[ASTRUC JEAN]: (1684-1766) French professor of medicine, author of the first great treatise on syphilis and venereal diseases. An unsigned hardback 8vo edition of Conjectures sur les memoires originaux don't il paroit que Moyse s'est servi pour composer le Livre de la Genese, First Edition published by Chez Fricx, Brussels, 1753 (actually Cuvelier, Paris, 1753), the French text including Reflexions preliminaires, Le Livre de la Genese, Le Livre de l'Exode, Remarques sur la distribution de Livre de la Genese en different Memoires and Tables des matieres. With an ownership signature and date, 20^th March 1859, to the front free endpaper and an ink annotation in an unidentified hand opposite the title page, 'It is stated in Horne's Introduction to the critical study and knowledge of the Holy Scriptures….that this book is by M. Astruc - Astruc was a physician, a Roman Catholic: he died 1766…..'. With marbled endpapers and the front board detached (although still present) and with five raised bands to the spine. Some overall age wear, about G

 

Astruc's anonymously published book played a fundamental part in the origins of critical textual analysis of works of the Bible. The physician was the first to try to demonstrate, by using the techniques of textual analysis that were commonplace in studying the secular classics, the theory that Genesis was composed based on several sources or manuscript traditions, an approach now called the documentary hypothesis.