Fairy Tale Spotlight: Jasher [Book Review]

Oh, thank goodness I finally finished this!

"Jasher" is a book found within the "Apocrypha." I don't know who the author is. I looked into it and some names were mentioned, but there seems to be a whole lot of disagreements on it. I stopped caring real fast.

"Jasher," like "Jubilees," is another spin on "Genesis," although this particular book extends from "Genesis" to "Joshua." And it's long. It's really long! Every single possible thing that you could ever expand on happens in this book. It was infuriatingly long. It was unnecessarily long. Half the time I felt like banging my head on my desk from how frustrated I got with this book.

And it isn't just how long it is; it's also just an overwritten and unbelievable book. Things happen in it that just did not happen. There is an actual scene towards the end where a man named Og picks up a seven-mile-wide rock with the intention to throw it on top of the entire people of Israel. No. That did not happen. That is absurd writing, you fool. You should never have written that. All credibility is gone now.

It wasn't just that. There was the story of Jacob and his sons which read something like a Marvel action movie. All the sons of Jacob had super powers. Like over the top ones. It would actually make a good action movie. Some of the battles remind me specifically of the movie "300." It's all garbage though.

There are some glaring inconsistencies as well. They made both Enoch and Moses a king. Enoch was king of the world and Moses was king of the land of Cush. These two things never happened. It's garbage.

One big issue that seriously marred the credibility of this book is the outright plagiarized of other books of the Bible. "Jasher" out rightly steals stories from "Job," the Gospels, and "Daniel," simply changing the characters involved but keeping the same surrounding narrative. The plagiarization of "Job" was probably the worse. A lot of that was taken word-for-word from "Job," but it was actually the story of Abraham and Isaac. Just.... shameless. I couldn't believe it was actually that bad.

Despite all of my complaints, there is a silver lining. There are two chapters that are extremely good and absolutely smacks of truth and sincerity. Chapter 18 and 19 are wonderful. They tell the story of why Sodom and Gomorrah were wicked, like in the specifics. It's not what you'd think! It was not anything like I had been told in my upbringing. The reason I believe these chapters is because it's almost exactly what I see in the world today.

There is nothing over the top or silly in these two chapters. They just about mismatch themselves with the rest of the book. Everything is played down to a more reasonable and realistic level. And when you read them, you'll understand why the cities had to be destroyed... and why we may be coming close to their level today. Once again, it's not what you may think. It's probably not what people told you. But it's bad. It's really bad.

I want to make myself really clear in this last paragraph: I do not recommend you read "Jasher." It's the trashiest piece of apocryphal scripture I have ever read. It comes across as more of a tall tale than anything to be taken seriously. And maybe you like tall tales, at which point you might like it. But as Biblical research, it's garbage. That said, I do recommend Jasher 18-19. I wholeheartedly encourage that you read it. I'll even do you a little service and give you a link to both chapters. People need to know why Sodom was destroyed. Read those two chapters, and then take a good long look at the world around you. Maybe you'll see how close were are to something terrible.

Jasher 18 and Jasher 19.

This blog was written on August 20, 2022.

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