Sefer HaYashar (midrash) - Moses Samuel's English Translation

Moses Samuel's English Translation

The first translation of the 1625 Venice edition into English was that published by Mordecai Manuel Noah and A. S. Gould in 1840. Mordecai Noah was a prominent Jewish newspaper editor and publisher, as well as playwright, diplomat, journalist, and utopian. The translator of the 1840 edition was not published, but indicated as an eminent Jewish scholar in Britain in the comments of one of the four certificating Hebraist scholars to the publisher in the preface to the 2nd editions:

To Mssrs Noah and Gould. Gentlemen - I am acquainted with the 'Book of Jasher,' having read a considerable part of it while in the hands of the translator in England. The Hebrew is very purely written, and the translator is an eminent scholar.

— Rabbi H. V. Nathan, Kingston Synagogue, Jamaica, April 14, 1840

Subsequently the translator identified himself as Moses Samuel of Liverpool (1795–1860), who obtained a copy of the 1625 Hebrew edition and became convinced that the core of this work truly was the self-same Book of the Upright referenced in Hebrew scriptures. He translated it into English and, in 1839, sold it to Mordecai Manuel Noah. The reason Samuel's name did not appear on the translation. "I did not put my name to it as my Patron and myself differed about its authenticity", the NYC publisher having had a lower opinion of the work's authenticity than Samuel. Samuel had in fact originally tried to persuade The Royal Asiatic Society at Calcutta to publish the work, a fact alluded to obliquely in the preface to Noah's 1840 edition, but eventually Samuel sold the work to Noah for £150 pounds. Neverthelss Noah in his promotional materials did enthusiastically claim that the historian Josephus had said of the Book of Jasher: "by this book are to be understood certain records kept in some safe place on purpose, giving an account of what happened among the Hebrews from year to year, and called Jasher or the upright, on account of the fidelity of the annals." No such statement is found in Josephus' works. Noah's 1840 preface contained endorsements by Hebrew scholars of the day, all of whom praised the quality of the translation but said nothing to indicate they believed it to be the work referred to in Joshua and 2 Samuel. Indeed one of them, Samuel H. Turner (1790–1861), of the General Theological Seminary, NYC, referred to the "Rabbinical writer" in this way: "The work itself is evidently composed in the purest Rabbinical Hebrew, with a large intermixture of the Biblical idiom, ..." indicating that Turner was not of the opinion that it was an ancient text.