Michael Langlois

My lastest book is out! It is a detailed study of the textual witnesses of Joshua 10: the masoretic Hebrew text, the Septuagint old Greek version and its later recensions, but also a new deciphering of the Hebrew Dead Sea Scroll fragments discovered in Qumran cave 4!

I am then able to offer an original reconstruction of this chapter’s textual history… A journey to the heart of the Bible!

Michael Langlois, Le texte de Josué 10. Approche philologique, épigraphique et diachronique (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 252). Fribourg, Academic Press / Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011. 280 p.

Here is a summary of the book:
Read the rest of this entry »

The course of Old Testament Textual Criticism that I teach at the School of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the Catholic University of Paris starts tomorrow!

This discipline consists in the comparison and evaluation of biblical manuscripts in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin, Syriac, and so on. In what way do they differ? Can we retrieve the original biblical text? Answer: tomorrow at 4 PM!

I have been invited as a jury for the PhD in French and Comparative Literature prepared by Claire Placial at the University of Paris–Sorbonne with the following title:

For a Close History of Translations. Bibliographical, Historical and Linguistic Study of the Translations of Song of Songs Published in French since the Renaissance.

The defense will take place on Friday, December 2, 2011 at 9:00, at the Maison de la Recherche, room D223 (28 rue serpente, 75006 Paris). The defense is public.

Samson, David, Daniel or Gilgamesh are some of the most famous heroes in biblical and mesopotamian literature. These characters are the object of a new book entitled “The Young Hero,” that I edited together with J.-M. Durand and Th. Römer.

To give you a taste, here is the table of contents: Read the rest of this entry »

I will attend the SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) International Meeting, which will take place on July 4-7, 2011 at the famous King’s College, London.

I will speak in a session entitled “Working with Biblical Manuscripts” with a paper on “Working with Biblical Manuscripts: Joshua 10 at Qumran.” I will show how a new decipherment of the oldest fragments of the Book Joshua sheds light on the history of this fabulous text. See you in London!