(RNS) — An international research team has recovered 42 lost pages from Codex H, a sixth-century Greek New Testament manuscript of St. Paul’s letters, using multispectral imaging and carbon dating.
The new discovery, led by Garrick Allen, a professor of divinity and biblical criticism at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, offers insight into how early Christians read and understood Scripture — and provides a point of connection for contemporary Christians.
Monks annotated the letters of St. Paul with poems, prayers and reflections at the remote Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece. Codex H is also one of the earliest-known examples of the Euthalian Apparatus, a system of chapter lists and headings to organize Paul’s letters, relied on long before the chapter and verse system used today.
“We mark up our own Bibles or make annotations or think about the complexities of these texts that were part of a much longer tradition of people who have been doing this same activity for 2,000 years,” Allen told RNS in an interview Monday (April 27), after the university announced the discovery days earlier.
Among the findings, Allen said, was a small Byzantine poem written in the margins.
“It’s both serious and silly at the same time,” he said. “It says something like, ‘let Plato and …