Born April 24 1923, Épinal (Vosges). Died September¹ 2004.

Training and professional career

Orientalist : Semitic history and civilizations, history of Semitic religions and biblical studies (exegesis, study of Israelite institutions and ideas, Qumran documents and Old Testament pseudepigrapha), epigraphy (especially Aramaic, Phoenician and Ethiopian), Semitic philology and literature, mythography (Ugarit), archaeology (Ugarit, ancient Ethiopia).

• Lycée de Vesoul
• Lycée Louis le Grand, Paris
• 1944 : École normale supérieure
• 1948 : Agrégé de grammaire
• 1949-1952 : Boarder at the French Institute of Archaeology in Beirut
• 1951 : Graduate of the École pratique des Hautes Études,^Ve section
• 1953-1955 : Member of the French Archaeological Mission to Ethiopia
• 1955-1956 : Director of Comparative Semitic Religions at the École Pratique des Hautes Études,^Ve section
• 1957-1960 : Lecturer in the history of religions at the Protestant Faculty of Theology, University of Strasbourg
• 1964-1968 : Lecturer in Hebrew and the history of the religion of Israel at the Sorbonne
• 1972-1994 : Professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Collège de France
• 1977 : Member of the Institut (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres)
• 1986 : President of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
• Member of the Société asiatique (Paris, of which he was president), the Société des Études juives (president), the Société française d'Histoire des Religions (Paris, general secretary) and the Société des Études renaniennes (Paris, president)

Awards and honors

• Knight of the Légion d'Honneur
• Commander of the National Order of Merit
• Commander of the Order of Academic Palms
• Knight of the Ethiopian Star