Page:Sefer ha-Yashar or the book of Jasher (1840).djvu/15

Rh It is known that such have been the curiosity and anxiety to discover this missing book, that several forgeries under that name have appeared from time to time; and the Rev. Mr. Horne, in his Introduction to the Study of the Scripture, has been at some pains to collect a history of the various fabrications of Jasher; the most remarkable of which was originally published in England, in the year 1750, by a person called Illive, and purported to be a translation from a Hebrew work of that name, found in Persia by Alcuin. It was republished in Bristol in the year 1829, and a copy is now in my possession. It is a miserable fabrication, occupying but sixty two and a half pages, with copious notes, making out Jasher to be one of the Judges, whereas the translation of the word is the upright, or the upright record. In the same work of Dr. Horne, a slight reference is made to the Book of Jasher, written in Rabbinical Hebrew, said to have been discovered in Jerusalem at its capture under Titus, and printed in Venice in 1613. This is the book now translated into English for the first time. Long prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews had established themselves in various parts of Spain and Italy; they traded to the bay of Gibraltar, as historians affirm, in the earliest periods of history; and Basnage mentions that in Sagunto, a town in Spain, a tombstone was discovered, bearing the following inscription in the Hebrew language: “This is the tomb of Adoniram, an officer of King Solomon, who came to collect the tribute, and died the day,” &c. There can be no doubt that Spain, probably France and Italy, were tributary to Solomon. It is, however, certain, that the Jews carried with them into Spain, on their dispersion, an immense number of manuscripts and sacred rolls, where they remained many years, and were, in the eleventh century, placed in their great college at Cordova, and from thence were conveyed to Venice on the first discovery of printing. The printer’s Hebrew preface to Jasher shows that it was a painful transcript from a very old and almost illegible Hebrew record, and printed by and with the consent of the great Consistory of Rabbins at Venice, who alone had the power of publishing such works from the Hebrew records as they deemed authentic. From the Venice edition of Jasher, another