Oct 24 2006
Oldest Certified Copy of New Testament
Barry at Southern Knight links to a piece on the Khaburis Manuscript, a copy of a second century (c. 165 AD) New Testament. The copy itself was carbon-dated to be around a thousand years old, making it the oldest known certified copy of the New Testament, sort of. (The oldest extant copy of the New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus, dated to 330-350 AD.)
The Khaburis scribe copied the book in an obscure Aramean script known as Estrangelo.
[Estrangelo] was developed at the School of Edessa (100AD) in order to record the Teachings of Y’Shua. The word, Estrangelo, actually means “to write the Revealed Message.”
The scribe would have been in ancient Nineveh (present-day Mosul, Iraq), according to the Colophon signed by a Bishop of the Church at Nineveh. In the Colophon, the Bishop certified (with his inverted signature and seal) that the Khaburis was a faithful copy of the second century original.
The details of the finding of Khaburis read like an Indiana Jones story.
In the early 1960’s two Americans, Drs. Norman Malik Yonan and Dan MacDougald, Jr., set out to locate an intact Aramaic New Testament. Their hope was to uncover the meaning behind Y’Shua’s Aramaic words, by which he was able to “drive out demons” and cure mental illness. [I don't recall references to "curing mental illness" in Scripture and I'm pretty sure my translation doesn't have 'drive out demons' in quotes. - Steve] Because the Yonan (Family) Codex (c. 400-700 CE) was amended and incomplete, they were interested to see if finding a more intact version of the New Testament could be enlightening. Their journey led them into Mesopotamia, and eventually to a monastery on the River Khabur, a tributary of the River Euphrates, in the mountainous region of northern Syria, and southern Turkey, a region, populated to this day, with Aramaic-speaking Christians. It was here, at this monastery on the River Khabur, that the Khaburis Codex had been treasured for centuries. At the monastery, they spent time with a centenarian monk, who was able to help them to understand some of the meanings. (Read more here.)
October 25th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Very interesting stuff.
October 25th, 2006 at 15:28 pm
If you brought this to the Antiques Roadshow, it would probably be valued at about $1,000. If you bring a coke sign from the 1920’s in mint condition it would probably for for $10,000. Go figure.
October 31st, 2006 at 20:42 pm
Wow. Very interesting. I wonder if the complete translation of Estrangelo is known? IOW, will a translation into English of the complete Khaburis Manuscript be forthcoming?