Chabot, Jean-Baptiste (1860–1947)

Syriac scholar.

Born in Vouvray (Indre-et-Loire, France), J.-B. Chabot entered seminary where he studied Latin and Greek and was ordained as a priest in 1885. He served as vicar in La Chapelle-sur-Loire for 2 years, and was then authorized by his bp. to further his studies in the Catholic University of Louvain, in the field of Oriental Patristics, under the direction of Lamy. He graduated in 1892 with a doctoral thesis on Isḥaq of Nineveh (De S. Isaaci Ninivitae vita, scriptis et doctrina [Paris, 1892]). On his return to Paris, he studied with Rubens Duval under whose direction he prepared the publication of the Chronicle of Zuqnin (Chronique de Denys de Tell-Mahré quatrième partie: Traduction française, texte syriaque [Paris, 1895]) and obtained the diploma of the École Pratique des Hautes Études. From this time on, he devoted his whole life to research in two fields, Semitic epigraphy, mainly Aramaic and Punic, and Syriac studies. In the first, he contributed through the redaction of thousands of notices of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, and he was the main editor of the first four volumes of the Répertoire d’Épigraphie Sémitique ; he published there and elsewhere many new inscriptions. His Choix d’inscriptions de Palmyre (Paris, 1922) is a monograph dedicated to this prestigious city. His work is also very important in North African studies where, in addition to the publication of Punic inscriptions, he explored the new field of Libyan inscriptions and published his important Recueil des Inscriptions Libyques in two fascicules. In Syriac studies, his primary preoccupation was to put sources at the disposal of everyone. On the one hand, the mss.: he published a supplement to the catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris by Zotenberg, and inventories of various mss. collections (Greek patriarchate of Jerusalem , Ambrosian Library in Milan). On the other hand, texts: his editions of Syriac texts are numerous, with Latin translations and short commentaries. To be noted are his Histoire de Mar Jabalaha III (Paris 1895–96), the Synodicon orientale (1902), the Chronique de Michel le Syrien (1899–1924), and La liturgie syriaque attribuée à Saint Maron (Paris 1940). He founded in 1903 and assumed the direction of the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, with sections devoted to Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic texts. He personally contributed several volumes (chronicles, documents on the origin of Miaphysitism, Commentary on the Gospels by Dionysios bar Ṣalibi ). A member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, he achieved a synthesis, Littérature syriaque, which was published in the Bibliothèque catholique des sciences religieuses, Paris, 1934.