What is the Cepher Bible?

Answer  
  

The Cepher, sometime referred to as the “Cepher Bible,” is a non\-scholarly work that claims to restore many “missing” books, phrases, and chapters to the Bible. The book is officially titled *Eth Cepher*, from the Hebrew words for “divinity” and “book.” The publishers claim that they do not call their work a “Bible”; however, they refer to the material incessantly as “biblical” in every other aspect. For all intents and purposes, the Cepher is a custom translation/compilation of the Bible. Save calling it a “Bible” directly, that’s exactly how the Cepher is marketed.  
  

The Cepher can be fairly described as non\-scholarly based on [information from its own publishers](http://www.cepher.net/who-were-the-translators-of-the-cepher.aspx). This work was not produced by qualified scholars or through an actual process of translation. First, the authors added books that they deemed “missing” from the orthodox Bible, contradicting the opinions of most biblical scholars. Then the words of the text were “transliterated” and cross\-referenced with a [concordance](Bible-concordance.html). The end product is whatever the editor thought the text should say. This type of bias is essentially what publishers of the Cepher accuse other versions of, though the Cepher’s authors have less academic background than those they claim are getting it wrong.  
  

Despite not directly calling the Cepher a “Bible,” the authors have included a significant amount of material, sometimes interspersed with the biblical text, that Bible scholars have long rejected as non\-canonical. Reading the Cepher, one encounters a mix of inspired and non\-inspired material.  
  

Though the Cepher is a relatively new publication, it seems to have strong connections to the [Hebrew Roots movement](Hebrew-roots.html). This, in and of itself, is a cause for concern.  
  

In short, neither the contributors, the content, nor the completed work of *Eth Cepher* give any reason to consider it a reliable source of information.  
  

