Mordecai Manuel Noah

“ There can be no doubt that Spain, probably France and Italy, were tributary to Solomon. It is, however, certain, that the Jews carried with them into Spain, on their dispersion, an immense number of manuscripts and sacred rolls, where they remained many years, and were, in the eleventh century, placed in their great college at Cordova, and from thence were conveyed to Venice on the first discovery of printing. ”

“ The prayer of King Manasseh, Bel and the Dragon, the two Books of Esdras, the Book of the Maccabees, and the Book of Enoch, recently found and translated from the Ethiopic. The Book of Jasher, referred to in Joshua and Second Samuel, has been long an object of great curiosity. Some of the Hebrew writers contend that it was the lives and acts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and other patriarchs, who were called Jasherim, the Just. Dr. Lightfoot thinks it is the Book of the Wars of God, and so the reader may think in perusing the various battles it recounts. ”

“ Horne, a slight reference is made to the Book of Jasher, written in Rabbinical Hebrew, said to have been discovered in Jerusalem at its capture under Titus, and printed in Venice in 1613. This is the book now translated into English for the first time. Long prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews had established themselves in various parts of Spain and Italy; they traded to the bay of Gibraltar, as historians affirm, in the earliest periods of history ”