Lost New Testament Pages recovered after 1500 years
Researchers from the University of Glasgow were able to identify the words of a 6th century manuscript thanks to ‘ghost imaging’.
Between the 10th and 13th centuries, the monks a the Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece, sporadically broke down a 6th century manuscript and reused its pages as binding material and flyleaves for other texts. In time ‘Codex H’ effectively disappeared. These new volumes were spread across Europe and it was only through the enterprise of a sharp-eyed 18th century French monk that researchers today have been able to locate the lost folios among libraries in Italy, Greece, Russia, Ukraine and France.
All the same, while the general content of Codex H, which contains a copy of the Letters of St Paul, was generally known, its layout and precise wording seemed irretrievable. Not so. A team of researchers from the University of Glasgow has now successfully recovered 42 previously lost pages from the important early New Testament manuscript. The tool that has made 1,500 year old Greek scripture suddenly visible is multispectral imaging, which allowed researchers to identify traces of ink that are virtually invisible to the naked eye.
The breakthrough arrived when the team, led by the divinity and biblical criticism professor Garrick Allen, realised that at one point in time the manuscript had been re-inked. This meant that chemicals in the reapplied ink had been transferred onto neighbouring leaves. These left what researchers called ‘ghost impressions’ that created a mirror image of the original text.
In partnership with the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library (EMEL), researchers used multispectral imaging to process images of the extant pages, in order to recover ‘ghost’ text that no longer physically exists, effectively retrieving multiple pages of information from every single physical page,’ researchers wrote.
Although the text of the Letters of St Paul itself is already known, the version revealed is organised differently from modern counterparts.
Though only fragments of Codex H are salvageable today, the scholars believe that the original manuscript may have contained hundreds of pages, many of which were re-used and re-purposed as they fell into disrepair. While 19th century collectors in Europe bemoaned this practice, seeing it as barbaric, it has inadvertently led to the survival of texts such as Codex H.
Thanks to Douglas for drawing my attention to this article. The full article and images can be found here:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/medieval-codex-h-new-testament-discovery-2768248