Michael Langlois

After years of silence, Semitica is back!

Semitica was created in 1948 by the Intitute of Semitic Studies of the University of Paris, with a board including R. Blachère, A. Dupont-Sommer, Ch. F. Jean, J. Nougayrol, and Ch. Virolleaud, its chairman. In 1973, the Institute was transferred to the College of France; Semitica was regularly published until the 2000s, when it slowed down.
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I was on yesterday’s MaCasbah.net TV show, where Saïd Oujibou interviewed me on the authenticity of Scriptures.

We addressed such questions as the birth of the Bible, the selection of the books that compose it, or the presence of variant readings in the earliest biblical manuscripts. Here is the full interview, which starts at 07:24:

Judaism, followed by Christianity and Islam, is often associated with the birth of monotheism. But is it really the case? Didn’t monotheism appear earlier? On the other hand, is the Bible really monotheistic? What do the earliest manuscripts reveal?

If you want to know more, come

Friday, March 16, 2010 at 8:30 PM

For a conference on

The Birth of Monotheism

This conference is organized by the Lions Club Montigny les 3 Villages, and will take place at Ferme du Manet, 61 avenue du Manet, 78180 Montigny-le-Bretonneux. For more information and booking, please visit the Lions Club website.

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:
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The invention of writing profoundly changed mankind’s relation to the divine. It enabled religions to develop and adopt sacred Scriptures, with a varied status in different places or eras.
This relationship between writing and Scriptures will be the focus of a conference entitled:

Origin of Writing—Origin of Scriptures

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 8:15 PM, Robertsau Protestant Parish, 86 rue Boecklin, 67000 Strasbourg

We will also discuss the “religions of the book,” and especially the relationship of various Jewish and Christian communities to the “Bible.”