Baidarka

I just read a post on another site about The Book of Jasher. I gather that it is a nineteenth century forgery purporting to be one of the ancient texts mentioned in the Bible)used by the 7th day Adventists and that it was one of the documents that Smith used when he was fabricating the Mormon Book of Abraham.
A google search just sent me on a tour through the strange world of the mindless fundies.
Does any one have any info the history of this book?

Ether

Go here:

<a href="http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/jasher/1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.ccel.org/a/anonymous/jasher/1.htm</a>

Baidarka

Ether:
Thank you but how to find the book of Jasher was not my question. I would like to know something about the history of this ingenious hoax and the writer or writers. I would also like to know how and by whom it has been used.

Apikorus

Some scholars think that the "Book of Jashar" in Josh 10:13 is an example of haplography, or scribal error. The relevant text reads halo-hi ketuvah al-sefer hayashar ("Is it not written in the book of yashar?") The word yashar has no obvious meaning.

While the word is undoubtedly pronounced yashar based on the Masoretic vowel pointings, it is important to remember that the vowels were added to the consonantal Hebrew text many hundreds of years - in this case perhaps a thousand years or more - after the text was composed. Rendered in consonantal form, the word in question is hysr (heh/yod/shin/resh). A conjectured scribal error here allows us to make sense of the term, for if the yod and shin were interchanged at some point, the original reading would have been spr hsyr which, pointed, becomes sefer hashir, meaning "the book of song".

It seems quite possible that the legend of the sun stopping for Joshua over Gibeon was commemorated with a ditty that was written in a song book.

One obvious problem with this proposal is that the "book of yashar" appears twice in the Hebrew Bible. Its other mention is in 2 Sam 1:18, which reads ...hineh ketuvah al-sefer hayashar ("behold, it is written in the book of yashar"). Now here the conjectured emendation "book of song" makes excellent sense, since the context is David's lamentation over Jonathan and Saul.

Assuming neither of these is a late insertion, what may have happened is that haplography led to a yod/shin transposition in one case, and the Deuteronomistic redactor of Joshua and Samuel had "fixed" the other case as well. The reading yashar was then imposed on the text, and it was pointed thusly when the Masoretes came along in the Middle Ages to do their thang.

All this is quite conjectural (as is much in biblical text criticism). The versions are of little help. The LXX seems to support the MT, but the Syriac has the curious reading Ashir in 2 Sam 1:18. My guess, though, is that the putative scribal error occurred prior to the Deuteronomistic redaction, in which case there is little hope that the versions can help us recover the original text.

In some sense the point here is moot, since the conjectural "book of song" is every bit as lost as the original "book of yashar".

If you want to read a little bit more about this, see P. Kyle McCarter's Anchor Bible Commentary to 1 Samuel. Another general resource is Duane Christensen's article entitled "Lost Books of the Bible" in the October, 1998 issue of Bible Review.

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

WWSD

I've always wondered about the book of jasher as well.

Is there actually an archealogically significant text that corresponds to the book of jasher/yashar?

Also, does anyone know much about the "book of the wars of the lord?"

Marduk

"book of the wars of the lord"

another missing text, I read one commentary that this book was incorporated into Numbers & Exodus.

offa

offa;
The Book of Jasher is on my shopping list. I just might jump over to <a href="http://www.amazon.com" target="_blank">www.amazon.com</a> and buy it.