The Israelite Epic

“The Israelite Epic” reflects Umberto Cassuto’s effort to challenge the “Documentary Hypothesis,” the theory that the Pentateuch was composed from several separate and sometimes conflicting written sources. Instead, Cassuto argues that an oral national epic existed in ancient Israel before the Torah was written down. He suggests that the biblical stories shared similarities in language and themes with Ugaritic (Canaanite) literature. Cassuto’s ideas about the Israelite epic were published in stages, as a series of talks and essays. After presenting his lectures at the Hebrew University, he published “The Israelite Epic” in the cultural journal Keneset. He had already explored similar arguments in his 1941 book The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch. His theories laid the groundwork for a cross-cultural, comparative approach to the stories in the Bible.