For centuries, fragments of an ancient biblical manuscript existed only as scattered pieces hidden inside the bindings of later books. What appeared to be ordinary reused parchment gradually revealed traces of a much older text, belonging to one of the earliest surviving copies of the Letters of St Paul. A team of scholars has now reconstructed dozens of missing pages from Codex H, a 6th-century manuscript whose original form had been lost after it was taken apart during the Middle Ages. Using advanced imaging methods alongside scientific testing, researchers have been able to recover writing that was no longer physically present, offering a rare glimpse into early Christian manuscript culture, medieval book recycling and the ways ancient readers organised and interpreted biblical texts.
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