Jean Astruc

Jean Astruc (Sauves, Auvergne, March 19, 1684 - Paris, May 5, 1766) was a famous 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 conclusively demonstrate—using the techniques of textual analysis that were commonplace in studying the secular classics— that Genesis was composed based on several sources or manuscript traditions, an approach that was still cautiously being called the documentary hypothesis in the late 19th century.

Reference

• J. Doe, "Jean Astruc (1694-1766): a biography and bibliography," Journal of the History of Medicine vol. 15, (1960) pp.184-97
• Jean Astruc, Conjectures sur la Génèse, 2003. critical edition with introduction and notes by Pierre Gibert.