Eagle Eyed Scholar Discovers A Rare Manuscript With Hidden Bible Text Under The Quran (Video)

A rare manuscript has become a unique one thanks to the eagle eyes of a French scholar. Dr. Eléonore Cellard noticed that there was barely visible text beneath an 8th century copy of holy scripture of the Qur’an. And that new information may have influenced bidding when it was sold at an auction – the text brought in almost five times the asking price!

The Guardian reports Dr. Cellard came across the Qur’an fragment while she was searching the catalogue of Christie’s auction house for a palimpsest (a manuscript page which has text scraped or washed off it so that it can be reused for another document) which they sold a decade ago. What she found instead was a vellum page of Arabic script covering Coptic writing. When Cellard contacted Christie’s, they told her the Islamic scribe had re-used a page for his holy writing by covering over text from the Old Testament’s Book of Deuteronomy.

Fragment of the rare manuscript sold by Christie’s. (Christie’s)

Christie’s specialist Romain Pingannaud reflected on the discovery,