Jean Astruc (1684-1766), scholar
Jean Astruc (1684-1766) was a French scholar.
Biography
Jean Astruc was a renowned professor of medicine at Montpellier and Paris. He was also attracted by problems of biblical criticism. In order to defend the Mosaic authenticity of the Book of Genesis, he identified four documents (or Memoirs) which he claimed Moses wrote and were then combined into a single work by a later editor. Astruc was the first scholar to argue what would become known as the Documentary Hypothesis.