What Is the Cepher, and Should Christians Use It?

Adjacent to times of significant societal upheaval, there is always an adjacent movement to go back to our roots. The Protestant Reformers liked to us a Latin phrase ad fontes, which means “to the fountainhead.” One might argue that we are in a similar season of societal upheaval and there are growing movements to “go back to the roots.”

The other day an ad popped up for me promoting the Cepher Bible. It talked about getting back to our roots and that it was a Bible meant to restore. I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical, as I typically am with such language. Having never heard of this Bible I decided to do a deep dive on it.

If you’ve seen similar ads, you might be curious as I was. What is the Cepher Bible? Should I put it on my Christmas list and use it as one of my Bibles for study?

What Is the Cepher?

In an effort to recover our Hebrew roots, the Cepher is a modern compilation and translation of the Bible with additional texts. The word Cepher comes from the Hebrew word for “book” or “scroll.” Some also refer to this as the Eth Cepher. It should be noted that the compiler of the Cepher does not approve of the word “Bible.”

One of the things you’ll notice in opening the Cepher Bible is that it has 87 texts instead of the traditional 66 books typically in a Protestant Bible. This is even more than the 73 accepted texts within the Catholic Bible. Some of these books are found in other church traditions, such as Eastern Orthodox or Ethiopian Orthodox. And some appear in the Septuagint (LXX). It includes books like Jubilees, Enoch, and Jasher which are not considered canonical by the majority of Christian traditions. It also includes literature such as The Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151.

The reader may also notice that familiar names and terms are now replaced with Hebrew transliterations. A transliteration is the process of converting text from one writing system into another, while retaining the corresponding letters. A translation conveys the meaning while a transliteration focuses upon how the words sound. As an example the Hebrew word שלום is transliterated as shalom in English, instead of the typical translation of “peace.” In the Cepher, Jesus becomes Yahusha and God is rendered as YHWH. The intention is to bring the text closer to its Hebrew roots. 

This focus upon Hebrew roots is the core intention of the Cepher. The text attempts to “restore” what the authors consider more accurate renderings of Scripture in its original linguistic and cultural context. This leads to an important question: who is “they”?

Who Is Behind the Cepher?

The Cepher Bible was produced by the Cepher Publishing Group, led by Stephen Pidgeon. According to their website, Pidgeon is “a political scientist with a Doctorate of Philosophy, and a Juris Doctorate.” He collaborated with a group of “students of Scripture” to create and publish the Cepher. They assert that the Cepher is a “restoration” of the original Scriptures, believing that modern translations have introduced errors or omitted key texts which were part of early biblical tradition.

The Cepher Publishing Group is closely associated with the Hebrew Roots Movement. This is a movement which believes Christianity was steered wrongly by Greco-Roman philosophy, ultimately losing the core of biblical Christianity. Those within this movement emphasize that Jesus’ work renewed and expanded the Law of Moses, rather than fulfilling it. They encourage believers to adopt aspects of Jewish law and tradition as part of their faith tradition.

Because of their belief that Christianity has been corrupted, Pidgeon and his team argue that many modern translations, including popular versions, have obscured or mistranslated certain elements of Scripture. Their goal with the Cepher is to correct those errors. However, it is important to note that the Cepher Bible is not produced by a recognized team of biblical scholars.

It is worth noting that traditional translations of the Bible are created through a rigorous process involving large teams of scholars with expertise in Hebrew, Greek, and ancient manuscripts. There is a significant lack of scholarly backing for the Cepher. While this might play into our present cultural impulse to not trust experts, this should cause concern. By what criteria are they claiming that the text is corrupt and that 2,000 years of church history has been in error?  The lack of scholarly backing for the Cepher raises concerns about the reliability and accuracy of its translations. And there are other concerns.

What Are the Concerns?

The Cepher raises several concerns for evangelical readers. The first concern is with the extra-biblical texts. These apocryphal and pseudepigraphal texts, like Enoch and Jubilees, have been excluded from the canon for theological and historical reasons. While they may have some benefit for a cultural or historical understanding, the church has not considered them to be inspired Scripture. Do we really need to resurrect debates about canon all these years later? Including these alongside recognized canonical texts creates confusion.

As mentioned previously, there is concern about the translation process of the Cepher Bible. It seems to be a modified King James Bible, rather than a team of scholars with expertise in each book going back to the original texts. I don’t mean to sound insulting here, but the way the original text is interacted with reminds me of a novice who just discovered a resource like a concordance.

Here is an example of the poor use of the Hebrew (and I am grateful to Torah Apologetics, for pointing out this glaring example). In the Cepher, Exodus 6:3 reads:

“And I appeared unto El-Avraham, unto El-Yitschaq, and unto El-Ya’aqov, by EL SHADDAI, but by my name YAHUAH was I not known to them.”

For those familiar with an English Bible, that is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the original it does say “el Avraham.” But that “el” is a preposition. It is different than the “el Shaddai” which we translate as God Almighty. The point here is that the Cepher is turning “El” into a proper name before Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and then also retaining the word to give us the word “unto.” This is the type of error a poor Hebrew student (like myself) would make on an exam.

The Cepher plays loose with history but purports to be full of hidden and previously undisclosed meanings. The “return to the original” has a great appeal in our day, as does a lack of scholarship. As our trust in institutions continues to decrease, a project such as this one will likely gain traction.

To even question the scholarship and truthfulness of the project immediately sets one as an outsider apparently corrupted by Greco-Roman influences. But on what leg does this particular project stand? You may not believe a team of scholars or centuries of church history from all across the globe. But one must ask, what sets Stephen Pidgeon apart from these?

Should Christians Use the Cepher?

In light of these concerns, and many others, the simple answer is no. While I do believe there can be some benefit in reading apocryphal or even pseudepigraphic literature, this barely qualifies as that. The translation philosophy begins from a faulty premise and would be better carried out by a team of scholars. I think there might be a well-meaning emphasis somewhere in here, but it’s ultimately lost.

For those exploring Hebrew roots to Christianity, this will likely hold some appeal. But it’s inclusion of non-Scriptural texts, a lack of scholarly oversight, and an overemphasis upon Hebrew (in places where it shouldn’t be emphasized like the New Testament) detracts from the clarity and sufficiency of Scripture.

Scripture tells us to avoid myths and genealogies and empty speculation. In my estimation, this work falls under that category and should be avoided. It purports to sound wise but ultimately deters from the finished work of Jesus Christ.

How to Spot a Fake

I will close with a bit of an experiment.

You probably do not know much about me, but let’s pretend that you stumble upon my About page somewhere. And on that about page, I list all of my degrees and qualifications. You don’t have any of those letters behind your name, so I might look like quite the authority. Now let’s pretend for a moment that I’m making the argument that the Bible has been corrupted by Greco-Roman philosophy over the years.

You don’t know much about Greco-Roman philosophy, but you’ve got a picture of Russell Crowe and Socrates somewhere in your mind. As you’re trying to place this philosophy and how it corrupted the Bible (a phrase you totally understand), you’re hit with a paragraph like this one:

The Bible, having undergone a plethora of exegetical transmogrifications, is inherently subject to hermeneutical obfuscations that result in a dissonance of textual veracity. The convolution of diacritical semiotics and esoteric eschatological interpolations, exacerbated by anachronistic transliterations, has undeniably led to a philological bifurcation of its intended orthodoxy. Consequently, the amalgamation of heterodoxical exegeses has rendered the corpus susceptible to doctrinal entropic drift, undermining its epistemological integrity. Thus, the parabolic palimpsests inscribed therein no longer align with the protological imperatives originally codified.

My guess is you’ve probably skipped out on much of that. And now let’s imagine that I say something like, “As you can clearly see, and as evidenced by NAME OF SOME GUY YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF, there is much to lead us to conclude that we need a better translation which helps us to get back to our Hebrew roots and avoids some of that corruption.”

You know that corruption is bad. You know that Hebrew roots are probably good. And you know that you aren’t quite sure what that wordy paragraph meant but it sure sounded smart and it was backed up by Dr. LettersAfterName. You conclude that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to give this Cepher thing a read. You don’t know Hebrew, but that guy sure sounds like he does.

That’s how I’ve found you can spot hogwash. If something is filled with unnecessarily smart-sounding words, appeals to people you’ve never heard of, and purports to be filled with secret wisdom that only discerning people like you can accept, then it probably doesn’t have much substance. Truth can be clear. And it doesn’t want to leave you scratching your head, nor feeling like it has the market cornered on secret wisdom or uncovering ancient secrets.

The Cepher is more distraction than helpful. For that reason, I’d avoid it.

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