Jean Astruc (Sauves, Auvergne, 19 March 1684 – Paris, 5 May 1766) was a professor of medicine at Montpellier and Paris, who wrote the first great treatise on syphilis and venereal diseases, and also, with a small anonymously published book, played a fundamental part in the origins of critical textual analysis of works of scripture. Astruc was the first to try to demonstrate — 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 that is called the documentary hypothesis.
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