Grigory Kessel, a researcher from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, discovered a fragment of the Gospel of Matthew written in Old Syriac. It was found with the use of ultraviolet photography. The gospel text was written in the 6th century, “but then later erased and copied over hundreds of years later,” as read in the note published by Medievalists.net. Kessel’s discovery, described in detail in his
The fragment is an Old Syriac version of the Gospel of Matthew. “The tradition of Syriac Christianity knows several translations of the Old and New Testaments,” Grigory Kessel explains. “Until recently, only two manuscripts were known to contain the Old Syriac translation of the gospels.”
The small fragment reveals a section of the Book of Matthew, from 11:30 to 12:26. It offers some new insights, Kessel claims, into how the Gospels were translated and transmitted.