Umberto Cassuto

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Umberto Cassuto
משה דוד קָאסוּטוֹ‎
Cassuto in the 1940s
Born	(1883-09-16)16 September 1883 Firenze, Italy
Died	18 December 1951(1951-12-18) (aged 68) Jerusalem, Israel
Resting place	Sanhedria Cemetery

Umberto Cassuto, also known as Moshe David Cassuto (16 September 1883 – 19 December 1951), was an Italian historian, a

Cassuto's criticisms, while influential amongst many Jewish scholars,^[citation needed] were dismissed by the overwhelming majority of Christian scholars at the time,^{[citation needed]} although Oswald Thompson Allis (1943) argued along parallel lines.^{[4][non-primary source needed]} Most scholars have tended to ignore Cassuto's The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch beyond mentioning it in their footnotes listings.^{[5][page needed][non-primary source needed]} Scholars such as Rolf Rendtorff and John Van Seters have also put forward theories on Pentateuchal historical origins very similar to Cassuto's, at least insofar as their views on its mode of composition are concerned. Modern ideas about the dating of the Torah, however, have not endorsed Cassuto's specific early historical dating, and the trend today is for the final act of composition to be seen as lying in the period 500–400 BC, or even later.^{[citation needed]}

Text of the Hebrew Bible

Cassuto felt the need to produce the most accurate possible text of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). He realised that the texts generally published at the time had mostly been edited by non-Jews, and Jews who had converted to Christianity. While Cassuto saw no reason to believe that major alterations had been made, he felt it was important to compare these printed editions with older manuscripts as a check.^{[citation needed]}

Thus Cassuto sought to use the oldest and most reliable manuscripts of the Tanakh, dating back many centuries before the invention of printing. In particular, in 1944 he managed to visit the Great Synagogue of Aleppo, Syria and study the Aleppo Codex. He was one of the very few scholars to study this key manuscript before most of the Torah section and some of the Prophets and Writings sections disappeared in the 1947 anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo.^{[citation needed]}

From his research, he concluded that the printed Bibles generally had an accurate text. However, he corrected the spelling of many words, and made a great many corrections to the vowel points and musical notes. He also revised the layout of the text, its division into paragraphs, the use of poetical lines when he deemed it appropriate (for example, in Psalms, Proverbs and Job) and similar matters. Where he differed from other Bibles in any of these respects, it is likely that Cassuto has better authority.^{[citation needed]} Cassuto's critical edition of the Hebrew Bible was published posthumously in 1953.^{[citation needed]}

Bible commentaries

Cassuto's most enduring legacy may be his commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, his 1944 Shirat ha-Alilah be-Yisrael ("Fear of the Plot in Israel", later published in English in Biblical and Oriental Studies II) was Cassuto's 'primary contribution'.^[1] He wrote a Hebrew commentary on the Bible that became very popular in Israel.^{[citation needed]} He wrote a more detailed commentary on Exodus and at the time of his death had completed chapters 1–11 of a more detailed commentary on Genesis. Both of these latter commentaries were made available in English, and include his views on the documentary hypothesis.^{[citation needed]}

Works available in English or Italian

• Cassuto, Umberto. La Questione della Genesi. Florence: 1934.
• Cassuto, Umberto. Storia della letteratura ebraica postbiblica. Pp. xvi, 212. Florence: Casa editrice Israel, 1938
• Cassuto, Umberto. The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch: Eight Lectures by U. Cassuto. Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. Jerusalem: Shalem Press, Jerusalem, 2006
  ISBN 978-965-7052-35-8 2006 pdf version of the book's introduction
• Cassuto, Umberto. A Commentary on the book of Genesis. From Adam to Noah. Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. Volume 1 of 2 Volumes Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1961–1964
  ISBN 978-965-223-480-3
• Cassuto, Umberto. A Commentary on the book of Genesis. From Noah to Avraham. Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. Volume 2 of 2 Volumes Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1961–1964
  ISBN 978-965-223-540-4
• Cassuto, Umberto. A Commentary on the book of Exodus. Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. Pp. xvi, 509. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1967
• Cassuto, Umberto. The Goddess Anath: Canaanite Epics on the Patriarchal Age. Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1971
• Cassuto, Umberto. Biblical and Oriental Studies. Translated from the Hebrew and Italian by Israel Abrahams. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1973–1975

• Abraham Yahuda
• Elijah Benamozegh
• Joshua Berman
• Cassuto family name
• Cyrus Gordon
• Yehezkel Kaufman
• Kenneth Kitchen Egyptologist
• Mosaic authorship
• Gary Rendsburg

References