Experts have announced that a manuscript dating back 1,600 years has been recently deciphered and identified as the oldest known record of Jesus Christ’s childhood, according to a news release.
Historians at Humboldt University in Germany have recently announced the discovery of a piece of papyrus containing the earliest surviving copy of the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas,” which has been stored in a university library in Hamburg for decades. According to the experts, the document had “remained unnoticed” until Dr. Lajos Berkes from Germany’s Institute for Christianity and Antiquity at Humboldt University in Berlin, and Professor Gabriel Nocchi Macedo from Belgium’s University of Liรจge, examined and identified it as a text detailing the childhood of Jesus Christ.
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According to Humboldt University, the discovery of this translation marks a significant breakthrough in the research field. Previously, it was widely believed that the earliest existing version of this gospel was a codex dating back to the 11th century.
Berkes and Macedo translated a document that dates back to the 4th and 5th century. While the stories in the document are not part of the Bible, the papyrus includes anecdotes that were frequently shared during the Antiquity and Middle Ages. According to the Gospel of Thomas, the fragment contains a description of a “miracle” performed by Jesus as a child. It recounts how he brought clay figures of birds to life.
According to a news release, researchers confirmed that the gospel was originally written in Greek, as the document was written in this language. The fragment, which contains 13 lines in Greek letters, is said to have originated from late antique Egypt.
According to a news release, the papyrus was overlooked by past researchers who deemed it “insignificant.” However, advancements in technology aided Berkes and Macedo in translating the language on the fragment and comparing it to other early Christian texts.
According to Berkes, the handwriting appeared to be quite clumsy, which led researchers to believe that it was likely part of an everyday document, like a shopping list or a private letter. However, upon closer inspection, they noticed that the word “Jesus” was included in the text. After comparing it to several other digitized papyri, researchers were able to decipher the text letter by letter and came to the realization that this was not an everyday document after all.
According to a news release by Macedo and Berkes, they are of the opinion that the gospel was formulated as part of a writing exercise in either a school or monastery. This, they believe, could be the reason behind the unpolished handwriting and inconsistent lines.
