Umberto Cassuto, Shalem Press, new edition 2006
Cassuto, chief rabbi of Florence in the 1920s and latterly chair of Bible studies at the Hebrew University was a well-known scholar, who wrote in Hebrew as well as in his native Italian. This small work, translated in 1961 from the 1941 Hebrew original is actually an embellished transcript of a series of lectures delivered in Jerusalem in 1940. It is a scholarly, yet accessible, demolition of the Graf-Wellhausen documentary hypothesis of the origin of the Torah. It is based upon his much larger work on the same theme, ‘La questione della Genesi’, which I will leave Italian readers to review! In eight digestible sections, totalling only 120 pages, Cassuto carefully dissects what he calls the ‘five pillars’ on which Wellhausen’ theory rests. They are: the use of different names for the Deity, variations of language and style, contradictions and divergences of view, duplications and repetitions, signs of composite structure in the sections. Cassuto’s sensitivity to nuances in the text is remarkable. Interestingly, although the book is not primarily focused on this, his approach suggests maintaining the integrity of the text, approaching it as an integrated whole using literary techniques.
The Documentary Hypothesis And The Composition Of The Pentateuch
