JASHER, THE BOOK OF, a work mentioned in Joshua x. 13, and 2 Sam. i. 18, and which, especially in recent times, has occasioned much controversy. The two passages connect the book with two poetical compositions, and from this circumstance Lotth has supposed that it was a collection of national songs; and that the name applied to it was the first word of the first poem, Jasher—he sang,—this being the common way in which the Hebrews gave names to books. A more general belief was that founded upon a different meaning of the word, according to which it was supposed to consist of a series of biographies of just men—Jasher meaning just. In early times Theodore thought the whole book of Joshua to be a quotation from Jasher, while Jerome considered Genesis and Jasher to be the same. Some thought Jasher to be the Pentateuch; others, the book of Judges, and others again conjectured that it was a treatise on archery. This last opinion was founded on a mistaken notion of the passage in David's lamentation over Saul, where when he says that the children of Judah were taught the use of the bow, the bow is imagined to be the name of a poem so called from its initial word. In the thirteenth century, a book on Jewish laws, by Rabbi Tham, was called Jasher; and another, which was printed in 1625, professed to have been preserved by an old man at the destruction of Jerusalem. In 1751 an impudent forgery was palmed off upon the public, under the name of the Book of Jasher, by a type-founder of Bristol of the name of Jacob Hlve. The preface to the book gave an account of the pretended discovery of the original in the city of Gazna in Persia by Alcuin, who is also said to be the author of the English translation. This forgery was revived in 1827, and would scarcely deserve so much notice were it not for the learned critiques to which it gave rise. (See Horne's Introduction.) The subject of Jasher has been again revived by the publication in 1854 of a work by Dr Donaldson, entitled Jasher Fragmenta Archetypa Carminum Hebraicorum in Massoretico Veteris Testamenti textu passim tessellata, &c. According to this author, the Old Testament is a new building consisting of materials taken from the dismembered book of Jasher, and these materials he restores to their primitive place. The present arrangement of the Old Testament, according to Donaldson, was effected by men thoroughly incompetent to the task; and amongst other discoveries which he has lived to make are these,—that Moses did not write the Pentateuch; that Shem, Ham, and Japhet were the three sons of Adam; that Abraham was the son of Abel; that the Song of Moses was written in the time of Solomon, and the Song of Hannah by David.