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Umberto Cassuto, also known as Moshe David Cassuto, (1883 - 1951), was 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. 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 criticsm
The Documentary Hypothesis is the idea that the five books of Moses (the Torah) were edited together from a number of early sources long after the time of Moses. The most popular form of this theory in the 1800s was the form proposed by Julius Wellhausen, a Christian Bible scholar.
Cassuto rejected Wellhausen's specific views, and wrote a detailed critique of Wellhausen's claims. However, Cassuto did accept in general the idea of applying higher criticism to the Torah. He believed that an editor, well after the time of Moses, wove together a number of early sources to create the text of the Torah that we now know today, and developed his own theory of how the Torah was edited. At the time he wrote his views on the subject, his theory on the Torah's origin was reviewed and dismissed by the overwhelming majority of non-Orthodox scholars at the time.
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 a complete Tanakh kept there. This is the oldest known Hebrew manuscript of the whole Tanakh and was written by the great authority Rabbi Aaron ben Moses ben Asher.
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.
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