On November 15, the feast day of St Albert the Great, patron saint of science, the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem celebrated the 135th anniversary of its founding. This happy event reminded us how much the Dominican intuition of combining faith, intelligence, and research remains at the heart of our mission.
To mark this anniversary, we invite you to revisit the beautiful video produced by the Diocese of Monaco, in which Fr Manuel Rivero, O.P., vice-postulator of the cause of Fr Lagrange, reflects on the founding figure of the School. Through his testimony, we can see how much Fr Lagrange’s work remains alive: a constant call to “confront the text and the context,” to explore the Bible in the land of the Bible, to follow in the footsteps of the Word made flesh and those who followed him.
This fidelity to the founding gesture is still embodied today in the richness of our specialized library—with more than 460,000 volumes—in the notes of the Bible en ses Traditions (Bible in its Traditions) developed with some sixty collaborators, as well as in the numerous courses and conferences that the School offers in biblical and archaeological sciences. Critical study of the text, dialogue between document and monument, the articulation of faith and reason: these are the paths through which the School continues to offer a living space for research and transmission.
In revisiting this evocation of Fr Lagrange, we give thanks for 135 years of silent, persevering, and demanding work, and for all those who, following in his footsteps, continue today this intellectual and spiritual adventure that began in 1890.