Félix-Marie Abel

Félix-Marie Abel (29 December 1878 – 24 March 1953) was a French archaeologist, a geographer, and a professor at the École Biblique in Jerusalem. A Dominican priest, he was one of the most prominent bible scholars in the end of Ottoman era and British Mandate era. His work "remains even today the authority on the Greek sources for Palestine", according to Benedict T. Viviano.

Biography Abel was born in Saint-Uze, in the Drôme department, on 29 December 1878. He was educated at the Preparatory Seminary of Valence. He was ordained on 1 February 1897 at Saint-Maximin. Lagrange had recruited him (and :fr:Raphaël Savignac) to help him get "a clear grasp of physical environment and the cultural framework of the Bible". Abel graduated in 1900. In 1905 he became a professor at the École Biblique teaching Church History, Greek, topography, archaeology, and Coptic; he served there until his death in 1953. Starting in 1906, he served as guide to scriptural tours through Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria. his Géographie de la Palestine (Paris, 1933–1938) treats the political, historical and physical geography from the most remote times until the Byzantine period. ), a theory later discredited by scholarship. The topographical quality of his work was quite influential: according to Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, "The ten maps he prepared have served as the prime, but often unacknowledged, source of much subsequent topographical identification". In 1952 he published Histoire de la Palestine depuis la conquête d'Alexandre jusqu'à l'invasion arabe, a comprehensive history.

With Louis-Hugues Vincent he published a number of works, the most famous of which are the three volumes of topographic-archaeological-historical studies on the city of Jerusalem. They worked together also at the excavations of Emmaus, on research on the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and at the Church of the Nativity. With Savignac he argued that archeological remains beneath the St. Stephen's Basilica, Jerusalem, which houses the École Biblique, were those of the basilica built by Empress Eudocia in the 5th century CE, but not that this was also the site of the stoning of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr.

Bibliography, books Vincent, L.-H., and F.-M. Abel. Jérusalem: Recherches de topographie, d'archéologie et d'histoire Vol. 1, Jérusalem antique. Paris, 1912. Vol. 2 (1st part), Jérusalem nouvelle. Paris, 1914. Vol. 2 (2nd part), Jérusalem nouvelle. Paris, 1922.

Abel, Félix-Marie. Grammaire du Grec biblique suivie d'un choix de Papyrus. Paris, 1927.

Abel, F.-M. Histoire de la Palestine depuis la conquête d'Alexandre jusqu'à l'invasion arabe. Paris, 1952.

Bibliography, articles (partial list)