Specialist in Semitic languages ​​and historian of religions of the ancient Near East, Semitic philology studied in Rome and Paris. He worked and participated in excavations in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan and Iraq between 1961 and 1968. He was professor of Biblical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Columbia (New York) from 1968 to 1978 and, after a stay in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), as research director and then director of the Institute of the ancient Near East, he was appointed professor of the College de France in 1995. Owner and a professor of Semitic Antiques, courses devoted to the history of Palmyra , philosophy in Syriac and Aramaic. He is an honorary professor at the College de France since 2002.
And has published numerous articles in professional journals and the Bulletin d'Semitic epigraphy (1964-1980), he is the author of The Pagan God. Popular Religion in the Greco-Roman Near East (1977), The Pantheon of Palmyra (1979), a Roman port du désert: Palmyre are commerce et d'Auguste à Caracalla (1984), The Philosophy translated. Partial Chronicle of Edessa in the early centuries (1991) and Mon père, l'Aramaic errant (2003), among other works.