HOUBIGANT, Charles-François. – Exegete and Orientalist, born in Paris in 1686, died there on 31 Oct. 1783. In 1704 he entered the Congregation of the Oratory. After teaching at Juilly, Marseille, and Soissons, he was called to Paris in 1722. Later, having abandoned teaching due to loss of hearing, H. continued his preferred studies in textual criticism and biblical exegesis.
He had an excellent command of Hebrew, but held singular views on the language that diminished the effectiveness of his teaching. H. displayed great skill in textual criticism, though he often allowed himself to be guided by a love for conjecture, even when not entirely arbitrary. In his study of the Pentateuch text, he gave excessive importance to the Samaritan version. The originality and even audacity of his ideas earned him no small number of enemies, who persisted in their opposition and prevented the publication of several manuscripts left at his death. Nevertheless, there are exegetes today who place great value on H.’s conjectures (cf., e.g., A. Condamin, *Le livre de Jérémie*, Paris 1920).
His principal works include: *Racines hebraiques sans points-voyelles* (Paris 1732); *Psalmi Hebraici mendis quam plurimis expurgati* (Leiden 1748); *Prolegomena in S. Scripturam* (Paris 1750); *Conférences de Metz* (Leiden 1750); *Biblia Hebraica cum notis criticis et versione latina nova ad notas criticas facta. Accedunt libri Graeci qui deuterocanonici vocantur, in tres classes distributi* (4 vols., Paris 1753 ff.); *Veteris Testamenti versio nova* (5 vols., ibid. 1753).