The Book of Jasher: The Bible Tells You to Read a Book That Isn't in the Bible

There is a strange, almost uncomfortable moment that happens when you read the Old Testament closely. You are moving through the narrative, following the timeline of the ancient Israelites, when suddenly the text stops and tells you to go read a different book.

It happens in the Book of Joshua. In the middle of a massive battle, Joshua commands the sun and moon to stand still in the sky so his army can finish defeating the Amorites. The text records the miracle, and then adds this note:

“Is not this written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.” (Joshua 10:13)

It happens again in the Book of Samuel. King David is teaching the children of Judah the use of the bow, and the text says:

“Behold, it is written in the Book of Jasher.” (2 Samuel 1:18)

The authors of the Bible are citing their sources. They are pointing the reader to an older, more comprehensive historical record. They assume the reader knows exactly what the Book of Jasher is, and where to find it.

There is only one problem, the Book of Jasher is not in the Bible.

It is not in the Torah. It is not in the Catholic Apocrypha. It is not in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For centuries, the official position of the Church and mainstream biblical scholarship was that the Book of Jasher was a “lost book”, a text that had simply vanished into the sands of time, destroyed during the Babylonian exile or the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

But what if it wasn’t lost? What if it was suppressed?