Michael Langlois

I’ve just published a new inscription mentioning biblical Makkedah. It is written in Aramaic and dated to the fourth century BCE.

It is an “ostracon,” i.e. a pottery shard recycled into writing medium. For more information, you may download the article in PDF format:

Langlois 2012, “Un nouvel ostracon mentionnant la ville biblique de Maqqéda”, Semitica 54, p. 51-63

Christian Palestinian Aramaic (CPA) is often associated to Syriac, from which it inherits its writing; as a result, most printed editions use a Syriac font. But in reality, CPA uses a specific writing, whereas its linguistic characteristics (phonology, morphology, syntax) associate it with other western Aramaic dialects.

For these reasons, a CPA-specific Unicode font was long due. I am pleased to offer a preliminary version of my “CPA Genizah ML” font.
Read the rest of this entry »

Semitica 54 is out!

Monde sémitique et Bible hébraïque, édité par Michael Langlois sous la direction de Thomas Römer. Paris, Maisonneuve, 2012. 250 p., ISBN 978-2-7200-1164-1.

Here is the table of contents:

Première partie : Documents inédits

• Jean-Marie Durand – avec une note de Michaël Guichard. Noms d’équidés dans les textes de Mari. p. 9-18.
• Michaël Guichard. Relations entre Carkémish et Mari : nouveaux fragments. p. 19-32.
• André Lemaire. Quatre nouveaux ostraca paléo-hébreux. p. 33-49.
• Michael Langlois. Un nouvel ostracon mentionnant la ville biblique de Maqqéda. p. 51-63.
• André Lemaire. Trois nouveaux ostraca araméens d’Idumée. p. 65-70.
• Marie-Jeanne Roche. Deux graffiti thamoudiques dans la région de Bayḍāʾ, Pétra. p. 71-79.
• François Bron. Une nouvelle inscription sabéenne du règne de Laḥayʿathat Yarkham, roi de Sabaʾ et dhū-Raydān. p. 81-89.

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!

This is the title of the chapter I published in the new volume dedicated to the Young Hero.
If you find this title intriguing, there’s one thing to do: read the chapter! Here it is in PDF format. Enjoy!

Michael Langlois, « Loin des yeux, non du cœur : l’héroïsme selon Daniel » in Le jeune héros. Recherches sur la formation et la diffusion d’un thème littéraire au Proche-Orient ancien, éd. par Jean-Marie Durand, Thomas Römer et Michael Langlois (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 250), Fribourg, Academic Press / Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011, p. 242-258.