One of Oldest Manuscripts of New Testament : Photo Technique Renews Ancient Gospels Text

One of the oldest manuscripts containing the New Testament Gospels is only faintly visible because the ink was scraped off and the parchment re-used. It is also closely guarded by monks in a remote Sinai Peninsula monastery.

But a pair of American scholars revealed this week that they were allowed to photograph the document with advanced techniques that made the underlying text “pop out” visibly. The USC and Princeton scholars said they may obtain further confirmation of its contents through computer-image enhancement.

The text is Syriac Sinaiticus 30, written sometime between AD 350 and 420. It was discovered and painstakingly read in 1892 by Agnes Smith Lewis of Great Britain at the same monastery where the 364-page manuscript is still kept.

‘Exceedingly Important’

“This is an exceedingly important manuscript,” said James H. Charlesworth, professor of New Testament language and literature at Princeton Theological Seminary.

It contains a number of interesting variant readings, Charlesworth said. Like two better-known Greek manuscripts, it shows the Gospel of Mark ending at Chapter 16, Verse 8, without the disciples seeing the risen Jesus, a scene found in other texts of Mark. Also, its Gospel of Matthew has the Magi saying they saw Jesus’ star “from the east” rather than “in the east”--an apparently unique reading in the Nativity story.

“But the importance (of this manuscript) has not been acknowledged except in very special circles,” Charlesworth said. This was because scholars could not easily check the accuracy of Lewis’ transcriptions or decipher the writing from three earlier attempts to photograph the manuscript, he said.

After eight years of negotiations with the monks of St. Catherine Monastery of Mt. Sinai, Charlesworth got permission this year to photograph the pages. Last July, linguist-photographer Bruce Zuckerman of USC and his brother Ken accompanied Charlesworth to the monastery, a six-hour drive from Cairo.

Bring Out Images

The Zuckerman brothers tried a variety of lighting, film and filters during the first two days. They found that by using ultraviolet light and a yellow filter that they could get the underlying letters to stand out in sharp images.

“The ultraviolet light stimulated the molecules of the carbon-based ink in the leather manuscript,” Bruce Zuckerman said. The scholar directs the West Semitic Research Project at USC’s School of Religion and did his Ph.D. dissertation on one of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Zuckerman and Charlesworth also said they plan to contract for computer enhancement of the photographs, the same technique used to eliminate extraneous elements from photographs made by unmanned space probes. The computer would print only the light-toned writing and eliminate the darker script--a treatise on the lives of female saints written in the late 8th Century.

More important, Zuckerman said, the combination of good photography and computer image enhancement might be crucial when applied to other projects, especially where scrolls or manuscripts are deteriorating.

Another Project

Zuckerman also is involved in a massive Princeton University Press project headed by Charlesworth to publish a complete set of Dead Sea Scroll translations. Zuckerman, aided by his brother, will re-photograph the scrolls and fragments as required. “Almost all of the scrolls pictures were done with infrared film and the focus is often bad,” he said.

Charlesworth indicated that the rapport he was able to establish with Archbishop Damianos and the Holy Council at the Sinai monastery may lead to permission to study thousands of other manuscripts housed there.

“These Greek-speaking monks preserve a unique tradition,” Charlesworth said. But they had also been victimized in the past. A famous Greek manuscript of the Gospels, Codex Sinaiticus, disappeared from the monastery in the 19th Century and later showed up in Europe.

“In the old days, people would take manuscripts and push the monks aside. We need to include them and share any financial benefits with them,” Charlesworth said.

Traveled by Camel

The biblical scholar also expressed admiration for Lewis, the discoverer of Syriac Sinaiticus 30, who traveled six times--by camel--to the monastery to study and transcribe the text.

“It’s nevertheless important to move from guesswork to clarity,” Charlesworth said. He said he expects that the current study will confirm 90% or more of the readings, but that even a 1% correction would be significant.