Michael Langlois

I am going on an epigraphic mission in Switzerland during the second half of July to study a collection of Hebrew ostraca with André Lemaire.

An “ostracon” (plural: ostraca) is a pottery sherd reused (one could say “recycled”) as a cheap writing support (compared to papyrus or leather, for instance). It is a common support in Antiquity, notably for accounting or economical documents.
The study of these Hebrew ostraca will thus expand our knowledge of the life in Ancient Israel—a real treasure!

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!

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 today! 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: today at 1 PM!

Paul-Hubert Poirier has published a review of my book, Le premier manuscrit du Livre d’Hénoch, in Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72 (2010), 799-800. He states that:

The importance of L[anglois]’s book for Enoch studies cannot be overstated

I want to express my deepest gratitude to Paul-Hubert Poirier for his extremely positive review, which I invite you to read in its entirety below:

Read the rest of this entry »

The exhibition on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the National Library of France has been a huge success: 30000 visitors, unanimous press, book out of print before the exhibition even ended…

By the way, a new printing is under way, so that those of you who could not get a copy of the book will soon be able to do so.

In the meantime, here are a few articles from the book, which will help you wait until it’s available again, or perhaps even convince you to get one!
Read the rest of this entry »