[1] Cassuto studied there at the University of Florence (graduated in 1906), and the Collegio Rabbinico (ordained in 1908), where its principal Samuel Hirsch Margulies had a profound influence on him.

When the 1938 anti-Semitic laws forced him from this position, he accepted an invitation to fill the chair of Biblical studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine in 1939, where he taught until his death in 1951.

His treatise Ha-Elah Anat (1951, 1965; The Goddess Anath, 1970), a translation with introduction and commentary of Ugaritic texts, particularly the epic of Baal, is of special importance.

[4][non-primary source needed] Most scholars have tended to ignore Cassuto's The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch beyond mentioning it in their footnotes listings.

While Cassuto saw no reason to believe that major alterations had been made, he felt it was important to compare these printed editions with older manuscripts as a check.

He also revised the layout of the text, its division into paragraphs, the use of poetical lines when he deemed it appropriate (for example, in Psalms, Proverbs and Job) and similar matters.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, his 1944 Shirat ha-Alilah be-Yisrael ("Song of the Plot in Israel", later published in English in Biblical and Oriental Studies II) was Cassuto's 'primary contribution'.