Prominent divinity scholar donates personal library
A senior faculty member in the Divinity School who has spent a lifetime adding to the scholarly record has given his working collection to Vanderbilt University.
Jack M. Sasson, the Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible, has donated a large part of his personal library to the Divinity Library. Sasson’s collection reflects more than 50 years of scholarship in Assyriology and Hebrew scripture, as well as his extensive editorial work on a number of scholarly journals and reference tools. Sasson was editor-in-chief of Scribner’s award-winning multivolume Civilizations of the Ancient Near East (1995) and authored commentaries on Ruth and Jonah, the latter for the Anchor Bible. The highly productive scholar is a frequent lecturer at conferences and museums.
Sasson’s collection includes more than 2,600 volumes with titles dating from as early as 1801 and as recently as 2011. Among the volumes are works such as C.H.W. Johns’ An Assyrian Doomsday Book, or Liber Censualis of the District Round Ḫarran, a 1901 publication found in only 15 libraries worldwide. “The collection represents significant resources in the areas of Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East that will be of interest to scholars around the country,” said James Hudnut-Beumler, dean of the Divinity School and Anne Potter Wilson Distinguished Professor of American Religious History. “Vanderbilt scholars will be fortunate to have these materials at close hand.”
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