ASTRUC, JEAN (1684-1 766), French physician and biblical critic, was born March ig 1684, at Sauve, in Languedoc, and died in Paris, where he was regius professor of medicine, May 5 1766. He published anonymously Conjectures sur les memoires originaux dont it parait que Moyse s'est servi pour composer le livre de la Genese (1753), in which he laid the foundation of modern criti cism of the Pentateuch by pointing out that two main sources can be traced in the book of Genesis.
See Hauck, Realencyk. f. Prot. Theol., vol. ii. p.