1500 Year Old Bible Claims Jesus Christ was Not Crucified, Vatican in Awe: Facts

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1500 Year Old Bible Claims Jesus Christ was Not Crucified – Vatican in Awe

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The Vatican has allegedly issued an official request to examine a 1,500-year-old Bible that has been held in Turkey for the past 12 years.

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Analysis:

These messages spreading heavily through social media, news outlets and other internet platforms talk about the purported discovery of a 1500 year old Bible that says Jesus Christ was not Crucified. It is also said that the Vatican is in awe with these claims and has allegedly requested to examine the Bible that has been held in Turkey for the past 12 years. Let us analyze the details and facts about them.

About the ‘Bible’ Discovery

On 23 Feb 2012, NationalTurk.com reported that a 1500 year-old Syriac Bible was found in Ankara, Turkey that has put Vatican in shock! It is said that the Bible was seized from a gang of smugglers in a Mediterranean-area operation in 2000. The Turkish police testified in a court hearing and believed the manuscript in the bible could be about 1500 to 2000 years old. After being held in Turkey for 12 years, the Bible was reportedly transferred to the Ankaran Ethnography Museum in 2012, with a police escort.

The reason why the manuscript gained so much significance is because it carries excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on leather, with lines of Syriac script with Aramaic dialect – the native language of Jesus that was once spoken widely across the Middle East and Central Asia. Ertugrul Gunay, the Turkish culture and tourism minister said that the book could be an authentic version of the Gospel, which was suppressed by the Christian Church because of its strong parallels with the Islamic view of Jesus.

Gunay also said that the Vatican, under Pope Benedict XVI had made an official request to examine the re-discovered Bible – a controversial text that Muslims claim is an addition to the original gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John that was suppressed. The handwritten gold-lettered Gospel, written on animal hide is believed to be worth $28 million.

What’s in it

According to the ‘Gospel’, Jesus was not God himself, but a human being and the Messenger of God, similar to the Islamic view of Jesus. The book also rejects the Jesus Crucification, and also says that Jesus predicted the coming of the Prophet Muhammad. In one version of the gospel, Jesus is said to have told a priest: How shall the Messiah be called? Muhammad is his blessed name.

Against the Claims

Despite the interest in the newly re-discovered ‘Bible’, experts have divided opinion about the manuscript, whether it was an original or a fake. Some believe the book is a fake and only dates back to the 16th century. Talking about the book, Theology professor Omer Faruk Harman told Today’s Zaman, “Muslims may be disappointed to see that this copy does not include things they would like to see and it might have no relation with the content of the Gospel of Barnabas“. He said that the copy in Ankara might have been written by a follower of St Barnabas, and that a scientific scan of it may be the only way to know how old it really is.

An article on website of Assyrian International News Agency says there are certain elementary spelling errors in the book that monks are unlikely to make. Further, it is said that the writing is in Modern Assyrian that was standardized in the 1840s, thereby calling it not authentic. Then there are some studies that say the gospel attributed to St. Barnabas could be written by a European Jew in the Middle Ages who was quite familiar with the Quran and the Gospels, who for reasons that remain unknown, has mixed facts from here and there. So, like mentioned by professor Omer Faruk Harman, a scientific scan of the said Bible may be the only way to know how old it really is.