Sefer haYashar
Sefer haYashar (Hebrew ספר הישר "Book of the Upright One"). In English Jashar was traditionally, perhaps mistaken as a name and left untranslated, rendered Book of Jasher.
There are a number of works with this name:
Rabbinical Treatises:
- Sefer haYashar (Amoraim): A collection of sayings of the sages from the Amoraim period (1st and 2nd centuries) mentioned by Seymour J. Cohen in the introduction to Rabbi Zerahiah's Sefer Hayasher. Not known to be still in existence.
- Sefer haYashar (Ibn Ezra), a commentary on the Pentateuch by the 12th century Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra.
- Sefer haYashar (Abraham Abulafia), by the Kabbalist and philosopher Rabbi Abraham Abulafia.
- Sefer haYashar (Rabeinu Tam), a famous 12th century treatise on Jewish ritual and ethics by Jacob ben Meir.
- Sefer haYashar (Rabbi Levita), a moral treatise written by Rabbi Shabbatai Carmuz Levita in 1391 and preserved in a Vatican manuscript according to Edgar J. Goodspeed (in Modern Apocrypha, Famous Biblical Hoaxes [The Beacon Press, Boston, 1956])
- Sefer haYashar of Zerahiah ha-Yevani, a moral treatise of the 13th century published as Ha-Yewani Zerahiah, Sefer Hayashar, The Book of the Righteous, ed. and transl. by Seymour J. Cohen (New York, 1973).
- Sefer haYashar of Jonah ben Abraham, a 14th century work by Rabbi Jonah ben Abraham of Gerona mentioned by Seymour J. Cohen in his Sefer Hayashar. Not known to be still in existence.
- Sefer haYashar (midrash) (Naples, 1552), a book of Jewish legends covering the period from the creation of man to the first wave of the conquest of Canaan, not certain to have existed before 1625. Book of Jasher (J. H. Parry & Company), Salt Lake City 1887
Forgery
Fiction
- Book of Jashar by Benjamin Rosenbaum. A fictional translation of the supposed Book of Jasher mentioned in 2 Samuel.
External links
How Sefer Hayasher has Come Down to Us