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Researchers at Humboldt University made a sensational discovery: they deciphered the oldest manuscript about the childhood of Jesus. The document was previously thought to be a shopping list.
Berlin/Liège – Little is known about Jesus’ childhood. Apocrypha, so-called “hidden” and later even forbidden writings, were not included in the Bible. Nevertheless, some have survived and paint a picture of a hot-tempered boy. Scientists from the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Belgian University of Liège have now created a sensation: They succeeded in a long-preserved papyrus fragment to decipher – with a story about the childhood of Jesus.
Oldest manuscript about Jesus’ childhood discovered – “Of extraordinary interest for research”
The researchers suspect that the text was written just a few hundred years after Jesus’ death. This makes it the oldest known documentation of Jesus’ childhood. “The fragment is of extraordinary interest for researchers,” says papyrus expert Lajos Berkes from the Theological Faculty of Humboldt University in a notice. “Firstly, because we were able to date it to the fourth or fifth century, making it the earliest known copy. Secondly, because we were able to gain new insights into the text’s transmission.” The document was kept in the Hamburg University Library for decades.
The reason why it took so long for someone to make the effort to decipher the sheet of papyrus was because of the style of the document: the writing seemed clumsy, it was written on the back of the papyrus, which at first suggested a shopping list or some other insignificant piece of paper. The scientists now assume that it was a writing exercise in a school or monastery, which would explain the messy writing. “We first noticed the word ‘Jesus’ in the text,” Berkes continues. “Then we deciphered it letter by letter by comparing it with numerous other digitized papyri, and it quickly became clear to us that it could not be an everyday document.”
Sensational discovery from late antiquity: Apocryphal writings
The document is only around eleven by five centimeters in size and contains the remains of 13 lines with around ten letters per line. It is written in Greek and, according to scientists, comes from late antique Egypt. This era begins with the accession to power of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in 284 AD. This makes the manuscript more than half a millennium older than the oldest document about Jesus from the 11th century. Not only the age of the papyrus, but also its content is a minor sensation. Much is known about Jesus’ death and his adult life, but little about his childhood.
The “second miracle” in the Gospel of Thomas is written down on the now deciphered papyrus. Jesus is playing by a river and forms twelve sparrows out of clay. When his foster father Joseph reprimands him because it is the Sabbath, the boy claps his hands instead of answering – and brings the sparrows to life. The story was already known before, but shows a different side of Jesus and is not included in the Bible. In other, partly forbidden stories about his childhood, the boy is described as quick-tempered and even linked to the deaths of other children. Joseph no longer wants to let him out of the house, because “those who provoke his anger are dead”.
Recently, another Scientists find clues to Plato’s tomb in papyri. Elsewhere, artificial intelligence is also helping to decipher papyrus: At the University of Kentucky, for example, computer scientists are using AI to look into papyrus scrolls that would otherwise crumble to dust when opened. A 21-year-old student deciphered the first word and won the $700,000 prize. “Vesuvius Challenge”.
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