Umberto Cassuto

Umberto Cassuto, also known as Moshe David Cassuto, (1883 - 1951), was a rabbi and biblical scholar born in Florence, Italy.

Early life and career

He studied there at the university and the "Collegio Rabbinico". After getting a degree and "Semicha", he taught in both institutions. From 1914 to 1925, he was chief rabbi of Florence. In 1925 he became professor of Hebrew and literature in the University of Florence and then took the chair of Hebrew language at the University of Rome La Sapienza. When the 1938 anti-Semitic laws forced him from this position, he moved to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Umberto's son Nathan was also a rabbi in Florence. He went into hiding during World War II, was betrayed and perished in the Nazi death camps. Nathan's wife and children were saved and emigrated to Israel. One child, the architect David Cassuto (born 1938), played a key role in rebuilding the Jewish quarter in the old city of Jerusalem. In the 1990s he was for some years deputy mayor of Jerusalem.

Cassuto and higher biblical criticism

For two hundred years prior to Cassuto's works, the origin of the five books of Moses (the Torah) had been one of the most-argued subjects in biblical scholarship. The 19th century in particular had been a time of great progress, but also of great controversy, with many theories being put forward. The one which eventually emerged to dominate the field was a particularly comprehensive version of the documentary hypothesis put forward by Julius Wellhausen in 1878: indeed, so great was its dominance that by the first half of the 20th century the Wellhausen hypothesis had become synonymous with the documentary hypothesis, and the issue of Pentateuchal origins was regarded as settled.

Cassuto's "The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch" (Hebrew, "Torat HaTeudot", 1941; English translation, 1961) was one of the first mainstream works to offer a detailed critique of Wellhausen, rejecting both the central idea of the documentary model - that the Pentateuch had its origins in originally separate documents which had been combined by an editor into the final text - and Wellhausen's dating, which saw the four sources being composed between 950 and 550 BC with the final redaction around 450 BC. In place of this, Cassuto proposed the Pentateuch was written down as a single, unified text in the 10th century BC and not thereafter altered in any meaningful way. [ [http://www.bh.org.il/Names/POW/Cassuto.asp] .]

"The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch" criticized the adherents of the documentary hypothesis for ignoring the cognate literatures and archaeological evidence and for not keeping an eye on critical methods at work in other fields (e.g. Homeric studies), and suggested that disagreements over questions such as whether P or D was the latest stratum pointed toward the instability of the theory over-all. An example of Cassuto's style of argument can be seen in his discussion of the divine names - one of the main criteria by which the documentary hypothesis distinguishes between separate sources - where he argued that Yahweh and Elohim are each consistently employed within a particular context and for a specific purpose, "Yahweh" signifying the God of Israel and "Elohim" the God of the world: to construe the two names as evidence of two authors was, according to Cassuto, to ignore the evidence of Jewish literature.

Cassuto's criticisms were dismissed by the overwhelming majority of scholars at the time. Scholars such as Rolf Rendtorff and John Van Seters have put forward theories on Pentateuchal origins very like 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, 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.

Cassuto and the text of the Hebrew Bible

Cassuto saw the need to produce the most accurate possible text of the Tanakh. He realised that the texts generally published 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, it was important to compare these printed editions with older manuscripts as a check.

Thus Cassuto sought out 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 disappeared.

His research showed that the printed Bibles generally have an accurate text. However, he corrected the spelling of many words, and made very 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 appropriate (see the books of Psalms, Proverbs and Job) and similar matters. Where he differs from other Bibles in any of these respects, it is likely that Cassuto has better authority. The Bible was published posthumously in 1953.

Cassuto as Bible commentator

However, his most enduring legacy may be his commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. He wrote a Hebrew commentary on the Bible that is very popular in Israel. 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 are available in English and, not surprisingly, reflect his views on the Documentary Hypothesis.

Works available in English or Italian

*CASSUTO, Umberto. La Questione della Genesi. Firenze: 1934.

*CASSUTO, Umberto. Storia della letteratura ebraica postbiblica. Pp. xvi, 212. Firenze: 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. Pp. xii, 117. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1961

*CASSUTO, Umberto. A Commentary on the book of Genesis. Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1961-1964

*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

*CASSUTO, Umberto. The documentary hypothesis and the composition of the Pentateuch: eight lectures by Umberto Cassuto, with an introduction by Joshua A. Berman. Translated from the Hebrew by Israel Abrahams. Pp. xxix, 142. Jerusalem and New York: Shalem Press, 2006

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