PRAT, FERDINAND. - Exegete, b. at La Préterie (Aveyron, France) on 10 Feb. 1857, d. at Toulouse on 4 Aug. 1938. Having entered the Society of Jesus in 1876, he studied Oriental languages and theology at Beirut (Lebanon), in Rome at the Gregorian University, where his teachers were E. Gismondi and R. Cornely, in England and in Paris.
From 1893 he taught Sacred Scripture in the scholasticates of his Order, until in Jan. 1903 Leo XII called him to Rome as one of the first forty consultors of the "Cardinalitial Commission for the Promotion of Biblical Studies," intending to make use of him also to prepare the creation of a Biblical Institute. There he remained until 1907, when he was appointed professor of New Testament exegesis at the Oriental Faculty founded in Beirut (1907-1909); afterward he devoted himself to the publication of his works, except for the interruption of the war of 1914-18, during which he was a military chaplain, and five years of biblical teaching in the scholasticate of Enghien (Belgium, 1919-25).
A most solid exegete, of very vast erudition, of wisely progressive views, he played an important part in the controversies surrounding the "Biblical Question"; he remains, however, principally one of the pioneers of biblical theology in the Catholic field and as such exercised a very great influence. Besides very many articles in various journals and encyclopedias (Etudes, Recherches de science religieuse, Dictionnaire de la Bible and its Supplément), he wrote: La Bible et l'histoire, 1904 (Italian trans., La Bibbia e la storia, Rome 1906, and German); Le Code du Sinaï. Sa genèse et son évolution (Paris 1904); Origène. Le théologien et l'exégète (ibid. 1907); La théologie de St Paul (2 vols., Paris 1908 and 1912; 8th ed. revised 1924; Italian trans. Turin 1922, and English); St Paul (Paris 1922); Jésus-Christ. Sa Vie, sa doctrine, son oeuvre (2 vols., ibid. 1933; Italian trans. Florence 1945).
Bibliography
Stanislaw Lyonnet