CONDAMIN, ALBERT. - Jesuit exegete and Orientalist, born at Marseille on 7 Sept. 1862, died on 3 July 1940. He devoted himself chiefly to the study of two problems: the relations between Babylon and the Bible, and the metrical and strophic composition of biblical poems.
On the first subject he wrote the Bulletin des religions babylonienne et assyrienne, begun in Etudes in 1909 and continued from 1910 to 1931 in Recherches de science religieuses; La religione di Babilonia e d'Assiria, in the Storia delle religioni of C. Martindale (Italian trans., Florence 1913); Babylone et la Bible, in DFC, I, cols. 327-390. On the second problem he published various articles in the Revue biblique, of which he was a regular contributor from 1897 to 1910, analysing passages from the prophetic books. In the series directed by P. LAGRANGE, GIUSEPPE LUIGI (v.), Etudes bibliques (Paris), he provided translations and commentaries on Le livre d'Isaïe (1905), Le livre de Jérémie (1920, 3rd ed. 1936), Poèmes de la Bible, avec introduction sur la strophique hébraïque (1933). Noteworthy among his other writings are Jonas, Judith, Prophétisme israélite, in DFC; the Chronique biblique (of the Old Testament), which for 40 years he published in the Revue (pratique d') Apologétique; and two apologetic studies (Voltaire, «le Grand Homme» d'A. Bayet, Paris 1936; A la recherche d'une morale laïque: Les découvertes de M. Bayet, ibid. 1937).