MORE ON THE LOOTED SYRIAC BIBLE: Reuters has a very helpful article. As suspected, the manuscript seems to be later than first suggested, perhaps very much later.

"Ancient" Syriac bible found in Cyprus
Fri Feb 6, 2009 7:57am EST

By Sarah Ktisti and Simon Bahceli

NICOSIA (Reuters Life!) - Authorities in northern Cyprus believe they have found an ancient version of the Bible written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus.

The manuscript was found in a police raid on suspected antiquity smugglers. Turkish Cypriot police testified in a court hearing they believe the manuscript could be about 2,000 years old.

The manuscript carries excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on vellum and loosely strung together, photos provided to Reuters showed. One page carries a drawing of a tree, and another eight lines of Syriac script.

Experts were however divided over the provenance of the manuscript, and whether it was an original, which would render it priceless, or a fake.

Experts said the use of gold lettering on the manuscript was likely to date it later than 2,000 years.

"I'd suspect that it is most likely to be less than 1,000 years old," leading expert Peter Williams, Warden of Tyndale House, University of Cambridge told Reuters.

Turkish Cypriot authorities seized the relic last week and nine individuals are in custody pending further investigations. More individuals are being sought in connection with the find, they said.

[...]

"One very likely source (of the manuscript) could be the Tur-Abdin area of Turkey, where there is still a Syriac speaking community," Charlotte Roueche, Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College London told Reuters.

Pete Williams is well-known to PaleoJudaica readers. The region of Tur-Abdin (Tur Abdin) has come up in PaleoJudaica in connection with Syriac here, here, here, here, and here.

Stories regarding the antiquity of manuscripts is commonplace. One case would be the Yonan Codex, carbon dated to the 12th century which people tried to pass off as earlier.

There's more on the Yonan Codex here.

The rest of the article gives the interesting information that Cambridge scholar JF Coakley thinks the manuscript could be quite late - 15th to 19th century or later. The article includes a photo of a not-very-informative page of the codex.

Background here.