A team of researchers successfully pieced together 42 pages of a manuscript from a document containing copies of the apostle Paul’s letters.
Professor Garrick Allen from the University of Glasgow led a team of international academics to recovering the pages from Codex H, an anthology of Paul’s letters dating to the 6th century, according to an April 24announcementfrom the school.
Codex H was disassembled at at the Great Lavra Monastery on Mount Athos, Greece, sometime in the 13th century.
The pages were then reused as binding material for other manuscripts.
But Allen’s team discovered that the 42 pages from the document included ancient chapter lists, scribal insights, and medieval recyclings.
An international team of academics led by Grantee Garrick Allen of@UofGlasgowhas successfully recovered 42 lost pages from one of the world’s most important early New Testament manuscripts: Codex H.https://t.co/tVwv8LF0LV
— Templeton Religion Trust (@TempletonRelig)April 27, 2026
“The breakthrough came from an important starting point: we knew that at one point, the manuscript was re-inked,” Allen explained in the announcement.
“The chemicals in the new ink caused ‘offset’ damage to facing pages, essentially creating a mirror image of the text on the opposite leaf — sometimes leaving traces several pages deep, barely visible to the naked eye but very clear with latest imaging techniques.”
The researchers used “multispectral imaging to process images of the extant pages, in order to recover ‘ghost’ text that no longer physically exists, effectively retrieving multiple pages of information from every single physical page.”
Source: VidNews » Feed
