Page 222 - GQ 12

9*

Bruno Chiesa’s academic career

Haggai Ben-Shammai

Bruno Chiesa was undoubtedly a multi-disciplinary scholar. His education
at the University of Turin included a wide range of topics: Jewish studies,
Semitic philology (Ugaritic and Syriac), Classics (Greek, Latin, Greek and
Roman history), Byzantine philology, and the history of Christianity. He
taught at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice from 1979–1986, at the University
of Pavia from 1986–1998, and finally at the University of Turin from 1998
until his passing. Bruno served as an editor of the journal Henoch in the
years 1978–1987 and later as its editor-in-chief (1989–1996).

His first publications dealt with the Massorah, the history of the Hebrew
language and the Bible. At the beginning of the 1980s, he began to take
an interest in Judaeo-Arabic literature, in particular authors from the tenth
century – Saadya Gaon and the Karaite exegete, legist and thinker al-
Qirqisani. A substantial portion of his book on the historical philology of the
Bible (Filologia storica della Bibbia ebraica, two volumes: 2000, 2002) is
devoted to the exegetical methodology of these two authors. In 1984, Bruno
published with Wilfred Lockwood an English translation of the first treatise
of al-Qirqisani’s substantial work Kitab al-Anwar wal-Maraqib (Book of
Lights and Watchtowers). Bruno’s book on the creation of Man and his
Fall in Judaeo-Arabic exegesis (Creazione e caduta dell’uomo nell'esegesi
giudeo-araba medievale, 1989) is largely based on Saadya and al-Qirqisani.
In his Nachlass there are a number of unpublished works which he had
prepared together with Lockwood: an edition with English translation of
al-Qirqisani’s comprehensive introduction to his commentary on the Torah
(which I am planning to complete and publish), as well as al-Qirqisani’s
commentary on Exodus.

GQinezdeiem
12 (2016)