The Book of Jasher
By John Baskette
Copyright 1994 by John Baskette, AIA Research Associate.
I am seeking information on any "book of Jashers" floating about. a friend
says he has one, and though i have not seen it, i am assuming it probably a
strecth of someones imagination. in the bible there are only two references
to a "book of jasher" so it is actually a "lost book" it would be
interesting to see if any one else has bumped into one.
The following book discusses the book of Jasher:
Modern Apocrypha, Famous "Biblical" Hoaxes by Edgar J. Goodspeed (The Beacon
Press, Boston, 1956) the Library of Congress catalog card number is 56-10075
Goodspeed was a first rate Biblical scholar, professor emeritus of the
University of Chicago. He made the first translation of the Apocrypha
directly from Greek into English in The Apocrypha: An American Translation.
He translated the New Testament in his The New Testament: An American
Translation and has written a number of other books about the Bible or the
history of Christian and Biblical literature.
Chapter Ten of the book discusses the book of Jasher.
According to Goodspeed there were Three medieval books name Jasher written
by Jews in Hebrew as follows:
A 1391 version by Rabbi Shabbatai Carmuz Levita, preserved in a Vatican
manuscript.
A book used as the introduction to the Hexateuch probably written by a
Spanish Jew in the 13th century and published in Venice in 1625.
A treatise on Jewish ritual written by Rabbi Tham who died in 1171; it was
printed in Italy in 1544.
The second of these (the 13th century version) was translated into English
by a Mr. Samuel of Liverpool and published in 1840 in New York by Nash and
Gould.
The version of the book of Jasher that you have seen is likely one that was
produced by a Jacob Ilive, a London printer, who published his own version
of the book of Jasher in 1751. This version has been reprinted and
circulated by the Rosicrucian order.
Goodspeed cites several reviews from the late 18th and early 19th century
that declared this book to be "a shameless literary forgery".
The book is described as "a condensation of portions of the first seven
books of the Old Testament". One glaring omission is that nothing is said
about David's dirge over Saul, which should be there according to II Samuel
1:18.
The title page of the book says. "translated into English by Flaccus Albinus
Alcuinus, of Britain, Abbot of Canterbury, who went on a pilgrimage into the
Holy Land and Persia, where he discovered this volume in the city of Gazna."
Alcuinus did live in Britain around 650. One problem with this manuscript is
that it is written in an Elizabethan style English unknown to Alcuinus. The
first edition of this book claimed that Alcuinus had "learned in the
University of Oxford all those languages which the people of the East
speak." The problem with that is that Oxford wasn't founded until 886, more
than 80 years after Alcuin's death. Subsequent editions omitted this remark.
Goodspeed gives a number of other reasons based on internal evidences in the
book why it is clearly an 18th century forgery and not genuine.
John Baskette
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