Giovanni Garbini
Giovanni Garbini (8 October 1931 – 2 January 2017[1]) was an Italian Orientalist and Semitist. His biblical studies revealed historical omissions and helped scholars to interpret the biblical narrative in the larger context of the history of the ancient Near East. He worked as a university lecturer in the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples, at the Scuola Normale in Pisa and finally in Sapienza in Rome until his retirement. He was a member of the Lincean Academy since 1990, and a member of the Leone Caetani foundation for Islamic studies.
Giovanni Garbini
8 October 1931
2 January 2017 (aged 85)
Italian
Antiquity historian
Semitic studies
Early life and education[edit]
Garbini was born in Fiastra in Italy. His family settled in Rome when he was young. He studied classical literature, following which he was uncertain about his career path. Garbini developed a predilection for Indian literature during his adolescent years; it was one of his prospective career paths along with classical archaeology, classical epigraphy, and etruscology. His indecision was overcome after he took Hebrew and comparative Semitic languages courses with Phoenician and Punic civilizations expert Sabatino Moscati in 1951–1952 in the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies. Moscati, who was then 29, taught Garbini the history of ancient Semitic civilizations, the study of Biblical Hebrew, Semitic linguistic comparison, and the Syriac language. Garbini was an avid student and was fondly remembered by his teachers Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Alfonsa Ferrari, Margherita Guarducci, and Massimo Pallottino.[1] Garbini capped his Oriental studies with Assyriology under Giuseppe Furlani and Arabic with Maria Nallino.[1] Garbini's thesis subject was the linguistic and grammatical analysis of ancient Aramaic inscriptions; his thesis discussion was held in October 1954 under the advisorship of Moscati.[1]