The discovery containing portions of the Gospel of Matthew which are said to be the only known “remnant of the fourth manuscript that attests to the Old Syriac version” of the Gospels.
The researchers used ultraviolet photography to find the ancient translation hidden underneath three layers of text.
The study, published last month in the journal New Testament Studies, features an interpretation of Mattew 11:30 to Matthew 12:26, originally translated as part of the Old Syriac translations nearly 1,500 years ago.
According to the British Library, Syriac was a dialect of Eastern Aramaic used by the Church in Syria and several countries in the Middle East from the first century until the Middle Ages. Although it was written in the same alphabet as Hebrew, the Syriac language has its own unique characters.
The study concluded that the book was produced no later than the sixth century.
The Austrian Academy of Sciences said the discovered text was made in the third century and copied in the sixth century. More than 1,000 years ago, a scribe in ancient Israel erased a book of the Gospel inscribed with Syriac text to reuse it, as the parchment was a scarce resource in the desert in the Middle Ages and was often reused.