The book is now a palimpsest, a manuscript with a layer of text written over an earlier scraped- or washed-off text (see What is a Palimpsest?). For centuries the monk's prayer book is used in ...

The Bible study, conducted by Grigory Kessel from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, involves a double palimpsest. This is a type of overwriting done on manuscripts that were first carefully erased.