A few broken lines of ancient writing may preserve a lost account of Christianity’s most extraordinary claims.
Researchers have deciphered a roughly 1,600-year-old Christian manuscript that they believe describes Jesus’ death, descent into the underworld and return through his resurrection.
Written in Greek, the fragment measures just two by three inches and was held among unpublished papyri in the Austrian National Library.
Researchers have deciphered a roughly 1,600-year-old Christian manuscript that they believe describes Jesus’ death, descent into the underworld and return through his resurrection
The team’s tentative translation includes references to someone who ‘died’ and a figure who ‘descended’ and apparently ‘ascended again,’ although missing letters leave parts of the wording uncertain.
Amphilochios Papathomas and Marianna Thoma, of the University of Athens in Greece, believe the passage concerns Jesus and could belong to a Christian work that did not survive through medieval copying.
Their analysis favors a fourth- or fifth-century date, placing the manuscript hundreds of years after the crucifixion but within the ancient Christian world.
They suggested it may preserve a sermon, possibly written by a church father or an Egyptian religious leader, although a hymn or another religious composition remains possible.
…According to a longstanding Christian tradition, Jesus entered the realm of the dead before his resurrection and freed the righteous who had died before him.
The researchers supported their interpretation by comparing the wording with passages attributed to Eusebius and with Christian hymns describing the Savior descending into the regions of death.
