VOSTÉ, JACQUES MARIE

Scripture scholar, b. Bruges, Belgium, May 3, 1883;d. Rome, Feb. 24, 1949. He entered the Dominican Order in 1900 and was ordained in 1906. After studying under Ladeuze and Van Hoonacker at Louvain, he went (1909) to the École biblique in Jerusalem. Upon obtaining the licentiate in Scripture in 1911, he was appointed to the faculty of the Angelicum (Rome). In 1929 he became a member of the Biblical Commission and was also consultor to several Oriental Congregations. An excellent pedagoque and endowed with great linguistic ability, he wrote on a wide variety of scriptural subjects. A Festschrift in his honor [ Angelicum 20 (1943)] features a bibliography of his works complete up to that year; it covers 158 items. Best known are his De Scripturarum veritate (1924), De synopticorum mutua relatione et dependentia (1928), Studia Ioannea (2d ed. 1930), Studia Paulina (2d ed.1941), De Passione et morte Iesu Christi (1937), and two volumes of Parabolae selectae (2d ed. 1933). In 1939 he was named Secretary of the Biblical Commission. The three outstanding events that occurred during his term of office were the encyclical divino afflante spiritu (1943), the new translation of the Psalter (1945), and his own Letter to Cardinal Suhard (Jan. 16, 1948) concerning the Pentateuch and the literary forms of Genesis 1 to 11. He also edited two volumes of a Syriac text of Theodore of Mopsuestia in CSCO (1940).

Bibliography: r. t. a. murphy, "The Very Reverend James Vosté, OP," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 11 (1949) 121–125; "James Marie Vosté, OP, STM, SScrD," Homiletic and Pastoral Review 49.2 (1949) 526–528.

[r. t. a. murphy]