JASHER, BOOK OF (ja'sher, bc-Tok Ov), (Heb.
sayler hay-yaw-shawr', the book of the righteous).
This work is no longer extant, but cited in Josh. x:13, and 2 Sam. i:18. In the former it is thus introduced : 'And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this writ ten in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and basted not to go down about a whole day,' etc. And in the pas sage referred to in 2 Sam. i, it stands thus (ver. 17) : 'And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son ;' (ver. 18): 'Also he bade them teach the children of Judah the use of thc bow ; behold, it is written in the book of Jasher.' After which follows the lam entation of David. As the word Jasher signifies just or upright., by which word it is rendered in the margin of our Bibles, this book has been gen erally considered to have been so entitled as con taining a history of just men.
(1) A Poetical Work. Bishop Lowth, how ever (Prcclect. pp. 3o6, 307), conceives, from the poetical character of the two passages cited from it, that it was most probably a collection of na tional songs written at various times, and that it derived its name from jashar, 'he sang.' (2) Various Conjectures. It is, at the same time, by no means an improbable conjecture that the book was so called from the name of its au thor. Josephus (Antiq. v. 1. 17) speaks of the book of Jasher as one of the 'books laid up in the temple.' Jerome is of the opinion that the book of Jasher is no other than the book of Gen esis, which is also the opinion of some Jewish authors. Others suppose it to include the Penta teuch (see Calmet's Comment in loc). Mr. Horne (Introd. vol. i.) asserts that 'some un derstand by thc book of Jashcr the book of Judges. as mention is therein made of the stand ing still of the sun.' ( ?) Front the passage above referred to, 2 Sam. i:t8--`Also Ile bade them teach the children of Israel the use of the bow'— it has been supposed by some (see Dr. Adam Clarke's Comment. in loc., and Home's Introd. vol. i.) that the book of Jasher contained a treatise on archery ; but it has heen observed (sec Par ker's translation of De Wette's Introd. vol. i. p. 301) that, according to the ancient mode of cita tion, which consisted in referring to some partic ular word in thc document, 'the bow ' which the children of Israel were to be taught indicated the poetical passage from the book of Jasher in which the 'bow of Jonathan' is mentioned (2 Sam. i:22). De \Vette's translator supposes that our English translators of the Bible were per haps ignorant of this manner of reference, and he instances this as a 'ludicrous instance.' (3) Rabbinical Works. The Book of Jasher is also the title of two Rabbinical works, one of which was written by Rabbi Thant in the thir teenth century, and printed at Cracow in 1617. It is a treatise on Jewish laws. The other was
printed in 1625, and contains (see Batolocci's Btblzotheca Rabbinica, and Horne's Introd. vol.
Bibliogr. ,4pp.) some curious but many fab ulous narrations; among other things, that it was discovered at the destruction of the temple in possession of an old man, who was found shut up in some place of concealment, and who had a great number of Hebrew books. It was brought to Spain, preserved at Seville, and pub lished at Naples.
In the year 1751 there was published in Lou don, by a type-founder of Bristol named Jacob Ilive, a book entitled 'The Book of Jasher, with Testimonies and Notes explanatory of the Text: to which is prefixed Various Readings: trans lated into English from the Hebrews by Alcuin of Britain, who went a pilgrimage into the Holy Land.' This book was noticed in the Monthly Review for December, 1751, which describes it as a palpable piece of contrivance, intended to im pose upon the credulous and ignorant, to sap the credit of the books of oses,.ane to blacken the character of Moses himself. The reviewer adds that 'the Book of Jostler appears to have been constructed in part fron the apocryphal writings of the Rabbins; in part from a. cento of various scraps stolen from the Pentateuch : and in the remainder from the crazy imaginings of the au thor' (Ilive). Prefixed to this work is a nar rative professing to be from the pcn of Alcuin himself, giving a detailed account of ids discovery of the Hebrew book of Jasher, the city of Gazna in Persia, during a pilgrimage which he made from Bristol to the Holy Land, and of his translation of the same into English. This clumsy forgery in modern English, which ap peared with the chapters of. the thirteenth cen tury, and the numerical versicular divisions of the sixteenth, having been exposed at' the time of its appearance, and sunk into well-merited oblivion was again revived in 1827, when it was reprinted at Bristol, and published in —ondor. as a new dis covery of the Book of Jasher. A prospectus of a second edition of this reprint was issued in 1833 by the editor, who herein styles himself the Rev. C. R. Bond. Both Ilive's and Bond's editions con tain the following pretended testimony to the value of the work from the celebrated Wycliffe: 'I have read the book of Jasher twice over, and I much approve of it, as a piece of great antiquity and curiosity, but I cannot assent that it should be made a part of the canon of Scripture.' (4) Sun and Moon Standing Still. The chief interest connected with the Scriptural book of Jasher arises from the circumstance that it is referred to as the authority for the standing still of the sun and moon. There are few passages in Biblical literature the explanation of which has more exercised the skill of commentators than this celebrated one. We shall here give a brief account of the most generally received interpre tations.