Lost account of Jesus's descent to hell and resurrection uncovered in 1,600-year-old papyrus, researchers suggest

A few broken lines of ancient writing may preserve a lost account of Christianity’s most extraordinary claims.Researchers have deciphered a roughly 1,600-year-old Christian manuscript that they believe describes Jesus’ death, descent into the underworld and return through his resurrection.Written in Greek, the fragment measures just two by three inches and was held among unpublished papyri in the Austrian National Library.The team’s tentative translation includes references to someone who ‘died’ and a figure who ‘descended’ and apparently ‘ascended again,’ although missing letters leave parts of the wording uncertain.Amphilochios Papathomas and Marianna Thoma, of the University of Athens in Greece, believe the passage concerns Jesus and could belong to a Christian work that did not survive through medieval copying.Their analysis favors a fourth- or fifth-century date, placing the manuscript hundreds of years after the crucifixion but within the ancient Christian world.They suggested it may preserve a sermon, possibly written by a church father or an Egyptian religious leader, although a hymn or another religious composition remains possible.If their interpretation is correct, the fragment preserves part of a Christian work that may otherwise have disappeared, offering another glimpse of how ancient believers described Jesus’ victory over death. Researchers have deciphered a roughly 1,600-year-old Christian manuscript that they believe describes Jesus’ death, descent into the underworld and return through his resurrectionPublished online on January 19, 2026, in the journal Tyche, the paper examined the fragment catalogued as P.Vindob. G 29289, a Late Antique Greek papyrus fragment.Its original author remains unknown, as does the precise place where the papyrus was found.The researchers suspect it came from Egypt’s Fayum region or Hermopolis because those locations supplied material to the collection, but the library’s inventories provide no precise origin.Their investigation involved studying the original in Vienna, transcribing the surviving Greek and comparing its handwriting and language with other ancient manuscripts and Christian writings.The most striking interpretation concerns a damaged phrase on the reverse.Translated into English, the researchers’ tentative reading is: ‘… alone (?) he who descended (into Hades) ascended again (?) …’ The words ‘into Hades’ are supplied by the researchers to explain their interpretation, while the final word translated as ‘ascended’ is partly reconstructed. ‘The sense of the passage is probably that only Jesus and no one else went into Hades and returned through his resurrection,’ the researchers wrote, translated from German. The team’s tentative translation includes references to someone who ‘died’ and a figure who ‘descended’ and apparently ‘ascended again,’ although missing letters leave parts of the wording uncertainHades refers here to the realm of the dead, which the authors connect with a Christian tradition describing Jesus’ descent after death.According to a longstanding Christian tradition, Jesus entered the realm of the dead before his resurrection and freed the righteous who had died before him. The researchers supported their interpretation by comparing the wording with passages attributed to Eusebius and with Christian hymns describing the Savior descending into the regions of death.In one passage, Eusebius, an early Christian writer, describes the Savior alone descending into the regions of death, resembling the fragment’s proposed reference to a lone figure who ‘descended.’ Another surviving verb appears to mean ‘swallowed.’The team suggested death was its subject, drawing comparisons with Christian writings that portray death swallowing people but failing to retain or overcome Jesus.Their proposed reading placed the fragment within an established tradition of describing Christ’s victory over death.However, the manuscript does not preserve an uninterrupted narrative of an empty tomb or Jesus appearing alive to his disciples.Its gaps are substantial, and some crucial words have been reconstructed from surviving letters and parallels elsewhere.The papyrus bears three horizontal folds and appears to have broken along the upper two. Near the end of the passage, the scribe squeezed the beginning of the word interpreted as ‘ascended’ against the edge of the sheet, while its continuation is now missing. The researchers reconstructed the proposed ending from the remaining letters and comparisons with other Christian texts. Blank space at the end of the final surviving line suggests the passage may have concluded a section of the original work. The researchers acknowledged other possible restorations, including a word meaning ‘was raised.’The authors also considered a less likely interpretation in which the descent refers to Jesus coming from heaven to live as a human, rather than entering the realm of the dead. The front appears to offer moral guidance, addressing the reader as a ‘wanderer’ and warning against taking the ‘broad road’ while hoping for life.The researchers found a similar warning in a sermon by early Christian preacher John Chrysostom.However, a damaged verb could describe someone walking in the past rather than a command to ‘walk,’ possibly making the passage about Jesus’ own life.Both sides were copied by the same scribe in a carefully executed literary script, according to the team.To estimate its age, they compared its handwriting with examples spanning several centuries, including the Egerton Gospel and other Christian papyri.Although some similarities occur in earlier and later manuscripts, the combined handwriting and linguistic evidence points them toward the fourth or fifth century.The researchers allow a broader date range from the late third through the fifth century, although they favor the fourth or fifth. That estimate concerns the surviving copy, not necessarily the work’s composition.The paper reports no radiocarbon dating.Double slashes dividing the text provide another clue: similar marks occur in Christian manuscripts and hymns, supporting the possibility of a poetic composition.The researchers hope this first scholarly publication will help others identify the original work or locate more pieces of the same papyrus.