Editing Sefer haYashar (midrash) (section)

==History==
Scholars have proposed various dates between the 9th and 16th century for its composition.

The earliest extant version of this Hebrew ''midrash'' was printed in [[Venice]] in 1625, and the introduction refers to an earlier 1552 edition in [[Naples]], of which neither trace nor other mention has been found. The printer Yosèf ben Samuel{{Citation needed|date=September 2021}} claimed the work was copied by a scribe named Jacob the son of Atyah, from an ancient manuscript whose letters could hardly be made out.

The Venice 1625 text was heavily criticised as a forgery by [[Leon Modena]], as part of his criticisms of the ''[[Zohar]]'' as a forgery, and of [[Kabbalah]] in general. Modena was a member of the Venetian rabbinate that supervised the Hebrew press in Venice, and Modena prevented the printers from identifying ''Sefer ha-Yashar'' with the Biblical lost book.<ref>The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early ... - Page 68 Yaacob Dweck - 2011 "Modena compared the pseudepigraphic character of the Zohar to Sefer ha-Yashar, a Hebrew work printed in Venice in the early seventeenth century.  34 Sefer ha-Yashar appeared in Venice in 1625. See Joseph Dan, ed., Sefer ha-Yashar "</ref>

{{Blockquote|Behold, it [the Zohar] is like Sefer ha-Yashar, which they printed (without my knowledge and without the knowledge of the sages here in Venice, about twenty years ago). Although I removed the fantasies and falsehoods from it, [e.g.,] that it is the Sefer ha-Yashar mentioned in Scripture, there are still those who claim that it was discovered during the time of the destruction [of the temple]. But who can stop those who imagine in their minds whatever they wish.|Leon Modena, ''Ari Nohem'', before 1648<ref>Leon Modena's ''Ari Nohem'', MS A ed Libowitz 1929 pp73-74</ref> }}

Despite Modena's intervention, the preface to the 1625 version still claims that its original source book came from the ruins of [[Jerusalem]] in 70 CE, where a [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] officer named Sidrus allegedly discovered a Hebrew scholar hiding in a hidden library. The officer Sidrus reportedly took the scholar and all the books safely back to his estates in [[Seville]], Spain (in [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] known as [[Hispalis]], the provincial capital of [[Hispania Baetica]]). The 1625 edition then claims that at some uncertain point in the history of [[Al-Andalus|Islamic Spain]], the manuscript was transferred or sold to the [[Jewish]] college in [[Córdoba, Spain|Cordova]]. The 1625 edition further claims that scholars preserved the book until its printings in [[Naples]] in 1552 and in [[Venice]] in 1625. Apart from the preface to the 1625 work, there is no evidence to support any of this story. The work was used extensively, but not especially more than many other sources, in [[Louis Ginzberg]]'s ''Legends of the Jews''.

Although there remains doubt about whether the 1552 "edition" in Naples was ever truly printed, the study of [[Joseph Dan]], professor of Kabbalah at the [[Hebrew University of Jerusalem]], in the preface to his 1986 critical edition of the 1625 text<ref>Joseph Sefer HaYashar, edited with an Introduction, Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute 1986.</ref> concludes, from the Hebrew used and other indicators, that the work was in fact written in Naples in the early 16th century. The Arabic connections suggest that if the preface to the 1625 version is an "exaggeration", it was then probably written by a Jew who lived in Spain or southern Italy.