small manuscript fragment, now considered the fourth textual witness, was identified as the third layer of text in the Vatican Library manuscript, i.e., double palimpsest. The fragment is the only known remnant of the fourth manuscript that attests to the Old Syriac version, offering a unique gateway to the very early phase in the history of the textual transmission of the Gospels. [vi]

The Syriac translation was produced at least a century before the oldest Greek manuscripts that have survived, including the Codex Sinaiticus. This discovery highlights the importance of the interplay between modern digital technologies and basic research when dealing with medieval manuscripts. [vi]

Kessel asserts that the Syriac translation discovered in the Vatican library manuscript is older than the earliest Greek version of the Christian Testaments by at least 100 years. This includes the Codex Sinaiticus, believed to have been authored in the mid-fourth century and is the earliest surviving complete copy of the Christian New Testament. Nonetheless, manuscripts containing the Syriac translation that have survived are relatively recent, dating back to the 6th century. [vii]

References

[i] Bruce M. Metzger,The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations(Oct. 1977)

[ii] Sebastian P. Brock,Two hitherto unattested passages of the Old Syriac Gospels in palimpsests from St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai(2016)

[iii] Grigory Kessel,Two (Palimpsest) Fragments of Sin. geo. 49 and Their Four Syriac Undertexts(Dec. 14, 2022)

[iv] Grigory Kessel,A New (Double Palimpsest) Witness to the Old Syriac Gospels (Vat. iber. 4, ff. 1 & 5)(Mar. 8, 2023)

[v]Id.

[vi]Id.

[vii]Id.