Daniel Marguerat

Daniel Marguerat was born on 30 October 1943 in Lausanne, the capital of the Swiss canton of Vaud. Public sources that describe his childhood in detail are scarce. What is clear is that he grew up in French-speaking Protestant Switzerland and chose theology as a vocation while still a young man. He later made his home in Ecublens, a commune next to Lausanne on the north shore of Lake Geneva, and remained closely tied to the churches and university of Vaud throughout his life.

He studied theology at the University of Lausanne and at the University of Göttingen in Germany, a combination that placed him in both the French-speaking Reformed tradition and the German historical-critical school. Lausanne awarded him the licence in theology in 1968 and a faculty prize the following year. In 1975 he obtained the Certificat de recherche en sciences bibliques, a postgraduate diploma of the Institut romand des sciences bibliques. His doctorate, completed at Lausanne in 1981, examined judgement in the Gospel of Matthew (Le jugement dans l'Évangile de Matthieu) and received the prize of the Société académique vaudoise. The dissertation already showed the method he would keep: a historically grounded reading of a Gospel text that refused to treat theology as something detached from history.

Marguerat's career joined parish ministry and the university. After directing a residence for secondary-school students in Lausanne from 1970 to 1972, he was pastor of the parish of Ouchy from 1972 to 1976 and of Syens from 1980 to 1984. He lectured at the University of Fribourg from 1982 to 1984, then held the ordinary chair of New Testament at the University of Lausanne from 1984 until he became professor emeritus in 2008.

Administrative work ran alongside teaching. He was dean of Lausanne's theology faculty from 1990 to 1992 and again from 2003 to 2005, president of the Société vaudoise de théologie, and president of the Fédération des facultés de théologie Genève-Lausanne-Neuchâtel in 2004 and 2005. From 2007 to 2008 he served as president of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.

He was a frequent visiting professor: at the University of Geneva, the University of Neuchâtel, the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Waldensian Faculty in Rome, the Centre Sèvres in Paris, the École Pratique des Hautes Études, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and institutions in Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City and Brussels. He sat on editorial boards that included New Testament Studies, the Journal of Biblical Literature and Concilium, and he co-directed book series at Labor et Fides in Geneva.

His research concentrated on three fields: the historical Jesus, the theology of Paul, and Luke-Acts. He became the scholar who, more than any other, made narrative analysis of biblical texts familiar in the French-speaking world, especially through Pour lire les récits bibliques, written with Yvan Bourquin and first published in 1999. His two-volume commentary on Acts (2007, 2015) and L'Historien de Dieu (2018) treated Luke as the first Christian historian. In later years he reached a still wider public with Vie et destin de Jésus de Nazareth (2019) and Paul de Tarse: L'enfant terrible du christianisme (2023).

He was married to Claire Diserens, who appears in public records and in his university curriculum vitae as Claire Marguerat-Diserens. They made their home at Chemin de la Cocarde in Ecublens. The family death notice names two daughters, Isabelle and Laurence, their husbands, and four grandchildren: Manon, Oscar, Ludovic and Lise. He remained a pastor of the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Vaud as well as a professor, and he recorded a long filmed conversation for the Plans-fixes series at home in Ecublens in October 2012.

Marguerat described himself as both historian and theologian. He insisted that the tools used to study Julius Caesar or Nero should also be used on the Gospels, and that personal faith must not overrule historical honesty. In his 2010 essay Mon parcours d'exégète he wrote that source criticism draws its legitimacy from a simple axiom: to be understood correctly, a text must be placed in the history that produced it.

He was a leading advocate of narrative criticism, reading biblical books as stories with narrators, plots and points of view, not only as quarries for historical facts or dogmatic proof-texts. On Jesus, he held that historical research still has new things to teach after two thousand years, that Jesus was fully Jewish, and that even sceptical historians can treat his activity as a healer as well attested. On Paul, he argued that later Christian tradition had painted over the apostle with clichés, including the charge of misogyny, and that the seven undisputed letters show communities in which women prayed, prophesied and carried his most important letter, Romans, to its first hearers.

He took part in the Bayard Bible translation and wrote often for non-specialists, convinced that the historical Jesus and the Paul of the letters still mattered to secular as well as church readers.

In the French-speaking world Marguerat was one of the most widely read Protestant biblical scholars of his generation. Pour lire les récits bibliques became a standard introduction to narrative analysis. His Acts commentary and his Seuil books on Jesus and Paul carried specialist debates into bookshops and parish halls. He trained students at Lausanne for nearly a quarter of a century and lectured across Europe and North America. A Festschrift in 2003 gathered some thirty colleagues around his work. Television series by Prieur and Mordillat introduced his voice to viewers who would never open a technical commentary. After his death, even reports that focused on the unfinished criminal inquiry noted that the accusations had not erased the scholarly standing of his books, which continue to be cited in several languages.

Lausanne's Faculty of Theology awarded him its Prix de Faculté in 1969. His 1981 doctorate received the prize of the Société académique vaudoise. The high point of public recognition came late, with Paul de Tarse. In 2024 the Académie française gave that book the Prix François-Millepierres. The same work also received the prize of the Festival protestant du livre in Paris, a readers' prize from the Conférence catholique des baptisés francophones, and the Mare Nostrum Prize in 2023. His presidency of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in 2007 and 2008 was itself a mark of standing among New Testament scholars worldwide. Colleagues honoured him with a Festschrift, Raconter, interpréter, annoncer, on his sixtieth birthday in 2003.

Besides technical articles and collected volumes, Marguerat wrote and edited books that circulated well outside academic libraries. Among the most cited are Pour lire les récits bibliques (with Yvan Bourquin, 1999); the two volumes of Les Actes des apôtres (Labor et Fides, 2007 and 2015); Jésus et Matthieu (2016); L'Historien de Dieu (2018); Vie et destin de Jésus de Nazareth (Seuil, 2019); and Paul de Tarse: L'enfant terrible du christianisme (Seuil, 2023). He directed or co-edited reference works including Introduction au Nouveau Testament and, with Camille Focant, Le Nouveau Testament commenté.

He contributed the Acts of the Apostles and the Letter to Philemon to the 2001 Bayard Bible, working with the writers Pascalle Monnier and Jean Echenoz. On screen he appeared in Corpus Christi (1999), L'Origine du christianisme (2003) and L'Apocalypse (2008), all directed by Jérôme Prieur and Gérard Mordillat. In 2012 the Plans-fixes series filmed Daniel Marguerat, le théologien amoureux des Écritures in Ecublens. He also gave many recorded public lectures on Jesus, Paul and resurrection, several of which remain available on YouTube.

From 2024 until his death, Marguerat was the subject of public allegations of sexual abuse said to have taken place in the 1990s, while he was a professor at the University of Lausanne and involving female students according to later news reports. On 10 July 2024 the Swiss daily Le Temps published an investigation by the Protestant press agency Protestinfo into a presumed case of sexual abuse and a related transaction between the State of Vaud and the Reformed Church. That first article did not name him. In April and May 2026 the French Christian monthly Le Cri identified him and reported further accounts. Swiss newspapers including 24 Heures and Le Nouvelliste covered the naming.

In February 2026 the Vaud public prosecutor opened a criminal inquiry after a report (signalement) from the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Vaud. The prosecutor later told journalists that no criminal complaint had been filed. On 22 June 2026 the Conference of Reformed Churches of French-speaking Switzerland, meeting at Crêt-Bérard, decided as a precaution to ask its parishes and institutions not to invite him for public or institutional collaborations, including lectures and training, for a year, and to ask him to refrain from activity tied to his status as pastor or professor in those churches.

Marguerat denied the alleged acts. In a statement sent to RTS he wrote that if he had hurt anyone by a gesture of familiarity he apologised and asked pardon, that this had never been his intention, and that he had committed neither abuse, nor constraint, nor violence. His lawyer, Christian Bettex, told RTS after the death that in his view the inquiry had shown no well-founded grievance; RTS said it had not independently confirmed that characterisation with the prosecutor. Reporting in 24 Heures noted that he disputed the accusations of abuse while acknowledging certain familiar gestures that he called awkward.

He died before any trial. The Vaud public prosecutor stated that the death brought the criminal proceedings to an end. He had not been convicted, and Swiss and church officials noted that he remained presumed innocent. The Reformed executive in Vaud said it had learned of the death with the seriousness that any death requires and that it respected the mourning of the family, and it declined further comment.

Daniel Marguerat died on 3 November 2026 in the canton of Vaud. He was 83. The family death notice published on Hommages.ch said he had been taken from his relatives suddenly, and press reports spoke of a sudden death without giving a medical cause. The cause of death has not been made public, nor has a more precise place than the canton.

24 Heures reported the death on 6 November 2026. The Vaud public prosecutor confirmed it to that newspaper and to RTS, and said the criminal inquiry was closed as a result. A farewell service is scheduled for Saturday 14 November 2026 at 11:00 at the Temple de Saint-François in Lausanne, with honours from 11:30. The family invited memorial gifts to Entraide Protestante Suisse (EPER). According to the notice he was laid at the Chapelle Saint-Roch in Lausanne before the service.