The oldest depiction of the Jesus story was found in 1845
The strange story of the Rossano Gospels
Published in
5 min readSep 4, 2024
In 1845, an Italian journalist was traveling in a town in southern Italy. At a cathedral, he noticed an ancient Bible written in silver ink, with purplish pages—and paintings of the Jesus story!
The journalist, Cesare Malpica, wrote about the book. Three decades later, two scholars from Germany announced its existence to the world.
To this day, however, Christians don’t know about the Rossano Gospels, the oldest surviving depiction of the Jesus story.
The cathedral in Rossano still holds the book.
They put it on display, and advertise it. Google’s Arts and Culture site has a page. Scholars write about it, on occasion.
But Christianity ignores the Rossano Gospels. Even scholars of Christianity often don’t know about it. The book makes no “sense.” The religion believes its origins were in poverty, a faith, at first, of slaves and tradespeople.
The purple dye was at the time as expensive as actual gold and silver, and the ink used is actual gold and silver. Enormous wealth…
