JOSIPPON. – Compiler of Midrashic legends, also called JOSEPH ben GURION or JOSEPH the HEBREW (“Joseph the Jew”), who claimed to be the author of a work entitled Sepher ha-Yashar (“Book of the Upright”), and who is said to have lived at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus (A.D. 70). According to the more extensive recension, the history of the Jews, interspersed with legends, extends from Adam to Titus.
The work was printed with a Latin version by J. F. Breithaupt in Gotha (2nd ed., 1710). As early as 1540 a Judeo-German (Yiddish) version had appeared.
A shorter and more critically pure recension had been published in Mantua between 1476 and 1479 and reprinted in Münster and Basel in 1541.
There exists an Arabic recension, abbreviated; a fourth recension is contained in the so-called Arabic Book of the Maccabees, edited in the London Polyglot (vol. IV). The central focus is the story of the Maccabees. The original, shorter work must have been composed in Italy in the 8th century; the longer one, also in Italy, at the beginning of the 10th century. The author was sometimes confused with Flavius Josephus.