HOUBIGANT, CHARLES-FRANÇOIS. – Exegete and Orientalist, born in Paris in 1686, died there on 31 October 1783. In 1704 he entered the Congregation of the Oratory. After teaching at Juilly, Marseille, and Soissons, he was summoned to Paris in 1722. Having subsequently abandoned teaching because of the loss of his hearing, H. continued his preferred studies of textual criticism and biblical exegesis.
He knew Hebrew exceptionally well, but held peculiar ideas about that language which diminished the effectiveness of his teaching. H. displayed great ability in textual criticism, but often allowed himself to be guided by a fondness for conjectures, although these were not always arbitrary. In studying the text of the Pentateuch, he assigned excessive importance to the Samaritan text. The originality and also the boldness of his ideas gained him no few enemies, who persisted in their opposition, preventing the printing of several manuscripts left at his death. Nevertheless, there are still exegetes today who attach considerable importance to H.’s conjectures (cf., for example, A. Condamin, Le livre de Jérémie, Paris 1920).
His principal works are: Racines hébraïques sans points-voyelles (Paris 1732); Psalmi Hebraici mendis quam plurimis expurgati (Leiden 1748); Prolegomena in S. Scrip-
turam (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., there 1753).