The seventh is a collection of various hymns composed in the reigns of David and Solomon, and contains Da- vid's song of triumph over Goliath (!) (1 Sam. ii, 1-10) ; his lament for Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i, 19-27), and for Abner (2 Sam. iii, 33, 34) ; his psalm of thanksgiving (Psa. xviii ; 2 Sam. xxii) ; his triumphal ode on the con- quest of the Edoraites (Psa. Ix), and his pro])hecy of Messiah's kingdom (2 Sam. xxiii, 1-7), together with Solomon's Epithalamium (Psa. xlv), and the hymn simg at the dedication of the Temple (Psa. Ixviii).
It cannot be denied that the critic has shown great ingenuity and constructive skill in elaborating his the- ory. His commentaries on the individual fragments composing the jiarts often exhibit striking and just re- marks, with a right perception of the genius of some portions of the O. T. Yet we must pronounce the at- tempt a failure. The leading positions are untenable. Donaldson's arguments are often weak and baseless. Most of the contents which he assigns to the book of Jashar never belonged to it, such as the pieces of Gen- esis which he selects, etc. But it is needless to enter into a refutation of the hypothesis, ingeniously set forth in elegant Latin, and supported with considerable acute- ness. INIost of the book of Jashar cited in Joshua and 2d Samuel is lost. It is verj' improbable that laws such as those in Deut. vi, x, xi, or historical pieces like Gen. xvi, 1-4, ever belonged to it. It is also a most unfortunate conjecture that iT^'^"c3, in Gen. xlix, 10, is abridged from ri^'?0 ; or, even if it were, that it furnishes a proof of the poem being written while Solomon was king (p. 27). We are persuaded that tlie critic gives great extension of meaning to the Hebrew word ^'^^, in making it al- most, if not altogether, an appellation of the Israelitish people. When he assumes that it is contained in ^N" w^, the notion is erroneous (p. 23).
Among the many strange results of Donaldson's ar- rangement, Shem, Ham, and Japheth are no longer the sons of Noah, who is Israel under a figure, but of Adam ; and the circumstances of Noah's life related in Gen. ix, 18-27 are transferred to the latter. Cain and Abel are the sons of Shem, Abraham is the son of Abel, and Esau becomes Lamech, the son of JMethuselah.
2 and 3. There are also extant, under the title of" the book of Jasher," two Kabliinical works, one a moral trea- tise, written in A.D. 1394 by l.'.Miabbatai Carmuz Levi- ta, of which a copy in MS. exists in the Vatican library; the other was written by Jacob ben-Meir, or R. Tam, who died in 1171, and contains a treatise on Jewish rit- ual questions. It was published at Cracow in 1586,4to, and again at Vienna in 1 8 1 1 , but incorrectly. No trans- lation of either was ever made. — Kitto ; Smith.
4. An anonymous work under the same name wa.s published at Venice in 1625, at Cracow in 1628. and at Prague in 1668. It contains the histories of the Penta- teuch, Joshua, and Judges, and intermixes many fabu- lous things. It gives (Ixxxviii, 64) the account of Joshua's miracle nearly in the words of Scripture, mak- ing the sun to stand still " thirty-six times" (""^P"), i.e. hours ; but does not bring the historj' down later than the conquest of Canaan. The jjreface itself states that it was discovered at the destruction of Jerusalem by Sidrus, one of the officers of Titus, who, while searching a house for the purpose of plunder, found in a secret chamber a vessel containing the books of the law, the prophets, and Hagiograiiha, with many others, which a venerable man was reading. Sidrus took the old man under his protection, and built for him a house at Se- ville, where the books ^vere safely deposited, and thence this one was conveyed to Naples, where it was printed. The book in question is probably the production of a Spanish Jew of the 13th centurj- (Abicht, De lib?: Recti, in Thes. Nov. Theol. Phil, i, 525-34). A German version of it, with additions, was published by R. Jacob at Frank- fort-on-the-Main (1674, 8vo), with the title ^">r^1 cn, perfect and light. A stereotyped translation of this
JASHOBEAM
V88
JASHUBI-LEHEM
work was published in Nev; York in 1S40, under the di- rection of jNI. M. Noah, with certificates of its lideUty to the original by eminent Hebrew scholars who had ex- amined it.
5. The above works mnst not be confomided with the various editions of a fabrication which was first secretly printed at Bristol, and published in London in 1751 (4to), by an infidel type-founder of Bristol named Jacob Ilive, who was its real author. It was entitled •' The Book of Jasher, with Testimonies and Notes explanatory of the Text: to which is prefixed Various Readings : translated into English from the Hebrew byAlcuin of Britain, who went a pilgrimage into the Holy Land." This book was noticed in the Month!;/ Reciew for December, 1751, which describes it as "a palpable piece of contrivance, intend- ed to impose upon the credulous and ignorant, to sap the crecUt of the books of Moses, and to blacken the charac- ter of Moses himself." Tlie preface, purporting to be written by Alcuin, contains an account of the finding of the book in :MS. at Gazna, in Persia, and the way in which it was translated. Having brought it to England, Alcuin says that he left it, among other papers, with a clergyman in Yorkshire. After two pages of various readings, the book itself follows, divided into thirty- seven chapters. Testimonies and notes are appended. The editor states, in a dedication at the beginning, that he bought the MS. at an auction in the north of Eng- land, and affirms that Wickliffe had written on the out- side, " I have read the book of Jasher twice over, and I much approve of it as a piece of great antiquity and cu- riosity, but I cannot assent that it should be made a part of the canon of Scripture." This clumsy forgery was reprinted at Bristol in 18-27, and published in London in 1829 (4to), as a now discovery of the book of Jasher. A prospectus of a second edition of this reprint was issued in 1833 by the editor, who therein styles himself the Rev.C K. Bond. This literarj' fraud has obtained a notoriety far beyond its merits in consequence of tlie able critiques to which it gave rise, having been again exposed in the Dublin Christian Examiner for 1831, and elaborately refuted by Home in his Introduction (ut sup.; new edition, iv, 741-6).