Vita gazette – Experts say a papyrus fragment recently deciphered by historians could be the oldest record of Jesus’ childhood.

Historians at Humboldt University announced that the fragment, dating back 1,600 years, has been stored in a university library in Hamburg, Germany. The historians claim that what they have deciphered is part of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a Christian text not included in the Bible but is part of a collection of texts called the Apocrypha that would have been widely shared around the Middle Ages. The Thomas Gospel details Jesus’ life as a child before his public ministry.

The translation of this unique fragment, measuring around 11 by 5 centimetres and containing the remains of 13 lines in Greek letters, is believed to be from the fourth or fifth century in Egypt. The university stated this discovery is significant for the research field, as the earliest version of this gospel was a codex from the 11th century.

Lajos Berkes, from Germany’s Institute for Christianity and Antiquity at Humboldt University in Berlin, and Gabriel Nocchi Macedo, a professor at the University of Liège in Belgium, studied the document that had previously been ignored because scholars did not see it as necessary. “It was thought to be part of an everyday document, such as a private letter or a shopping list because the handwriting seems so clumsy,” Berkes said in the news release. “We first noticed the word Jesus in the text. Then, by comparing it with numerous other digitised papyri, we deciphered it letter by letter and quickly realised that it could not be an everyday document.” The university noted that new technology helped these experts decipher the language of the fragment and compare it to other early Christian texts. The few words on this ancient fragment recount what is said to be a miracle Jesus performed as a young boy, bringing figures of clay birds to life. Macedo and Berkes noted in the news release that they believe the text was created as a writing exercise in a school or monastery, which they said would explain its clumsy handwriting and irregular lines.