VOSTÉ, JACQUES-MARIE. — Exegete and Orientalist, born in Bruges on 3 May 1883, a Dominican from 1900, a priest from 1906, died in Rome on 2 February 1949.
Before obtaining the Magisterium in Sacred Theology, he began his biblical and Oriental studies at the University of Louvain; he continued them for two years at the École biblique in Jerusalem under the direction of Fr. M.-J. LAGRANGE, GIUSEPPE LUIGI (v.), subsequently taking all the examinations required for the doctorate (1920) before the Pontifical Biblical Commission. From 1911 to 1946 he taught biblical exegesis, especially that of the New Testament, at the Pontifical “Angelicum” Institute in Rome. In 1929 he was appointed consultor to the Pontifical Biblical Commission, of which he became secretary in 1939. He was also consultor to the Sacred Congregations for the Oriental Church and for Seminaries and Universities, a member of the Commission for the Codification of Oriental Law, chairman of the Commission for the edition of the Pontificale dei caldei e dei siri di Antiochia, and a member of the Flemish-Belgian Academy of Sciences and Fine Arts.
He wrote very many articles in various journals and numerous works on biblical and Oriental questions (a list comprising 158 items, in Angelicum, 20 [1943], pp. 4–15, dedicated to V. on his sixtieth birthday, and continued [with a further 62 items] until his death, ibid., 26 [1950], pp. 174–78). His principal works are: Comm. in Ep. ad Thessalon. (Rome 1917); Comm. in Ep. ad Eph., (2nd ed., ibid. 1932); De div. inspiratione et veritate S. Scripturae (2nd ed., ibid. 1932); Parabolae Domini nostri (2 vols., 2nd ed., ibid. 1933); Theodori Mopsuesteni commentarius in ev. Johan. ap. (Corpus Script. Christ. Orient., Script. Syri, nos. 115–16, Paris–Louvain 1940); Pontificale iuxta ritum Eccl. Syrorum occident., id est Antiochiae (Vers. latina I. Al. Assemani emendata et notis illustrata, Rome 1940, 1942, 1944).
Pietro Gerardo Duncker