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There are forgeries of this book.
There have been several translations and forgeries of this book. The Rosicrusians have accepted one version, and the Mormons accepted another version of several that were written. (see below)
The Mormon prophet Joseph Smith accepted a version that was translated by Moses Samuel, who sold it to a newpaper in 1839, which then was published by newspaper-owner and philanthropist Mordecai M. Noah in 1840 (see: last paragraph in this post) .
Read some of the research and History pertaining to this book as noted by some correspondence on the answers.org web site as follows:
The Book of Jasher
By John Baskette, © 1994, 2003
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:
1. A 1391 version by Rabbi Shabbatai Carmuz Levita, preserved in a Vatican manuscript.
2. 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.
3. 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
Addendum (2003):
I get emails regarding the book of Jasher from time to time asking about one publication or another. I have done some further research and have found everything I related from Goodspeed's book has held up. The above writing was originally a posting to the soc.religion.christian USENET news group back in 1994. One development on the Internet since that time has been the popularization on the web of a version of the book of Jasher promoted by the Mormons. This is the 1840 version mentioned by Goodspeed which Goodspeed says "appears" to be a translation of the 13th century Hebrew document. According to Bernard Wasserstein (In the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England Vol. XXXV), this Samuel was Moses Samuel, a well respected 19th century Jewish Hebraist. He writes:
Samuel also translated into English the pseudo-biblical Book of Jasher, a supposedly ancient Hebrew text which Samuel convinced himself was authentic. After failing to persuade the Royal Asiatic Society to publish it, he sold his translation for £150 in 1839 to the American Jewish newspaper-owner and philanthropist Mordecai M. Noah. It appeared in New York the following year but with Noah's name and not Samuel's on the title page. "I did not put my name to it as my Patron and myself differed about its authenticity", Samuel later explained. This was odd since Noah seems to have had a lower opinion of the work's authenticity than Samuel. The translation was accepted as accurate, but the publication provoked criticism by scholars who rejected the claims made on behalf of the text. It won acceptance, however, by the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. (p. 2)
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Read the rest of the article here: http://www.answers.org/bible/jasher-book-of.html
Also Note: I had to place this specific excerpt from the rest of that article here to avoid dispute about
the mormons postition on this book of Jasher as follows:
"...The Spalding Studies web site contains the following comment regarding this version of the Book of Jasher and the Mormons:
Mordecai Noah was not unaware of the Mormon activities in building a temporary city of refuge at Kirtland in the 1830s. In a late 1835 issue of his Evening Star, Noah protested the Mormons' calling their nearly finished house of worship at Kirtland the "Temple of the Lord." The Jewish editor and would-be American zionist seemingly had no patience with what he termed the Mormons' "unhallowed purposes" in gathering around a "heathen temple." The Mormons never quite lose sight of Mordecai Noah's work, though they have long since forgotten his name. In 1840 the Jewish scholar translated into English and published the extracanonical Book of Jasher. The Mormons became fascinated with the book and have kept it in print and circulation wherever they congregate. The first of their reprintings of this strange volume was published by J. H. Parry & Company in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1887 and modern printings are always kept in stock at the LDS Church's Deseret Book Stores.
Note that the Mormon sources that I have read claim that the LDS church takes no official position on the authenticity of the Book of Jasher. ... "
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Read the whole article is is very interesting, indeed.
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