A 1,500-year-old text recording a section of Psalm 86, also known as ‘a prayer of David’, has been discovered in what was a monastery 11 miles southeast of Jerusalem in the West Bank. The text is written in Koine Greek, a language often used in early copies of the New Testament. It was inscribed on a building block located on the floor of the monastery and has a cross drawn on it. The text reads: “Jesus Christ, guard me, for I am poor and needy,” which is incorrect.
However, the original lines of the psalm read: “Hear me, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Guard my life, for I am faithful to you.”
While the writer wrote in Greek, his text contained grammatical errors, suggesting that the writer’s native tongue was a Semitic language. The ancient monastery is located at the site of Hyrcania and was built on the remains of a 2,100-year-old fortress constructed by the Hasmoneans, a dynasty of Jewish rulers that controlled the region at the time. The monastery was built in 492 CE. At that time, the area was part of the Byzantine Empire, which controlled lands stretching from the Balkans to Egypt. In 635
CE, the Rashidun Caliphate, which was Islamic, conquered the region but the monastery kept operating.