A Review of the "Eth Cepher" - Part 2

​If you landed on this page and have not yet read part 1, please go do that first. Unless of course you already have read it, in which case, welcome back: it has been quite a while! This is the second part of my review of the Eth Cepher. I initially reviewed and critiqued some of the translations and canonical texts of the Eth Cepher. In this part, I will address more of the claims made by its author / publisher. These references will come directly from the Millennium Edition of the Cepher, from its own Preface. I will be addressing and arranging the material herein in the order which the Cepher’s own Preface progresses, so if you have one (or want to look it up on their website) to follow along, it may make more sense. 

Table of Contents

This may feel like a silly place to start critiquing a book, but the table of contents itself is actually quite telling in this book. First, the way the sections are arranged – and some of their Hebrew transliterated titles – once again betray a lack of understanding of Biblical languages.

The first section is Torah, and that one makes the most sense. The book names are transliterated in a bit of a non-standard way, but hey, let’s just say for the sake of argument that transliteration is fluid, since it’s not an exact science anyway.

The second section is given as Cepheriym Sheniy, which I would write as seferim sheni, meaning “second books.” Here the author places “Yovheliym, Chanoch, and Yashar.” (Or, Jubilees, Enoch, and Jasher). One must wonder why the author simply refers to Enoch as Enoch and not the proper title of the book as it is known: 1 Enoch. The reason I point this out is that there are multiple ancient texts attributed falsely to Enoch. In my experience, the folks who accept 1 Enoch as canonical and authentically Enochian tend to reject 2 and 3 Enoch, and thus they reject the 1 on account of how it connects the text to these additional, later, pseudepigraphal works. At any rate, to call any of these three books “second books” and place them immediately after the Torah is bizarre. Jubilees and 1 Enoch are sectarian works of the Second Temple era, and Jasher is a late medieval period Rabbinic commentary and retelling of the material of Genesis through Joshua.
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The third section is Neviy’iym, or the “prophets.” Here the Cepher includes Tobit as well as 1 and 2 Baruch. While 1 Baruch somewhat makes sense at least, on account of how the text claims to have been written by Baruch the scribe of Jeremiah, 2 Baruch and Tobit do not make sense. Tobit tells of a time during the Assyrian exile and is not a prophetic book but a narrative, describing an ideal of righteous living despite being in exile. 2 Baruch is a later apocalyptic text, written after the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE. It mirrors the style of Jeremiah in some cases, in terms of including prayer and lamentation. It claims to address the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar but is most likely referring to the destruction by Rome in 70 CE. The text was also originally written in Syriac, which is a language that did not exist during the time of Baruch and Jeremiah.

The fourth section, referring to the 12 minor prophets, is called Trei Asar, which is also bizarre. These books in Hebrew are called Sh’neim Asar, or “two and ten.” Yet Trei Asar is the Aramaic phrase that is used to refer to the books, so why the author opted for that title instead of the Hebrew one is a mystery to me. One more that sticks out here is that, just as the Cepher completely misses the Hebrew of “Yeshua” (for, instead, the made-up “Yahusha”), so, too, it misses Hoshea (Hosea) for “Husha.”
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The rest of the books are generally just those of the apocrypha, arranged in an odd way. Coming into the New Testament, the author puts first the synoptic Gospels, then Acts, then James, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude, and then Paul’s letters. Why Paul comes after these – and yet still before John – must be because Revelation is listed among John’s Gospel and his epistles. Again, just weird. I have seen similar such arrangements in some cases before that seek to minimize Paul’s writings and thus relegate him to “last place” before Revelation. But I can’t say for certain that is what is happening here. Hebrews is also listed as a Pauline epistle – though it likely is not Pauline – and Paul’s letters are arranged in a strange way as well. They are not alphabetical, nor arranged canonically as in most Bibles, nor even chronological, as Galatians – one of Paul’s earliest – is listed in the middle after Romans, which was one of his latest. Further, 1 Timothy, a later letter, is listed first, with Philemon last (before Hebrews). Again, I don’t know why, it’s just odd.

The Preface

The preface opens with this (run-on) sentence:

This collection of writings…is a restoration of the books traditionally recognized as set-apart Scripture and includes certain writings retained in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Chanoch and Yovheliym), together with the recaptured writing of Cepher Ha’Yashar (Yashar) and the Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch), the recapture of those books recognized in the Septuagint, and is completed with the last two writings of the Makkabiym (2 and 3 Makkabiym). [1]

​First, that’s an exhausting sentence to read in a single breath. Second, what’s the big deal? Sounds like a common enough thing to hear in Messianic-adjacent groups, right?

Well for starters, I’m not sure what exactly “recaptured” means, but from context here the author seems to be implying that these books belong in the Bible and he has helped to restore them. Yet there has never been a time when 1 Enoch, Jubilees, 2 Baruch, 3 and 4 Maccabees, and Jasher, have all been in the canon. 3 Maccabees is canonical to the Eastern Orthodox, and 4 Maccabees is considered deuteron-canonical to them. Jasher has never been canonized by any group: ever. 1 Enoch and Jubilees are only considered deuteron-canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Beta Israel, and trito-canon by the Orthodox. 2 Baruch is considered trito-canon by the Orthodox and that is all. (Note: deuteron-canon means secondary rule, and trito-canon means tertiary rule or perhaps you could say “third rank.” These very definitions mean these books are not consider canonically equal to Scripture). For the author of the Cepher to say he has “recaptured” books that were “traditionally recognized as set-apart Scripture” is intellectually dishonest at best, and intentionally deceptive at worst.

I won’t go into a discussion of why “Yahuah” and “Yahusha” are absurd terms and not at all even Hebrew names, as that is beyond the scope of the present article. I will, however, direct the reader to the two PDF documents on my Resources page by Adam C. Drissel which directly address both of these names in full.
After skipping over these and the terms Yachiyd and Yachad (because those are of minor import to me here), let’s look at what the author says regarding the name Heylel:

Yesha`yahu (Isaiah) 14 is well known as the only place in all of Scripture where some Bibles have substituted the name Lucifer, yet the name Lucifer (the light bearer) does not actually appear in the original Ivriyt. […] The term הילל reading right to left looks conspicuously like hey, yod, lamed, lamed hyll, or hell. The pronunciation however places more vowels yielding heylel. There are but two angels identified in the Protestant Bible – Miyka’el and Gavriy’el. Both names end with the identifier “el.” We have the same condition with heylel, leading to the possible conclusion that the word is actually the name of an angel – in this case, possibly the fallen angel Heyl’el. However, this same word may simply be the word ילל– yawlal, set with the hey as a prefix meaning the. This word is not referenced or interpreted in any other English text besides this תא CEPHER. The word ילל– yawlal means “howling.” Hence, the phrase which formerly referenced Lucifer now reads as follows: How are you fallen from heaven, O Heylel, son of the howling morning! how are you cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations!  [2]

Oh boy…where to begin…

First, I don’t have any complaints about removing the term Lucifer. That’s a holdover from the KJV’s Latin influence anyway. Yet here again, the author demonstrates he has no business (or experience) translating Hebrew. He says “heylel” sounds like hell…it doesn’t, but let’s pretend that it does. He notes that names of angels commonly have “-el” at the end, meaning “God.” That is correct: Gabri-el, Micha-el, etc. But the word heylel (הילל) is not related to these words, as the “el” at the end is not אל at all. Further, the word is not etymologically linked to yalal (ילל) with a “hey” (ה) prefix. If yalal is a name, it can’t take a hey prefix, because proper nouns in Hebrew do not take definite articles. Proper nouns are definite by their very nature. That is why you will never read “the David” or “the Judah” or “the Isaiah” in Hebrew. So if heylel is a name, then the hey is part of the word itself.

But setting all that aside, the word heylel isn’t related to yalal anyway: it is derived from hallal, meaning to shine. Hence why “heylel” is “shining one” or in some cases, “morning star.” The rest of the sentence here, which the author above has as “son of the howling morning” is also incorrect. Here again he randomly inserts the word he wants (howling) before “morning” to make his point. Quite simply, the Hebrew says אֵ֛יךְ נָפַ֥לְתָּ מִשָּׁמַ֖יִם הֵילֵ֣ל בֶּן־שָׁ֑חַר, “How you have fallen from heaven shining one, son of the dawn [heylel ben-shachar].” The author then states “This word [ie. howling] is not referenced or interpreted in any other English text besides this את Cepher.” Here again, he’s correct, but not because he is the only person to ever translate it; rather, because he is the only one (of which I am aware at least) to invent this word and add it to the text!

I think my chief gripe with this rendering here is not just that it’s incorrect, but that the author goes through such trouble to butcher the text, only to not end up making the text any more significant. It does not answer to whom the text refers; it does not make the text any easier or clearer to understand. Perhaps the hope is that, by removing the reference to this being as the “morning star” it saves Yeshua from bearing the same title in Revelation 22:16. But even that is easier (and more accurately) resolved in other ways. Irrespective of the author’s motives, this rendering is nevertheless terribly wrong, and demonstrates one of the primary concerns I raised in part 1 of my review: ad hoc alterations to the text.

Dead Sea Scrolls

​This next section is set up in an odd way. The section is titled “Dead Sea Scrolls,” but the opening paragraph serves only to challenge the exclusion of the Apocrypha and other books from the canon. It further dives into introducing the Septuagint, and claims its inclusion of some additional books as a basis for their inclusion in the Cepher. It also contains no trace references whatsoever to the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran at all. It really should have been titled “The Canon” or something of that nature.  

There are also some historical inaccuracies here to note. First, it claims that the books of the Septuagint were translated by 70 Rabbis in the 2nd century BCE. The history and origin of the LXX is certainly shrouded in a bit of myth and legend, but what the sources (namely, the Letter of Aristeas, Philo of Alexandria, and Josephus) agree on is that it was Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the Hellenistic king of Egypt, who commissioned the creation of the LXX in the first half of the third century BCE, not the second. Perhaps that is splitting hairs, but if one is making a claim which can be validated with a simple Google search (let alone cracking open an encyclopedia), it should at least be accurate. The author also states that these 70 Rabbis translated 54 books from Hebrew to Greek. Yet that is not the case: the original translators translated only the Torah, not the entire text. The rest of the books would be translated in a handful of different versions over the next few centuries. [3] No source is given in any form by the author as to where he gets this information from.

The author then refers to the Council of Laodicea and claims that this council made up the canon of Scripture when they issued Canon 60 (“canon” here meaning "rule" or a determination / decision handed down by the council). He further states that “many scholars” doubt the authenticity of Canon 60. He then bounces around a bit and ends up blaming the bishop Brooke Foss Westcott (B. F. Westcott) for creating the list based on a writing by Cyril of Jerusalem. The author claims the canon list should not be trusted because it was a later addition, excludes the book of Revelation, and was simply the opinion of Cyril. Let’s stop here for a moment.

First, the author is correct in asserting that most scholars doubt the authenticity of the canon list in Canon 60 of the council. But there is far more history at hand that just whether this particular enumerated list of canonical books was written as a result of that particular council. Second, Westcott cannot be blamed for popularizing the 60th canon or inserting it spuriously into the list. Westcott, in his own words, states, “On the whole then it cannot be doubted that external evidence is decidedly against the authenticity of the Catalogue [of books] as an integral part of the text of the Canons of Laodicea, nor can any internal evidence be brought forward sufficient to explain its omission in [the manuscripts of] Syria, Italy, and Portugal, in the sixth century, if it had been so.” [4] Meaning in short: there is no doubt that the catalogue (ie. list of enumerated books) is a later addition. To turn this into the opposite statement, such to blame Westcott for popularizing the canon list, is a direct misrepresentation of the facts.

Continuing then in the Preface (still under the header of Dead Sea Scrolls), the author states, “The 60th Canon has little or no value as the absence of Chizayon (Revelation) from the New Testament is fatal to its reception as an ecumenical definition of the canon of Holy Scripture to all orthodox believers, as is the absence of the book of Wisdom, etc., from the Old Testament to its reception by those who accept the books of the Greek collection (Septuagint), as distinguished from the Jewish collection (Tanakh).” [5] Here the author introduces two fatal flaws of his own, and I’ll let his own arguments work against him.

First, he claims that the canon list rejecting Revelation is, itself, a reason to reject the list. But this is a discussion of the canon, as in, why should we accept Revelation to begin with? He starts by assuming his conclusion, namely, that Revelation is canon. This is circular reasoning at its finest. Second, he says the very fact that the council rejected the book of Revelation (and Wisdom of Solomon) is proof that the council’s decision was not binding and not ecumenical for orthodoxy. If this is taken as the basis for forming the canon (that is, ecumenical agreements on canonicity) then 1 Enoch, Jasher, Jubilees, and a whole slough of other books that the author has added to the Cepher would also be removed, as they are not all ecumenically accepted as orthodox themselves. So it is clear he is not being genuine when stating that the issue with the canon list is that it is not binding for believers because it was not an ecumenical, orthodox, and universally accepted decision.

In the next paragraph the author engages in some intellectual sleight of hand. He claims, “The delineation of sacred Scripture by rule or canon began to emerge in the late 4th Century and early 5th Century with the work of St. Jerome, aka Eusebius.” [6] First the obvious one: Jerome is not Eusebius. Eusebius of Caesarea lived 260-339, and Jerome wasn’t born until 347, living until 420 (ish). The author could very well be referring to Jerome by his birth name, which actually was Eusebius Hieronymus, but I can think of no reason to refer to him this way, except to cause confusion with Eusebius of Caesarea. But on this, I digress. To the main point at hand, then. The delineation of sacred Scripture by rule came about because of disputes over books, and the books we have today arose after many centuries of debate and dispute over many of the same books that the Cepher includes. Books that were rejected for various reasons (and others, like Jasher, that did not even exist when these debates were taking place).

As with the above statement that no rule of the list of books was present until the late fourth, early fifth centuries, the author then states that the exact list of books of the New Testament were set forth by Athanasius in 367 CE, and that this list was “later affirmed in the Muratorian fragment, a 7th century Latin translation of a Greek original written around the 4th century.” [7] While the Athanasian canon list is indeed from his 39th Festal Letter in 367, the Muratorian fragment predates that letter. Most scholars would date the fragment to mid-to-late second century, with only a couple dissenters claiming a later date (ie. Hahnesmann and Sundberg), and even then largely because other canon lists begin to pop up in the fourth century, not because of any specific external or internal manuscript evidence. So with this, then, it would be untrue to state that no canon lists existed prior to the late fourth or early fifth century. What else is necessary to understand here is also that early Christian groups tended to not define the canon, so much as utilize only a subset of books. John Chrysostom, for instance, quotes from nearly every New Testament letter, and other Church Fathers similarly refer to different works as sacred and others as spurious. On this topic the aforementioned 1881 book by Westcott offers a very helpful survey of some the Church Fathers' own statements regarding which books are accepted for reading in the Church and which are not. As I have previously noted in my article on Peshitta Primacy, some early groups like the Assyrian Church rejected 5 books of the canon including Revelation. Similarly, Revelation remained one of the most disputed books for centuries. The point here overall is that whether we have a singular list of books or not, it was well-known that certain books were Scripture and others were not, and while some small sects may have used certain books that others did not use, it does not qualify them to be authoritative by default.

In the last section under the Dead Sea Scrolls heading, the author notes that these additional books are deuterocanonical. Here he is correct, though he seems to misunderstand what it implies. Deuterocanonical, as the term was first used in 1566 by Catholic theologian Sixtus of Siena, meant books that were not primarily accepted early on, but came to be accepted later, thus his meaning of “secondary canon” really means “subsequent canon.” [8] As the term is generally used among scholars today, it refers to books that are not part of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). This, alone, should give us pause, but perhaps more on that at a later date. The author, weirdly, upholds the Catholic Council of Trent of 1546, and quotes extensively from it to give some sense of authority to his list of included books, then concludes that it did not go far enough because it didn’t include 1 Enoch and Jubilees, or 3 and 4 Maccabees. [9]

Chanoch (Enoch)

Under this section the author claims that the Ethiopian Bible is the earliest complete collection in the world and has always contained 1 Enoch and Jubilees. One would have to very carefully use the word “complete” in order to make this definition fit. If by “complete” one means that the entire Bible, along with apocryphal works, were translated all into Ge’ez (Ethiopic) and compiled together, then yes, it is indeed one of the earliest “complete” collections of the Bible in a different language. The author also notes that it was easy to include these books since they were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and that while some fragments have disparities, “the Ethiopian texts comports with these fragments.” [10]

This is a drastic overselling of the evidence. What is true is that some fragments have been found at Qumran in Hebrew and Aramaic. What is not true is that the texts “comports” with the findings in those fragments. There are numerous textual differences, from the names of some of the angelic beings (Asa'el instead of Azazel, confusing later legends about the scapegoat with the names of one of the Watchers), to the contents of the majority of the book after chapter 36 (because there are no Hebrew or Aramaic fragments that support the later chapters of 1 Enoch, they exist solely in Ethiopic and scholars agree are later Christian additions to a Jewish original work).

The author finally gives a citation (albeit in-text only) to a work by Tertullian, referring to 1 Enoch as Scripture. There is no dispute that Tertullian considered it such, but that does not a Scripture make. The author claims that 1 Enoch upholds Yeshua as Messiah, but that is untrue. Rather, 1 Enoch upholds the figure of Enoch as the Messiah. As David Wilber has demonstrated in this article, 1 Enoch does not support a Messianic / Christian understanding of Yeshua as Messiah.​

Yovheliym (Jubilees)

I don’t have that much to say about this section; much of it is accurate, namely that there are fragments of the text from Qumran, the primary editions are from the Ethiopic text, and that various Church Fathers refer to the text. My primary complaint with the text is that, despite it being used in the early centuries BCE and CE, there are no references to it – in any form – in any of the books of the Tanakh. If Jubilees were in fact an authentic text written by Moses as it claims about itself, one would expect to see references to it somewhere in the Tanakh, especially during the return from exile, as we do with the Torah. But that is not the case. (Yes, I know: it’s a bit of an argument from silence). Further, there are no references to the text as "Scripture" in the NT either. 

Yashar (Jasher)

This one really bugs me. Again the author provides, largely, an accurate representation of where Jasher texts have come from since the middle of the 16th century. He barely glosses over the history before this though, perpetuating the myth of the “hidden library” in the Temple, where a Roman officer named Sidrus took some hidden scrolls from the Temple before it was burned down. Among them was this particular text, which somehow survived 1500 years of travel to make it to Spain, and then the book was published in Hebrew.

This "book of Jasher" is fascinating, yet it contains many issues. First, there is no provenance, as in, we have no real record of where it comes from or who the author was. It is decidedly not from the first century CE, as the language used is not Biblical or even hardly Mishnaic Hebrew. It contains a number of Rabbinic midrashic legends, but also contains references to places such as לומברדי (Lombardi) and אפריקא (Africa), words that did not exist in the first century CE when the Temple was destroyed. The Cepher recycles old arguments about Jasher, stating that it is referenced in 2 Samuel and Joshua, and that Paul refers to it in passing in 2 Timothy. [11] The author also adds another reference and makes a bizarre statement that Jasher is the original source for these quotes, including a quote from Ezekiel. To the this, he claims that Ezekiel is quoting from Jasher, but Ezekiel (29:3) is not quoting any text; rather, he is giving a direct word from God. If the argument here really stands on a clause in Hebrew being the same, and therefore implying that Jasher is an older text, it really is no argument at all. ​​

Ezra (Esdras)

No major disagreements here, as the author correctly states that 3 Ezra is essentially just a combination (in Greek) of Ezra and Nehemiah, and that 4 Ezra is a completely different apocalyptic work.

Baruch

Pretty much the same as above. 

Conclusion

​I covered some of the major issues from the New Testament portion of the Cepher in part 1 of this review, so I will not rehash them here. I would like to simply summarize my contention in two parts.

First, the Cepher is an ideological pet project that lacks even a modicum of honest scholarship. I know, that’s harsh. But it is. It has been hacked up and modified in multiple places (as demonstrated here and in part 1) that are not, even a little bit, supported by the texts of Scripture themselves. Instead, it pushes and agenda. This includes with the way it adds words that aren’t there as well as includes extra books and claims them to be sacred Scripture when they are not, and should not be. Yes, 2 Peter and Jude refer to 1 Enoch; the same way Paul quotes two pagan Greek philosophers and a hymn to Zeus. Not to call any of those things sacred Scripture, but because they were ancient sources and writings. They were points of reference for the audience.

Second, the Cepher is dangerous. When somebody reads a Bible, they take for granted all the thousands of years of hard work that went into the original texts, the copies of those manuscripts, the training in languages and translation, the blood, sweat, and tears of countless believers who work and have worked to preserve the texts, and more. When you read a Bible, it is normal to question a certain translation. But you should at the very least feel confident in the methodology laid out, and that those involved in translating it were honest about their intentions and how they arrived at their conclusions. One does not find that with the Cepher.

Lastly, while I myself would, I am sure, agree with the Cepher’s author on numerous conclusions (such as the ongoing validity of the Torah for all believers today including Sabbath and Feast observance, dietary laws, etc.), I will firmly assert that under no circumstances should the text of Scripture be butchered to make it suit my ideology, even if I have a hard time understanding and interpreting certain passages.

In short, the Cepher does not present honest and trustworthy translations of the texts is contains. It contains, at best, mischaracterizations of many of its justifications for textual decisions, and it makes conspiratorial claims about the canon that hinder, not help, a believer’s faith and trust in Scripture.

And with that I will, once again, recommend that you, the reader, stick with a Bible translation that was compiled by a committee like the NASB2020 or, if you want a Messianic flavored one, the TLV. 

References

​[1] 2021. Eth Cepher, Millennium Edition. Everett, WA: Cepher Publishing Group, LLC. Page 6.
[2] Ibid., page 10.
[3] Johnston, J. William. 2016. “Septuagint.” In The Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by John D. Barry, David Bomar, Derek R. Brown, Rachel Klippenstein, Douglas Mangum, Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Lazarus Wentz, Elliot Ritzema, and Wendy Widder. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[4] Westcott, Brooke Foss. 1881. A general survey of the history of the canon of the New Testament. Cambridge, London: Macmillan & Co.
[5] Cepher, page 12.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Klippenstein, Rachel, and John D. Barry. 2016. “Deuterocanonical.” In The Lexham Bible Dictionary, edited by John D. Barry, David Bomar, Derek R. Brown, Rachel Klippenstein, Douglas Mangum, Carrie Sinclair Wolcott, Lazarus Wentz, Elliot Ritzema, and Wendy Widder. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[9] Cepher, 12-13.
[10] Ibid., 13.
[11] Ibid., 21.