To date, only a small number of texts from the Nag Hammadi library - a collection of 13 Coptic Gnostic books discovered in 1945 in Upper Egypt - have been found in Greek, their original language of composition.
Earlier this year, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin in the US added to the list with their discovery of several fifth- or sixth-century Greek fragments of the First Apocalypse of James, which was thought to have been preserved only in its Coptic translations until now.
"We never suspected that Greek fragments of the First Apocalypse of James survived from antiquity. But there they were, right in front of us," said Smith.
The ancient narrative describes the secret teachings of Jesus to his brother James, in which Jesus reveals information about the heavenly realm and future events, including James' inevitable death.
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With its neat, uniform handwriting and words separated into syllables, the original manuscript was probably a teacher's model used to help students learn to read and write, Smith said.
"The scribe has divided most of the text into syllables by using mid-dots. Such divisions are very uncommon in ancient manuscripts, but they do show up frequently in manuscripts that were used in educational contexts," said Brent Landau, a lecturer in the UT Austin Department of Religious Studies.
It does not appear to be a brief excerpt from the text, as was common in school exercises, but rather a complete copy of this forbidden ancient writing, researchers said.
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