Hebrew Voices #33 – The Lost Book of Jasher

In this episode of Hebrew Voices, The Lost Book of Jasher, Nehemia Gordon speaks with Israel Prize winner and the world’s foremost expert on the Book of Jasher, Prof. Emeritus Joseph Dan. The Tanakh mentions a book called Sepher Ha-Yashar, which seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth thousands of years ago. An English translation of Jasher then showed up in 1840 claiming to be this lost Biblical book. If this is the original Jasher mentioned in Joshua and 2 Samuel, it would be more important than the Dead Sea Scrolls! If you ever wondered about the Book of Jasher mentioned in the Bible, you will want to listen to this interview.

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Hebrew Voices #33 – The Lost Book of Jasher

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Benjamin Netanyahu: Le ma’an Zion lo ekhesheh, u’l’ma’an Yerushalayim lo eshkhot.

Announcer: You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at nehemiaswall.com.

Nehemia: Today’s episode is about the Book of Jasher, or in Hebrew, Sefer HaYashar. This is a lost book mentioned in two passages in the Bible. The first time is in Joshua 10:13, which describing the miracle of the sun standing still over Gibeon says, “Is it not written in the book of Jasher?” Then when David is lamenting over Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1:18, it says, “Behold, it is written in the Book of Jasher.”

So, what happened to this Book of Jasher?

Jasher, in Hebrew, yashar, literally means straight. And Sefer haYashar is often translated as “The Book of the Upright”. And we have this book quoted twice in the Tanakh, but where is it? It’s lost. Wouldn’t you love to get your hands on that book? I know I sure would. And lo and behold, there is a Hebrew book published in Venice in 1625 that claims to be the lost Book of Jasher. That’s exciting. If this is legitimate, if this is a valid, authentic book, this may be the most important discovery, much more important than the Dead Sea Scrolls. An actual, authentic book from the time of Joshua, a source… it’s actually used as a source in the Book of Joshua. It was translated and published in English in 1840, and you can read it on the internet. But is this really the same Book of Jasher mentioned in Joshua and 2 Samuel?

I decided to track down the world’s foremost expert on the Book of Jasher. Here is my interview with Professor Joseph Dan.

Nehemia: So, you’ve continued in the footsteps of Professor Gershom Scholem, and actually, your official title is “The Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah” at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Professor Dan: They gave me his chair.

Nehemia: Or the chair, okay.

Professor Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And your accomplishments are… like I said, you’ve written over 80 books. You’re currently working on The Definitive History of Jewish Mysticism. What is the title of that in English? You’re now on volume 12, you told me?

Professor Dan: Yeah, it’s History of Jewish Mysticism and Esotericism.

Nehemia: Which is like esoteric knowledge, secret knowledge, in Hebrew, “Torat haSod”.

Professor Dan: Actually, there is no term in Hebrew for mysticism.

Nehemia: Oh, that’s interesting. Oh, that’s very interesting.

Professor Dan: Not in Arabic. No Arab and no Jew before the 20th century knew that he was a mystic.

Nehemia: That’s amazing. So, you’re saying there are things in Jewish mysticism that aren’t kabbalah, so you can’t call them “kabbalah”, you call them “Torat haSod”, which is really, I guess, literally…

Professor Dan: Esoteric knowledge.

Nehemia: Esoteric knowledge. Esotericism, wow. That’s very interesting. So mysticism is a foreign concept to Semitic languages, not just Hebrew.

Professor Dan: It’s sometimes misleading.

Nehemia: Oh, wow, okay. So you’re on volume 12 of the Definitive Guide to Jewish Mysticism, but today I actually wanted to talk to you about the Book of Jasher, which is in Hebrew called Sefer haYashar, and let me just kind of give a background for the audience why I wanted to talk to you about this, why you in particular, Professor Dan.

So, for years, literally going back to 1998, when I first started a website on the internet, I started getting emails from people asking me, “There’s this book of Jasher,” that’s what they called it in English, “Sefer haYashar” in Hebrew, “and is this a real ancient book, this Book of Jasher that’s been translated into English?” People asked me, “Is this the original mentioned in the Book of Joshua and in 2 Samuel?” And my answer was always, “No.” And then, people who were a little bit more bold would say, “Well, how do you know that?” And my answer was always, “Well, this is what the scholars say. This is the scholarly consensus.”

When I started doing this Hebrew Voices series, one of the things I really wanted to do is get to the bottom of some of these questions, because the real answer is, when I would tell people it’s not an ancient book, I didn’t really know. I was just quoting what other scholars said. And I traced back those other scholars and you, Professor Dan, are the source of what those scholars are saying. In other words, when any scholar today says, “No, the Book of Yashar is not an ancient book,” he’s basing it on a study that you wrote in 1986.

And so, I wanted to talk to the man who is the source of this information, which is you, which is that the Book of Yasher is not an ancient book. And it’s your thesis, and I’m actually holding here…

Professor Dan: Just a moment.

Nehemia: Please, yes.

Professor Dan: I’m not the first to say that it’s not an ancient book.

Nehemia: So tell us the history of other scholars who said that.

Professor Dan: All the scholars who wrote the history of Midrashim, of the Jewish legends and so on…

Nehemia: Midrashim are Jewish Rabbinical legends.

Professor Dan: Yeah, have referred to Sefer HaYashar, but they didn’t study the problem, and in most studies before the time that I started, they say that this is Medieval.

Nehemia: Okay.

Professor Dan: Sometime in the Middle Ages.

Nehemia: In the Middle Ages.

Professor Dan: Yes. So, what I succeeded to do, I hope, is to pinpoint the time, and it’s a bit after the Middle Ages, the early 16th century. But as far as I know in Jewish culture, there was no one who really believed that Sefer haYashar is the book mentioned in Joshua.

Nehemia: Okay, so you’re saying… And we’ll get to that in a minute. That’s actually really interesting. So I’m holding in my hand this book that you published in 1986, and I want to tell a story to the people. So, I wrote you an email and then I called you up, and I came over here. And I basically presented what I just presented. And I said, “So, how do we know, Professor Dan?” And you gave me, within about a period of about 20 minutes, you gave me four really solid points, and then you said to me - this is great. Guys, this is classic - he said to me, “Nehemia, let’s not waste my time and let’s not waste your time.”

He went to his bookshelf and he pulled off this 350-page book and he handed it to me. And he said, “After you’ve read this, get back to me.” So, now I’ve read the book, and I’ve really combed through it, and I have 12 pages of notes here, Professor Dan, of points, because I really went into this saying, “Okay, Professor Dan says it’s a book from the Middle Ages. I don’t know. I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it is from the time of Joshua. Let the book speak for itself,” as I was reading it and looking at the evidence that you present.

So, one of the things… I want to read this. This is a quote from you, from page 18 of your book. And the book is called, Sefer haYashar in Hebrew, published in 1986. Yosef Dan is his name, in Hebrew, Joseph Dan. And you wrote on page 18, “It seems that no one today would connect the Sefer haYashar mentioned in the Bible with this Sefer haYashar from the Middle Ages.” You wrote that in 1986. And lo and behold, I’ll just give you one example… You can go, by the way, onto Amazon Kindle and you can find at least 10 editions of Sefer haYashar, the Book of Jasher, published in English, many of them claiming that this is an ancient book that goes back to Biblical times.

Professor Dan: I didn’t know that. It’s a revelation. If somebody unqualified would have told me that, I wouldn’t have believed it. And it’s most surprising.

Nehemia: And I’m not saying these are scholars, but these are people… For example, I was in Washington State a little over a year ago, and there’s a new Bible put out in English. And it includes in it the Book of Jasher.

Professor Dan: Wow.

Nehemia: And it claims this is an ancient book from Biblical times. And here’s another example, a man named Ken Johnson – not to be confused with my friend, Keith Johnson – Ken Johnson in 2008 put out a book called The Ancient Book of Jasher. And he says as follows, this is a quote. He says, “It is approximately the same age as the Biblical book of Genesis.”

Professor Dan: Unbelievable.

Nehemia: He says, “We can know for a fact that the Mishna and Talmud used this Book of Jasher as a source document, and not the other way around.” Now, he doesn’t say how he knows that, he just says it’s a fact we know. And then he brings a quote from Josephus which doesn’t exist. He says, “Josephus says about it…” and I looked it up, and it doesn’t exist in Josephus, unless he has some other version of Josephus.

So, what do you say about that, Professor Dan? You’re the expert. You’re the one who literally wrote the definitive study. And look, at the beginning of your book, you have this definitive study that goes on for over 30 pages, with all kinds of details that I don’t think we’re going to have time to get to today. But what do you say about somebody today who thinks this is the original Book of Jasher mentioned in the Book of Joshua and 2 Samuel?

Professor Dan: Let me give a paragraph of the background.

Nehemia: Okay, please.

Professor Dan: Something that I think people don’t know, neither abroad nor here. Jewish culture, throughout its history until very modern times, completely neglected the concept of fiction. We don’t have, except for a very brief period in the 13th and early 14th centuries, we don’t have the concept and the creativity connected with fiction. By “fiction” I mean stories written by authors who know that they are not telling something which is truth, and readers who read it for pleasure or knowledge, who know that this is not true, which is fiction and it’s part of…

Nehemia: In other words, if I pick up a John Grisham novel, John Grisham knows he’s not telling a true story. And I know he’s not telling a true story. So, you’re saying that didn’t exist in Jewish history up until relatively recently?

Professor Dan: The same, as far as I know, in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, English, French. All literature that I know of have these sections of fiction, except Judaism, except for a few decades in the high Middle Ages.

Nehemia: Okay.

Professor Dan: But the urge to write fiction is human. You will always have people who like to tell stories, yeah?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Professor Dan: Disregarding whether they reflect something true or not, it’s a human urge. So the few people in Judaism who wrote narratives in prose had to disguise themselves, had to give some explanation, “What am I writing? Why am I writing?” I have to perhaps… note in the introduction, the later introduction to Sefer haYashar, the writer writes a series of to’alot, the usages of Sefer haYashar.

Nehemia: And just to give the background, we’ll go into this in more detail, there are two introductions to Sefer haYashar. And it’s your contention that the second introduction is actually the author’s introduction, although he claims it’s not. He claims he didn’t write the book, he found it. So, there are 13 to’alot…

Professor Dan: And first introduction is of the printer.

Nehemia: Right, okay.

Professor Dan: And it’s authentic. What’s written…

Nehemia: And he wrote that in 1625.

Professor Dan: And this printer has to apologize for doing that and finding ethical and ideological things in the book which explain why it should be printed.

Nehemia: Wait, why is he apologizing?

Professor Dan: Everybody did. Everybody who wrote fiction except in the very short period that I referred to, had to find some kind of apology, because the concept of writing and reading fiction didn’t exist. People wanted to read the truth, or something ethical, something philosophical…

Nehemia: Wow! That’s profound.

Professor Dan: To read for pleasure, to write for pleasure and read for pleasure, this concept is absent. So, the author of Sefer haYashar, as far as I can diagnose, is a person who is bursting with the wish to narrate, to tell stories. And he had to disguise it some way. I doubt it very much whether he himself for a moment took seriously his use of the Sefer haYashar.

Nehemia: Wow. In other words, he wasn’t trying to scam people and deceive them.

Professor Dan: Not really deceive, a kind of understanding.

Nehemia: This was his only creative outlet as an author to write fiction. And you actually mentioned to me when we met about a week ago, when you told me to go read the 350-page book, you said, “He likes to spin a yarn. He likes to tell stories.” And I have a great example here, he tells this story, it’s a complicated story of how when people would come before Pharaoh there were these lions, and Moses and Aaron miraculously bedazzled these lions, somehow. And here’s this line from page 309 of the Hebrew edition of the book, and it says, “Vegam hakfirim ba’u itam besimcha, vayirdefu achareihem. Vayismachu ka’asher yismach hakelev el adonav bevoh’oh min hasedeh.” “And the lions came with Moses and Aaron joyfully and chased after them with joy. And they were happy as a dog is happy when his master comes in from the field.”

This is beautiful prose! This is beautiful writing! And what you’re saying is, the guy liked to tell stories, and he didn’t think anybody was going to think this is Sefer haYashar from the time of Joshua, is your contention. Wow, isn’t that beautiful? It’s more beautiful in Hebrew, that’s why I read it in Hebrew. And I’m a dog lover, so that’s part of it. But it’s beautiful.

Professor Dan: But not a lion-lover.

Nehemia: The whole story of the lions is a great story. But they’re coming like dogs, and it’s interesting, because I’m thinking this guy didn’t work in the fields. What does he know of the dog coming in? But he must have been sitting, looking out his window, seeing the peasants in Italy coming in from the fields and the would dogs run out to them. And he writes that, it’s beautiful.

Now, I want to give… you know, we say in Hebrew, “la’asot seder”, to kind of organize things. So, there were two introductions. And the first introduction was written, we know, in 1625, or it was published in 1625, by the publisher in Venice, a man named Yosef haKatan. His name is Joseph ben Samuel the Little. He was from Morocco, and he tells the story of how this book was copied in Morocco around the year 1613 by a man named Jacob ben Attia, and I’m taking this all from your book. Joseph the Little, he writes in his introduction, written in 1625 about what happened around 1613, and he says, “And the copying of this book, Jacob ben Attia copied it from a very old manuscript with unclear letters. And had it not been for the expertise of the aforementioned rabbi,” meaning Jacob ben Attia, “no one else could have understood those letters to copy it, because of their age and lack of clarity.” So, that’s in 1625.

Now, in the second introduction, which is the earlier introduction, we don’t know who wrote that second introduction. We don’t have the…

Professor Dan: I believe it’s the author.

Nehemia: But you say it’s the author. And we know for sure it was written in Naples about 100 years before 1625. That we know for sure, and how do we know that? So, this is from page 38 of the book, and he tells the story of how he got this book, which you say is a fiction, and I think you’re right.

But he writes as follows. This is the second introduction. He says, “And it came to pass when the Lord exiled us a great exile at the hands of the kings of Edom…” and he certainly means the Christian kings when he says, “the kings of Edom,” “…from city to city and nation to nation, an evil embitterness. This book called Toldot Adam, the Generations of Adam, reached his hands,” and it’s unclear who the “his” is, “…along with many books that came from that house in Seville, and they came to our city Naples under the rule of His Majesty, the King of Spain.”

And you explain, based on the context of what he’s talking about, this has to be the early 16th century in Naples, when it was ruled by a king of Spain, when Spain was united, Aragon and Castille. You go into the history there. So, sometime in the early 16th century, the second introduction is written. And it’s your contention that that was the original introduction of the actual author of the book, who was telling these fun stories.

Professor Dan: And this introduction includes, I believe, you read it with the same urge to spin a yarn, to tell a story, to be fantastic, to be intriguing…

Nehemia: So tell this fantastical story of how this book was discovered, according to what you say is the original author.

Professor Dan: Go ahead.

Nehemia: All right, I’m going to read it. So, he writes this story - and you actually refer to this in the book as “ha sippur hayadua”, the “well-known story”, and I actually didn’t know this story, so I’m going to read it for the people. It’s from page 37 and it’s the story of Sidrus and the old man. And this is describing an event that takes place during the sack of Jerusalem in the year 70 AD, when the Temple was destroyed. And it says as follows. And again, this is from the second introduction written in the early 1500s by… who according to Professor Dan is the original author of the 16th century, which is the early 1500s, right?

Professor Dan: Yeah, sure.

Nehemia: Hame’ah hesheshesrei, in other words…

Professor Dan: Yeah sure, right.

Nehemia: So, this is from the early 16th century, the 1500s, about 100 years before it was printed in Venice. This was written in Naples. He says, “There was a certain general among Titus’ generals named Sidrus. He went in Jerusalem and found a very large house and took all the spoils that he found there. But when he wanted to leave the house, he looked at the wall, and he saw in his mind’s eye…” I love that, in Hebrew it’s “be’ein sichlo,” what does that even mean? He’s clearly spinning a yarn, as you say.

So, “Sidrus saw in his mind’s eye the appearance of a treasure in the wall. He then tore down the wall and the building and found one barrel full of many books, including the Bible, books of the kings of Israel, books of the kings of the nations, and other books of Israel. Also, the books of the correct and proper Mishna.” Which is ridiculous. The Mishna was compiled in 210 AD under Rebbe Yehudah haNassi, Rabbi Judah the Prince. But in the sack of Jerusalem, Sidrus found the original Mishna, and he says, “as well as many scrolls placed there.”

And it goes on to tell, “He found there an old man, sitting and reading these books.” And then it goes on and it tells how Sidrus took this man, along with all these books, and eventually they left Jerusalem and they wind up in Seville.

And these many books are housed in Seville in Spain. And Seville was part of the Roman Empire at the time, so this is possible. It’s not impossible. And then, somehow, 1,400 years later, 1,350 years later in the early 16th century, they leave Seville, these books, and end up in Naples in the hands of this man who’s writing the introduction, who you say is the actual author, and he’s making this up, he’s spinning a yarn, and it’s a great yarn. I mean, you know, this general… Meaning, he’s writing something which sort of sounds plausible.

And then he goes on to spin another yarn, which I do want you to tell the story of, because I don’t have the quote here. I want you to tell the story. He spins the yarn that this book even predates the destruction of the Temple, he ties it into The Letter of Aristeas, which is the story of how the Septuagint was written. And he says, “This book played a role in how the Septuagint was written.” So, can you tell that story, Professor Dan?

Professor Dan: I think that he tries to explain that the material in the Septuagint and the Christian Bible, that is not found in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, is taken from Sefer HaYashar.

Nehemia: Oh, so he’s explaining the Apocrypha?

Professor Dan: That’s right.

Nehemia: In the Apocrypha, you have all these stories that don’t show up in the Hebrew Bible. They’re only in the Greek. And the story, basically, he tells is, the Jews didn’t want to give the Bible to Ptolemy. You know, this is the story around 250 BC. Ptolemy is making the library at Alexandria. It’s told in The Letter of Aristeas, and so he asked the Jews, he said, “Send us the book of your Torah and we’ll have it translated into Greek.” And the Jews were very disturbed by this. They didn’t want the Bible translated into any language, certainly not Greek, at the time. And according to this second introduction written in Naples in the early 16th century, instead of sending him the Bible, they sent him Sefer HaYashar. And he translates Sefer HaYashar into Greek, and then the Jews get caught.

Professor Dan: He is subtly making the point that the Christians actually don’t know the real Bible.

Nehemia: Oh, because they have this Sefer HaYashar…

Professor Dan: They think the Sefer HaYashar is the Bible.

Nehemia: Wow, that’s pretty cool. That’s very, very cool. All right, so I want to move on. So this guy publishes it in 1625, Joseph ben Samuel the Little. And there’s this controversy around the original publication of the book. In other words, the man in Naples who writes the introduction intends to publish it, but he never does, as far as we can tell.

Professor Dan: He says that he’ll print it in 50…

Nehemia: 50 copies.

Professor Dan: …copies.

Nehemia: Yeah, and you made the comment…

Professor Dan: But we don’t have any evidence.

Nehemia: We don’t have those.

Professor Dan: And nobody at that time or any time would print anything with 50 copies.

Nehemia: Meaning, they would print a lot more. And it’s strange, why 50? And you say in the book, you say, “Look, we don’t ask questions about Jewish legends. People make stuff up in Jewish legends.” And I mentioned to you before the interview that I wondered if he didn’t take that from Christian history. There was the story that Constantine, shortly after the Counsel of Nicaea ordered 50 copies of the Bible - the Christian Bible in this case - to be created and spread throughout the Roman Empire. I don’t know, would a Jew in the 1500s know that story? Maybe. It’s possible he got that number 50 from there.

Now, you mentioned something really interesting in the book, you mentioned it almost in passing, that there’s this scholar named Zunz, and Zunz is one of the founders of Jewish studies as a scholarly study in the 1800s. And he began to study Sefer HaYashar because there were people in England saying in the English newspapers that the original Book of Yashar, the Book of Jasher mentioned in Joshua and in Samuel, was discovered. And Zunz decided, “Look, I can’t let this nonsense go without response,” and he began to research it.

And by the way, Jasher isn’t someone’s name. Jasher, or yashar just means “straight” or “upright”. And it’s interesting, in the second introduction, which you say is the introduction of the author, of the actual author, he interprets Sefer HaYashar as the chronological book, meaning it’s straightforward in its chronology, as opposed to the Torah, for example, which is not in chronological order always, sometimes by theme. The example is that Numbers chapter 9 is dated to before Numbers 1. It actually gives a date in the book.

So this is in chronological order. Some people call it the “Pseudo-Jasher”, this medieval Jasher. So, I want to jump to this issue of Joseph ben Samuel publishing the book, and you write this in a little footnote that I almost missed. I missed it the first time I read it, and then I re-read your study in 1986. And you mentioned that this book was censored. It was censored by the rabbis, because they considered it a fraud, basically. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Professor Dan: Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Modena was a polemicist, and he wrote many, many books. He was very integrated in the Italian culture of the time.

Nehemia: And you mean gentile, Christian Italian culture, right?

Professor Dan: Yes, sure, sure.

Nehemia: Even though he’s a Jew? Okay.

Professor Dan: No, he was one of those kind of Renaissance people, Jewish people who really integrated in Italian culture. What interested me most, he wrote a very detailed polemical work against the kabbalah.

Nehemia: And you’re the expert of kabbalah, okay.

Professor Dan: And he’s the fierce opponent of the Zohar and the kabbalah in general. He also pretended to write a response to a book which I’m sure that he himself wrote, against the Talmud.

Nehemia: What? Wait a minute. He wrote a book against the Talmud and then responded to that book?

Professor Dan: Yeah. It’s called “Kol Zahal Vesha’agat Aryeh,” “kol zahal, the voice of the ignorant…”

Nehemia: The fool. “The voice of the fool and the roar of the lion.

Professor Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: That’s great!

Professor Dan: And the interesting thing is that The Voice of the Ignorant is complete. It’s just a very short book, and The Roar of the Lion is only the beginning of the book.

Nehemia: Okay.

Professor Dan: And it was published anonymously, and I think his opposition to the kabbalah is a part of his general reformist attitudes. He wanted to modernize Judaism also, and his book against the kabbalah was published in 1648.

Nehemia: 1648, okay. The 1600s, yeah, 17th century.

Professor Dan: And I think he felt horror when he saw that the first edition of Sefer HaYashar somehow claims to be the ancient Biblical book. Not clearly, but…

Nehemia: It alludes to… Before we get to that, I want you to just say, as we say, “standing on one leg”, you are the world’s foremost expert today on kabbalah, and hence, on the Zohar. What exactly, for those who don’t know… Not exactly, in general, what is the Zohar? When was it really written, and when did it claim to be written?

Professor Dan: The Zohar was written… I just published volume 11 of the series which deals only with the Zohar.

Nehemia: Which is the definitive history of Jewish mysticism, yeah.

Professor Dan: It’s the key. It’s the most important. It was written by a scholar by the name of Moshe de León, who lived in Northern Spain in the last decades of the 13th century, Moshe de León.

Nehemia: Moshe de León, okay.

Professor Dan: And he died in 1305, and he wrote several kabbalistic works in his own name, and he wrote he wrote this enormous work which is actually kind of a Midrash on the Torah, homilies portion by portion on the Torah, which is the most important, meaningful, inspired work of Jewish mysticism or esotericism, you might say, of Jewish spirituality.

Nehemia: Which is the Zohar.

Professor Dan: Yeah, the Zohar is the pinnacle…

Nehemia: So Moshe de León wrote the Zohar, you’re saying?

Professor Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, but he didn’t write it in his own name?

Professor Dan: Not in his own name, it’s attributed to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a tanna, a scholar of the Mishna of the 2nd century, and his son and a group of friends around him, and discussions, and so on. And when I referred before to the absence of the concept of fiction, here we have an example. He wrote the narrative, a cover of the Zohar, in the manner of a romance, a romance of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai…

Nehemia: And by “romance” you don’t mean romance like love, you mean what we say in Hebrew, “roman, a novel.

Professor Dan: Like King Arthur and Alexander…

Nehemia: So a novel, basically in modern terms.

Professor Dan: A medieval kind of novel.

Nehemia: Okay. So, basically, he wrote this in the 13th century, claiming it was written in the…

Professor Dan: The late 13th century.

Nehemia: …in the 2nd century.

Professor Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: 1,100 years earlier. All right. And there are people to this day who believe it was written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the 2nd century.

Professor Dan: Oh, in contradiction to the situation in Sefer HaYashar, in many circles you are not really a good Jew if you don’t believe that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai wrote this. It’s a kind of thermometer - you check how much Jew you are by this. And in fact, on the festival of Lag b’Omer, of the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, they place they say is his tomb, near Safed, they say, three hundred to four hundred thousand people, Jews, assemble. It’s the greatest religious assembly of Jews ever.

Nehemia: Meaning, it’s the greatest annual… In fact in Israel, it’s my understanding it’s the greatest annual gathering of any kind, even more than the Muslims on their holidays on the Temple Mount, the largest gathering of anybody in Israel on an annual basis is the Jews at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the purported author of the Zohar. I think it’s the anniversary of his death, the 33rd day of the Omer.

Professor Dan: It’s connected to the story of the rebellion of Bar Kochba against the Romans.

Nehemia: Okay, but they gather on the 33rd day of the counting of the 50 days towards Pentacost every year at the tomb of this rabbi who didn’t write the Zohar, but he’s given credit for it by this rabbi in the 13th century. Now, let’s go back to Sefer HaYashar. So, this rabbi, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Modena, he’s writing in the year 1639 and he writes a book against the Zohar called Ari Nohem, The Roaring Lion, or something like the roaring lion.

Professor Dan: 1648.

Nehemia: Okay, in 1648. He writes this book, and he goes on at length, apparently, about how the Zohar is, from his perspective, a forgery. Meaning, it’s not really written…

Professor Dan: Absolutely.

Nehemia: …by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.

Professor Dan: He was the first to write in detail the reasons why no one in his right mind will accept that the Zohar was written in ancient times.

Nehemia: So, this is a book written in the 13th century, claiming to be from the 2nd century. And in the 17th century, in the 1600s, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Modena comes along and says, “This thing is a forgery.” And then he gives an example of a similar type of forgery. And I want read that passage, it’s from page 20 of your book in 1986, your edition of Sefer HaYashar and your detailed study. And you quote there from Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Modena from Ari Nohem where he says, “The forgery of the Zohar, it’s like Sefer HaYashar, which they printed contrary to my opinion, and the opinion of the rabbis here in Venice about 20 years ago.” And he says, “I removed from it the delusionary inscription…” I love that phrase, “…that this was the Sefer HaYashar mentioned in Scripture, and still there are people who claim it was found after the Destruction of the Temple.” So, this is Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Modena. He says, “Yeah, the Zohar’s a forgery, just like Sefer HaYashar.”

And your point is, nobody took Sefer HaYashar seriously, but they did take the Zohar seriously, and that’s why he brings this analogy. Now, what’s really, really cool is what you mentioned in a footnote, and I went and dug this up yesterday at the Jewish National Library at Givat Ram. You mentioned in the footnote that there was one copy in the world of the original printing of Sefer HaYashar from 1625, before Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Modena censored it. And I went to see it with my own two eyes, and I saw it. And I’m going to post it on the website, nehemiaswall.com. It’s the original title page which in Hebrew introduces it. It says, “The book of Yashar, an ancient book written in ancient times, which includes many stories not mentioned in the legends of our sages.”

And perhaps this is the Book of Yashar mentioned in the Scriptures.

Professor Dan: Perhaps.

Nehemia: So, he’s still careful, but he makes a pretty big claim. He says, “These aren’t stories taken from the legends of the sages, from the Midrash.” So, the more common edition, of which there are many copies after the censorship in 1625 - and these are both from 1625. It has a very different introduction. In the later 1625 title page it says, “The Book of Yashar, which includes some stories and legends of our sages.” Completely different. In other words, these are Midrashim. These are the types of stories our sages tell. This isn’t the original Book of Yashar. Even though the actual body of the second introduction claims that it is, which you say is the author in the 16th century.

Now, in 1839 there was a man named “MM Noah”, who published the Sefer HaYashar in New York, or he published it in 1840. And in 1839 he says, “I have no hesitation in pronouncing it a work of great antiquity and interest.” And I want to jump into some of the reasons you say this isn’t the original Book of Yashar, meaning not the one mentioned in the Bible. And you mentioned some of these to me when we met a week ago. You gave me some really powerful proofs. Share with me some of those, and we’ll talk about them.

Professor Dan: Just briefly, I think my emotional connection with Sefer HaYashar…

Nehemia: Your emotional connection?

Professor Dan: Yeah, the one thing I like about it is this legend of Tzvo ben Eliphaz.

Nehemia: Okay. Now, Tzvo ben Eliphaz in English, I think they say, “Zipho”.

Professor Dan: Zipho.

Nehemia: So, Tzvo is the grandson of Esau, of Esav.

Professor Dan: Right.

Nehemia: Great-grandson of Isaac.

Professor Dan: He’s mentioned once in the Bible, so he’s a biblical figure. And the Sefer HaYashar dedicates dozens of pages to a detailed narrative of the events and the history of this Tzvo ben Eliphaz, things which as far as I know, and I’m quite sure, are not to be found anywhere else. So, it’s most probably a pure fabrication, a pure fiction written by this author.

And the point is that this story of Tzvo ben Eliphaz as presented in Sefer HaYashar is quite similar in quite a few details to the epic of the history of Rome, written by Virgil, the Aeneas story, and so on, which the author of the Sefer HaYashar undoubtedly knew and copied it, and copied some of the details, and I think here he had an interest to explain what is the connection between Esau, who is actually the brother of Jacob, yeah?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Professor Dan: How Jewish can you get? And Rome, which is referred to in Jewish history as “Esau, Edom or Esau.” So, this narrative claims that this Tzvo ben Eliphaz, the grandson of Esau, he is the actual founder of the kingdom of Rome, and this is why the Romans can be referred to as “descendants of Esau,” yeah? And this is why they are called “Edom” as the Bible refers to Esau, because he lived in Har Seir, in Edom. And so, here he tried to bring together Jewish Biblical history and Roman history, and I think he did it very nicely.

Nehemia: Meaning, as a fiction?

Professor Dan: As a fiction.

Nehemia: I just want to reiterate what you said before, which is that he had no other way of expressing fiction except to pretend… what’s called pseudepigrapha.

Professor Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: In other words, he had to pretend he was some other author, there just wasn’t another way of writing in this period of Jewish history.

Professor Dan: There was no rubric, there was no place…

Nehemia: To write a novel.

Professor Dan: No corner in Jewish culture for works of fiction.

Nehemia: That’s actually really interesting, because today you go into a bookstore and you have the section which is fiction. And you’re saying that section didn’t exist in the Jewish bookstore in the 1500s, and so, he had to pretend he was somebody else…

Professor Dan: Like many others. I wrote many years ago a book on Medieval Jewish stories, the narratives in the Middle Ages, and I gave quite a few examples of apologies of people writing narratives and apologizing for doing so. The fact that you want to tell a story, or that some people like to read a story that’s within a Jewish framework, is no reason to do it, except for a very brief period, by the way, a brief period at the center of which is the Zohar.

Nehemia: Interesting. That’s very interesting. Wow.

Professor Dan: The author of the Zohar was even afraid, we know, of some of the writers of…

Nehemia: So, he could have written it as fiction, the author of the Zohar, but he chose not to.

Professor Dan: If someone puts forward the claim that the author himself did not believe for a moment, that he’s writing history, but that he knew that he was writing fiction, I think that’s…

Nehemia: It’s possible.

Professor Dan: …and people around him in the first generation after the Zohar, they all treated it as a fiction.

Nehemia: I have a great story I want to share about that, Professor Dan. There’s this great story that Eli Wiesel tells. Eli Wiesel is the great author…

Professor Dan: I know, I met him.

Nehemia: You have met him, okay. So, you know, he’s written many, many books on the Holocaust as fiction. And so, there’s a story he tells that he once met his childhood rabbi, and the rabbi asked him, “What do you do?” And the rabbi didn’t know what fiction was, so he tries to explain to him. And so, the rabbi says, “So, you tell lies?” And Eli Wiesel’s response…

Professor Dan: And in English, fiction is actually lies.

Nehemia: That’s true. And so, Eli Wiesel’s response - I don’t know the exact quote here - but he says something to the effect of, “Well, not everything that ever happened is true. And many things that are true never happened.”

Professor Dan: Very nice.

Nehemia: And he’s trying to explain to the rabbi… it’s profound. It’s deeply profound. But he’s trying to explain to a rabbi whose mindset is still in the Middle Ages, who doesn’t know what fiction is, he’s trying to explain to him, “I don’t tell lies. I’m telling deep, profound truths through things that never necessarily happened.”

And I get the impression when I read the Talmud stories about all kinds of things, of angels and voices from heaven, and you wonder, “Did the rabbis who wrote this think this happened? Or are they trying to express a moral story, a moral principle?”

Professor Dan: Whatever they did, sometimes we’ll never know. But what we do know is that the interpreters of the Talmud in the next many centuries tried to explain all these stories as fact, not fiction.

Nehemia: They took them literally as fact.

Professor Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Professor Dan: Maybe the Bible itself, I don’t know. Maybe there are parts which were written as fiction, became very sacred, and everybody takes them as fact and not fiction.

Nehemia: Well, so the example of that, even within the Jewish tradition is there were rabbis who said that the Book of Job was written as a mashal, as a parable, and not that there was a man who’s named Job…

Professor Dan: They say mashal, a parable…

Nehemia: It’s a parable.

Professor Dan: Because they didn’t have a term for fiction.

Nehemia: Okay. Well, or it was a story to express a deeper spiritual principle.

Professor Dan: Fiction can do that. Fiction is not contradicting a message, or a spiritual message.

Nehemia: And I happen to think it’s not a mashal, but definitely there are people who, even within the Jewish tradition, explain that about the Book of Job, for example.

Professor Dan: Because people are people. And then come the conventions of culture that they try to fit in.

Nehemia: And I think it was Nachmanides, Ramban, who famously said about the Jewish legends, the aggadah of the Midrash, that anybody who denies all of them is a heretic, but anybody who believes all of them is insane, something like that. But you’re saying in the first generation, they definitely took it literally.

So, I want to go into some of these details of Sefer HaYashar, and we’ll try to do this briefly. So, you know, as I was reading this, I was trying to give it the benefit of the doubt and say, “Look, maybe this is from the period of Joshua, and unless I see evidence to the contrary, I’m going to take that as…” And I actually asked you, so you gave me the example… Let’s go back to this. You gave me the example of Virgil’s Aaneid, which we know was written between 29 and 19 BC in Rome. It was an epic poem written by the poet Virgil. He’s giving, basically, an alternative history of Rome. The standard history of Rome was the story of Romulus and Remus, and so, he gives an alternative story that there was a survivor from Troy… Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey about the wars of Troy. And there was a survivor from Troy named Aeneas who had all these adventures and eventually arrives in Rome. And he settles in Rome, and he’s the real founder of Rome. And that story is basically told here, but instead of Aeneas, we have Zipho, the grandson of Esau.

Although it’s a little bit more complicated, there’s all kinds of things going on, but that one thing in itself proves the fact that one of his sources is clearly the Aeneid of Virgil, that it can’t be from the time of Joshua. I mean, that’s kind of the end of the story right there.

Professor Dan: And as you mentioned before, the terms “Africa” and the name of “Hannibal”.

Nehemia: What are some other things? One of the statements you made to me, I said, “What about the language? Could it be Biblical Hebrew?” And you made the remark to me, you said, “Read any two sentences and you’ll see it’s not Biblical Hebrew.”

Professor Dan: Except in the beginning.

Nehemia: So, it kind of pretends to be Biblical Hebrew.

Professor Dan: In the beginning it pretends to be Biblical, then he gets tired of it, and…

Nehemia: Well, he doesn’t really pull it off. And so, for example, he’ll have words that don’t exist in Biblical Hebrew. But he kind of has this pseudo-Biblical Hebrew, as you said, until he gets tired and he stops trying to pull it off. And are there any other things that you want to share about this book?

Professor Dan: About the language, please remember that there was no spoken Hebrew at that time.

Nehemia: Meaning, this is the 16th century in Naples?

Professor Dan: Yeah. So, one could easily…

Nehemia: So, what was Hebrew at that time?

Professor Dan: …adapt Talmudic language, halakhic language, Biblical language, and it would not contradict anything, yeah? There was no real alternative.

Nehemia: So, he might not have been sensitive enough to what we would analytically say is Biblical Hebrew to say, “Oh, I can’t use that word, that’s not a word from the period of Joshua,” you’re saying. So, who was writing and reading Hebrew in the 16th century? And that’s actually one of your fields of expertise.

Professor Dan: This period is one of the greatest and flourishing of Hebrew culture in Italy. That’s immediately after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and many, many of the intellectuals from Spain made their home in Italy, and there was a long tradition of Jewish culture in Italy, and the 16th century is really, for us also, it’s a renaissance, not in the European sense, but it’s a great, great seeding and profound culture.

Nehemia: So, you had Jews who could read Hebrew, who wrote Hebrew, and it was a major vehicle for…

Professor Dan: And hundreds, hundreds.

Nehemia: That’s kind of important, because a lot of times, people will hear Hebrew was a dead language, and it was brought back to life by Eliezer ben Yehudah. But it wasn’t a dead language in the sense that maybe Akkadian was, meaning, people always read and wrote in Hebrew, right?

Professor Dan: No doubt. No doubt.

Nehemia: Okay. That’s something that people miss when they hear it’s a dead language. It wasn’t completely dead, it was a language of writing, of literature.

Professor Dan: In this sense, it was more alive than kind of dealing with the kabbalah. We have from this period, several thousands of works…

Nehemia: Thousands.

Professor Dan: Thousands.

Nehemia: Wow, wow. Yeah.

Professor Dan: And halakha, Jewish law, and the homilies, there are many, many thousands.

Nehemia: Written in Hebrew, wow.

Professor Dan: Yeah.

Nehemia: And that’s actually kind of one of the things that, if I’m not mistaken, that Professor Gershom Scholem, that he discovered. In other words, before him, people didn’t take studying the kabbalah seriously.

Professor Dan: That’s right.

Nehemia: So, I heard the criticism was that people said to him, “You can’t study kabbalah. It’s shtut,” and he famously… I don’t know if he said this, but he’s attributed to have said, “Shtut, zeh shtut, aval, kheker hashtut, zeh mada.” He didn’t say that? Okay.

Professor Dan: No, it’s the exact opposite.

Nehemia: Oh, okay.

Professor Dan: I don’t think he will contradict it, but this was by the greatest Talmudic scholar of the 20th century, and a great occasional friend of Gershom Scholem, Shaul Lieberman. He introduced Scholem in a lecture in New York saying, “We know that kabbalah is nonsense. But the history of nonsense is a science.”

Nehemia: That’s great! That’s beautiful! And it’s actually really profound.

Professor Dan: It’s true.

Nehemia: It’s very profound, because before Gershom Scholem, people said, “Yeah, kabbalah. That’s not serious.” And what he discovered is kabbalah evolved over time, it changed over time. There were thousands of different books with different opinions and perspectives. And that’s what you’re continuing in his footsteps, and it’s actually really profound. Thank you so much, Professor Dan.

Professor Dan: You are very welcome.

Nehemia: I really appreciate it. I have to say, Professor Dan, I’ve done many, many interviews, and I’m deeply honored to have been able to sit here and speak with someone who won the Israel Prize. I really feel that I’m in the presence of greatness here…

Professor Dan: Oh, come on.

Nehemia: And I’m not exaggerating. You know, you’re a very humble man, but you really are one of the top people in all time in Jewish studies, and in the study of kabbalah, which we didn’t even really talk about, you are today, the world’s greatest scholar.

Now, Professor Dan, I noticed that in your… I forgot to tell people this. You have a list of publications that came out in 2012, and this is just a list of books and articles that you published. And just the list is 207 pages long, and one of the things you said to me when we first met about a week ago is, you said, “Don’t come back until you’ve looked through this.” And I did. And one of the books that you wrote here in your list, I’m really excited about. And it’s a book about Jewish Messianism, about Jewish expectations of the Mashiach, of the Messiah.

And you wrote this book in Hebrew, so there’s no way most of my audience will ever have access to this information. Professor Dan, I would love, after I’ve had a chance to study that book, to come back and do an interview with you about Jewish Messianism and expectations of the Mashiach. Would you be willing to do that?

Professor Dan: This is book is dedicated to the modern period.

Nehemia: The modern period. I think that’s wonderful.

Professor Dan: Not classical.

Nehemia: No, I understand. And the modern period you begin in which century, Professor Dan?

Professor Dan: 15th, 16th.

Nehemia: Okay, in the 15th and 16th century, that’s the modern period. So, that would be amazing to sit with you and talk. What was it that Jews expected of a Messiah? And I have to tell you my own experience, that’s something that I saw changes to this in my lifetime in the 1980s, with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. In my lifetime, I remember some of these changes, and you can trace this back to the 15th century. I would love to sit and talk with you about that. And God willing, that will be the follow-up interview in the future.

All right, would you come back and talk with us about that, Professor Dan?

Professor Dan: Yeah, sure.

Nehemia: Wonderful, thank you so much.

Professor Dan: You are very welcome.

Nehemia: Guys, I hope you’re looking forward to that, because I’m excited about it. All right, shalom.

Professor Dan: Shalom.

Nehemia: What an amazing conversation. And we barely scratched the surface. Professor Dan clearly believes that the Book of Jasher was written in Naples in the early 1500s, not in the time of Joshua. But we really didn’t get into too many details with actual evidence from the book. We just didn’t have time. So I decided to do a follow-up study with concrete examples, and definitive proof.

If you enjoyed the discussion with Professor Dan, you will absolutely love the follow-up study. My Raw Stream of Torah consciousness on the Book of Jasher, check it out on nehemiaswall.com. Shalom.

Announcer: You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at nehemiaswall.com.

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Related Posts:
The Book of Jasher Exposed
Enoch Walking with Angels
Nephilim and Demons in the Book of Enoch

Show Notes:

The original cover page of Sepher HaYashar, published by Samuel the Little of Fez in Venice 1625 reads: "The Book of Yashar, an ancient book written in ancient times… [which includes] many stories not mentioned in the legends of our Sages. And perhaps this is the Book of Yashar mentioned in Scripture."

Original (uncensored) title page of Sepher HaYashar, Venice 1625
Original (uncensored) title page of Sepher HaYashar, Venice 1625

Yehudah Arye of Modena censored Sepher HaYashar, forcing Samuel the Little of Fez to change the cover title of the 1625 edition to read: "The Book of Yashar, which includes some stories and legends of our Sages…"

Censored title page of Sepher HaYashar, Venice 1625.
Censored title page of Sepher HaYashar, Venice 1625.

"Some events do take place but are not true; other are--although they never occurred." Elie Wiesel

"In literature... certain things are true though they didn't happen, while others are not, even if they did." Elie Wiesel

  • shell says:

    Im looking forward to that follow up study. I got an audio book of jasher and went through it a few months ago. People were referencing it so i needed to see if it was true, and i got progressively more and more aggravated as it went on. The audio book was incomplete and ended in the chapters 60s, and i was glad for that; its one thing to turn joseph into a sniveling little tattle tale, and the sons of israel into actual supermen, but when you tell me Job was actually the one who told pharaoh to kill all the firstborn israelites in egypt, we got a problem. Fiction or not, that really bothered me. Ive heard you talk about job a couple times, and i feel the same way, the man and his life are very important to me

  • Matt says:

    Who is the artist and what is the name of the song used in your opening? I really like it. great episode by the way, what a blessing.

  • Yvonne says:

    Neihemia and Professor Dan. This was such a blessing.

  • Elliot Hass says:

    Enjoyed this. Very informative. We need truth.

  • Fran Brashear says:

    Thank you, thank you, thank you Nehemia and Prof. Joseph Dan. Truly looking forward to your future interview. You both are a blessing…beacons of truth!

  • What was the name of the book that the Professor Dan wrote that he wanted you to read before the interview. Is there 1 in English?

  • Ronald Peloquin says:

    Thank you Nehemiah i was about to completely swallow down whole as truth, the book of jasher, that i downloaded from u tube. I will read it but now i know that professor Dan and you show me that it was made in the medieval period. It is not the one in the book of joshua and 2nd samuel ib.c. watch your wall often. Does your friend keith johnston believe it is the ancient book of jasher? Thanks again from Ron Peloquin.

  • SisterCarrie says:

    In ancient Egypt there was fiction but it usually contained an historical element. Midrashim are legends, but how is one to be sure where they do not contain the truth? For instance, the Book of Jasher claims that Moses was a king in the land of Kush in the 55th year of the king of Egypt. Few pharaohs reigned that long but one, Thutmose III, did reign almost exactly that long. As I point out in my book, “Manetho Demystified”, Pseudo-Dionysius wrote: “In the Year 490, the king of Egypt died and Cencheres reigned for sixteen years. This was he who waged a contest with Moses with the help of Jannes and Jambres the magicians. It was about him that Moses said: He drowned Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea.”

    One can see by the year given by Pseudo-Dionysius that he is following the number stated in the Book of Exodus for the sojourn of the Hebrews―430 years from the promise to Abraham―which is actually supposed to be the time when Moses fled from Egypt. So Pseudo-Dionysius is observing the same reckoning as Eusebius but supplies the year of the return of the lawgiver in order to confront a new pharaoh. According to the math of Eusebius, reckoning backwards from the reign of a Roman emperor, Moses left Egypt in 1510 BCE–in the Year 430. The Year 490, then, is 1450 BCE, the precise year that Thutmose III died after 54 years on the throne and Amenhotep II succeeded. The latter’s throne name was “Aakheperure” and he is the “Cencheres” of Pseudo-Dionysius for linguistic reasons I explain in my book. Marianne Luban

  • Leaves Heal says:

    Thank you for this perspective / analysis!

  • Roxanne Arkie says:

    Yes, this was a great episode! I am going back to listen for the third time. I am trying to relay these truths to my fellow brethren!

  • This teaching interview was simply awesome. Just awesome. So many need to hear this and listen to it. I will be sharing this. I have told my readers to tune in. I will make that point again with this teaching.

    Great job, great interview and perfect timing. Thank you Nehemiah.

  • Lindsey says:

    Nice posts Nehemia. Got a question. The book Letters Beyond The Sambatyon is subtitled The Myth of the 10 Lost Tribes. It was edited by Simcha Shtull-Trauring. Its subtitle refers to myths. Prof Dan suggests that there were no “myths” but actually myths abounded. Is it they just didn’t have a word for “myth”? Was this because the were so convinced that the Hebrew tongue was so scared?

  • GREAT job guy’s the fairytales are myths and are busted my confirmation .

  • Michel Fleury says:

    I do have a question referring to the book of Jasher and the commentaries of Rashi.

    Shlomo Yitzchaki (Hebrew: רבי שלמה יצחקי‎‎; 22 February 1040 – 13 July 1105), in Latin: Salomon Isaacides, and today generally known by the acronym Rashi (Hebrew: רש”י‎, RAbbi SHlomo Itzhaki), was a medieval French rabbi and author of a comprehensive commentary on the Talmudand commentary on the Tanakh.

    A modern translation of Rashi’s commentary on the Chumash, published by Artscroll

    My question is why are the commentaries of Rashi in the published Artscroll Tanakh, word for word exactly like the stories found in the Book of Jasher?

    I could take pictures and do a side by side comparison. And it’s the same!

    • The 16th century author of Jasher used Rashi and various Midrashim as his sources.

      • Michel Fleury says:

        This is easy to say on both sides, so how do you know this that the author of Jasher used Rashi and not the other way around ? And where can we find any evidence of your statement?

        • I’m glad you acknowledge that the parallels between Jasher and Rashi (as well as the Midrash) prove nothing about the age of Jasher! The original, now lost, Sepher HaYashar is mentioned in Joshua so it must be from his period or earlier, i.e. around 1400 BCE. It’s quite clear that the Book of Jasher known from the Middle Ages is not from the time of Joshua or earlier. I go into great detail with proofs in part 2 entitled “The Book of Jasher Exposed“. The evidence includes:

          1) Tribes and their associated geographical locations that post-date Joshua by over 1,500 years, such as the Hungarians on the Danube and the Franks in Paris.
          2) Historical figures and places that post-date Joshua by centuries, such as Hannibal Barca, Rome, Carthage, etc.
          3) Legends that post-date Joshua such as Aeneas and the Rape of the Sabine Women.
          4) Greek and Latin words, such as “Africa” and “Aver” (air).
          5) Anachronistic impossible things such as an aquaduct that crosses the Mediterranean Sea.

          • Michel Fleury says:

            I am looking forward to reviewing your part 2… Ok then this brings me to my second question based on your first statement that the 16 century Author of Jasher took from Rashi and other sources. So just how much sources from Rashi / others did he take? Are these sources of Rashi valid and what sources were invented in the book of Jasher that are not valid?

    • Michel Fleury says:

      Nehemia Gordon How did Saul (Paul) in 2 Timothy 3:8-9 know the names of the two magicians who withstood Moses? Exodus 7:8-13 The Tanakh never mentioned the names! But one of the names are given in the Book of Jasher.

      • These magicians are mentioned in many sources such as the the Roman authors Pliny the Elder and Apuleius. There is also a separate Apocryphon of Jannes and Jambres and their names appear three times in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan:

        Ex. 1:15 And Pharaoh said that while sleeping he saw in his dream,”And behold all the land of Egypt was on one scale of a balance, and a young lamb was on the other scale of the balance, and the scale of the balance of the lamb was tipping down.” Immediately he sent and called all the magicians of Egypt and told them his dream. Immediately Jannes and Jambres, the heads of the magicians, opened their mouth and said to Pharaoh, “A son is about to be born among the congregation of Israel by whose hands all the land of Egypt is about to be destroyed.” Therefore, Pharaoh king of Egypt took counsel and ordered the Jewish midwifes, the name of the one was Shifra and the name of the second was Puah (she is Miriam her daughter),
        Ex. 7:11 But Pharaoh also summoned the wise men and the magicians, and they did so also, Jannes and Jambres, the magicians of Egypt, with their magic spells.
        Num. 22:22 Then the anger of the Lord grew strong because he was going to curse them, so the angel of the Lord stationed himself on the path to be hostile to him while he was riding on his she-donkey with his two servants, Jannes and Jambres.

    • SisterCarrie says:

      Another theory is that the Book of Jasher was not written in the 16th Century in Italy but in Spain in the Middle Ages.

  • Sharon Fahey says:

    What about the Book of Enoch?

  • Heiki Henrichsen says:

    This was super! Really appreciated this.

  • Joann Drucker says:

    I really enjoyed listening to this :–) thank you for doing this interview.

  • Wanda Ratcliffe-Smith says:

    I always enjoy listening to you and your guests Nehemia, but I must say this is one is one of my favourites:). Thank you both for taking the time to share and teach such wonderful information; I do look forward to hearing you and Prof Dan speak more after you’v read his book(s):)

  • YIshis Lassie says:

    Speaking of authorial styles, I remember the time reading the book of Jonah in seminary from a Critical perspective, and having a sudden strong sense that it seemed to be purposely written as a theatrical farce – in no way detracting from its truth. How often I also realize that it seems that all biblical truth seems to be paradoxical – I call this principle “Holy Paradox”.

  • Mary Wittman says:

    so insightful! Loved this episode, Thank you professor Dan. I appreciate your honesty and your research. Great job, once again, Nehemia! Blessed memory of Elie Wesel.

  • Something I’ve been wondering about for some time, thank you for addressing it! Look forward to the follow-ups.

  • Dawn says:

    What a treat. Thank you Professor Dan Thank you Nehemia.

  • Michael Ciavirella says:

    That interview was so amazing on many levels. One of your best. Can’t wait for the next interview with him. Would love to have the messiah book translated into English……

  • Walter Schwenk says:

    Feel up to dealing with the book of Enoch and its 364 day calendar?

  • Marty Shrabel says:

    Great interview! Thank you Nehemia for not only being the watchman on the wall, but also being a “Faith Detective”, investigating and uncovering the truth about the pertinent issues regarding our faith; as in Dragnet’s Detective Friday’s famous words, “Just the facts ma’am.” I look forward to the rest of your study on this subject. Please do the study on the “vav.”

  • Luci Landauer says:

    I felt so privileged to hear this! Wow! Real sources! Thank you for doing this one, I know it helps keep “sources” in perspective when speaking with other believers. It’s funny that even way back when it was published the author didn’t expect anyone to take it seriously as Scripture. We all have SO much to learn. The longer I go in this walk of faith with Yehovah the less I have to say out of my own mouth. I think there is a proverb about wisdom and keeping silent. ? I’m looking forward to your conversation with him about the messiah in the “modern” age. Can’t wait!

  • YIshis Lassie says:

    Wow – what a delightful interview. I just have to pinch myself sometimes, that I have these amazing opportunities to learn from elite and more every-day sources within the Jewish community through your faithful heart, Nehemia. It would be fascinating to hear what Kabala is from him, and then your own thoughts later, too. Raw stream of Torah-consciosness. Hope it arrives early!

  • Sarah says:

    Interesting. I look forward to your follow-up on the Book of Jasher.

  • Jacqueline K Moll says:

    …what a personable man! (you too Nehemiah) I think the best line in this interview is when Prof. Dan said, “You’ll always have people who like to tell stories”! I laughed so hard that I had to go back and listen again to the parts I missed… Great interview!!!