Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ (i.e., Messiah). Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God (i.e., Yahovah). (Colossians 2:16-19, ESV)–(cf. Rom. 14:3-5; 14:17; Gal. 4:10)

 

What I love about our Faith and community, that is Hebrew Roots community and Faith, is our focus on living in accordance with the principles and commandments that Father passed down to us in His Torah and through His prophets; Y’shua Messiah and His Apostles. We believe that Torah is still in effect today for the would-be, discerning disciple of Y’shua Messiah and that it was Master Y’shua who taught us how to live Torah the way Father always intended Torah to be lived. Thus we reject man-made religion that makes up a great majority of Judaism and Christianity today.

Please, don’t misunderstand me: we do not reject those who are blind to this fact; those who are opposed to our Faith; those who are caught up in the lie that is religion; we simply reject that which is not of Yahovah and that which was not taught to us by Y’shua Messiah. In the passage I read in the opening of this episode, Colossians 2, Shaul (i.e., the Apostle Paul), was apparently dealing with the issue of religion within and around the Colossian Assembly. Some refer to this issue as Asceticism which is the adoption of man-made practices and protocols as a means of achieving some greater spiritual power or advantage or some greater degree of revelatory understanding apart and above others. As we can see here in verse 16, Paul admonishes the Colossian Assembly to not be put off by those who would pass judgment upon them in how they consumed food and drink, or how they welcomed the renewed moon each month or how they celebrated the weekly Sabbath and the Feast Days. Those who dared to pass judgment upon the Assembly over such things as the consumption of food, drink; the celebration of the Feasts and observances of the Sabbath and the renewed renewed moon were essentially establishing their own methods of righteousness that they were pompously applying to and demanding of others to follow. Now this is contrary to how Churchianity reads and understands this passage. Churchianity sees this passage as Shaul putting forth the erroneous doctrine that the Torah has been done away with and furthering the false, hijacked doctrine of grace.

Judaism in the first century of the Common Era, as it is today, was full of practices, protocols and traditions, all designed and incorporated into the Hebrew Faith for purposes of exhorting or setting one’s self apart from others—as well as controlling the lives of the masses. This was the embodiment of Judaism and Kabbalahism. Although some might view such an endeavor as noble and admirable, to Father, asceticism and other man-made religious demands that the establishment loves to place upon the people is not what He has ever instructed us to do. He gave us His instructions and commandments and precepts as well as He sent His Son to model for us how we are to live out those commandments, precepts and instructions. Moshe (i.e., Moses) instructed us to “…not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of Yahovah your God…” (Deu. 4:2, ESV) Beyond our following the commandments–observing and obeying Torah–and our Master’s instructions, every other man-made concoction and prescription for life that he has with great hubris decided to incorporate into the One True Faith is nothing but a vain attempt to earn one’s salvation and relationship with the Creator of the Universe. You see, when we add to Torah and Y’shua’s teachings and instructions our own prescriptions and practices for whatever reason, we are attempting to establish our own standards for righteousness. Nevertheless, the great prophet Isaiah wrote: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment (i.e., filthy rags in the KJV). We all fade like a leak, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” (Isa. 64:6, ESV) In this passage of Colossians, Shaul was simply saying to the Colossian Assembly that they need not kowtow or succumb to the pressures and judgment of those who are pushing an ascetic-type religious agenda. Do that which you have learned from Scripture and have been taught by Master Y’shua—that is, we are to do the very best that we can as Shaul instructed Timothy, found in 2 Timothy 2:15-19. For us today, if it ain’t in the Bible, we have no right to demand man-made practices and traditions be followed by our brothers and sisters in the Faith, which would be an attempt on our part to apply our sense of righteousness upon the Body of Messiah. That, my friends, is a prescription for disaster. That’s not to say that if someone in our community—in our midst—wishes to follow ascetic practices for whatever personal reason, they are not permitted to do so. That’s absolutely their business and it is between them and Yahovah. The plumb-line, however, is when these individuals insist that others follow their ascetic ways—follow their religiousness—and then condemn those who refuse to follow suit. That’s where we must draw the line in the sand and say, no, not here—we will not permit such behavior in our midst. Just saying.

Calendar Concerns

As I prayerfully put together this episode of Sabbath Thoughts and Reflections, we find ourselves at the 4th-day of the 12th-Biblical Month. The renewed moon was sighted over the land of Israel this past Tuesday evening, signaling the start of the 12th month, also known as the month of Adar. Looking ahead on the Biblical Calendar, we are at a critical cross-roads in terms of upcoming Feasts and Festivals. In just 10-days the Festival of Purim will be upon us and from there we enter into the holy month of the Aviv–which of course encapsulates Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Purim of course is not one of the 7-mandated Feasts or moedim of Yahovah, so we are not necessarily compelled to actively observe the day. However, there are tremendous spiritual applications to be gained from looking at this Hebrew Festival that I will be examining in the next Sabbath Thoughts and Reflections episode. I’m looking forward to sharing some thoughts and reflect upon this key point in Israel’s history which became a popular, and unfortunately, secular Jewish festival. Despite the secular bent on this festival, as with Hanukkah, Purim portrays a “Shadow Picture” (Rood phrase) of spiritual elements that are associated with our Faith that we would be remiss to overlook. So let’s discuss next week. As it relates to Passover/Pesach and Unleavened Bread, hey, it is beyond important to our Faith and our community and we will certainly be looking at it in great detail in the coming month. But now is the time for us to start preparing for the Spring Feasts of Yahovah and not wait till the last minute.

Of course, if you follow Michael Rood and the “A Rood Awakening” ministry, you may know that he is planning his annual Passover celebration in Charlotte, NC, commencing Friday, March 25th, through Sunday, March 27th. It promises to be a great time of fellowship and teaching that hopefully if you are so inclined and led, I would highly encourage you consider attending this event. Hilary and I will be attending along—Yahovah willing–with a few others from our Sabbath fellowship. I will put the link to this event in the show-notes for your convenience and reference.

Thoughts on the Cepher Bible—A Violation of Torah?

Allow me to now turn to a rather frustrating issue that you may or may not be able to identify with. This will be the only point of thought and reflection for this episode. This issue has captured my attention this Sabbath and I am compelled to share it with you. I had actually started preparing other content to reflect upon for this episode, but I have been led to table that content for the next sharing opportunity. Thank you in advance for your attention and patience with me as I discuss this issue. As with any other episode of Sabbath Thoughts and Reflections, I welcome your comments and feedback.

As some of you may know, over the last few year, our community has been elated of sorts, over the production of a bible called the Cepher. The Cepher was to be the Hebrew Roots’ answer or challenge to the Protestant Bibles that have littered the Bible marketplace for years but those bibles have failed to address the spiritual needs and desires of the community. I had heard about this bible late last year when a couple members of our Sabbath fellowship brought this enormous bible to one of our fellowship sessions. I was awestruck by the size of this thing. When I asked my brother what in the world that thing was, he commented of course that it was the Cepher Bible that restored the sacred names of the Father and Son to the books of the Bible as well as added the apocryphal books to its canon. Upon seeing this for myself, I gave praise for this bible thinking to myself, well it’s about time.

The Cepher Bible can boasts about some relatively important things about it its content and make-up that were once not available to members of our community: (1) an English version of the whole bible based upon the most reliable–available texts in existence; (2) the sacred names of the Creator and the Son; the Hebrew names of the books of the bible; the Hebrew names of every person named in the bible along with the Hebrew names of every place mentioned in the bible. (3) The inclusion of the 66-books of the present-day Christian or Protestant Bible, along with I believe, an additional 10-books added to the Old Testament canon. For those of you who have been avid bible students for any length of time, you will be familiar with the Deuterocanonical (aka the second books) and the Apocryphal books (aka the secret or hidden books) that were originally contained in the 1611 King James Bible, the Oxford Bible and other earlier versions of the Bible. These 10-books over time were purged out of the Protestant Bible by scholars who really gave no true reason as to why they purged them out of the established canon, apart from these apocryphal and deuteronomical books were not “inspired” by God. There were of course other expressed reasons for this purging out of the 10-apocryphal books, but it appears to me that this is just another example of man’s attempt to control the masses through religion. And (4), the books contained therein were now placed in their proper order–the order they are believed to have been written.

Needless to say I had to have this bible and eventually I made connections to secure 2-copies of this bible: one for Hilary and one for myself. I was overly excited to finally receive the bibles.

This thing is so big and voluminous that to get any good use from it you would have to use tabs to mark the start of each book in the bible; otherwise you may spend a great deal of time searching for a single passage–not to mention that the books are not in the order that we are familiar with in our present day Protestant Bibles. So soon after receiving the bibles, I spent a great deal of time affixing book tabs to both bibles. In short order I figured out that this bible would not be as practical a resource as I originally envisioned–it’s size and complexity would necessitate that it be kept at home—not something to take out and use on the move, like say to our Sabbath fellowships or to our Feast Day celebrations. It just wouldn’t work well.

Still I was jazzed to have this resource and I began to reference it in my research and preparations for this program and in my daily Torah studies. Apart from its awkwardness as a usable book—that is its size and complexity–I initially had just two areas of criticism: (1) I would have appreciated having embedded throughout the text, notations that would explain the how’s and why’s and wherefore’s of their translation of the manuscripts they used for the Cepher text—just something I would have appreciated to help me understand why they rendered the text the way they rendered it—that’s all. And (2), the Cepher writers and editors used the name Yahuah and Yahusha to denote or refer to the Father and Son respectively. Of course, if you’ve listened to or read the contents of this ministry and website, you will know that we use the name Yahovah and Yahshua as names for the Father and Son. As it relates to the Cepher using the names Yahuah and Yahusha, I was able to live with that as I realize that no one really has absolute knowledge of how the Father’s name was pronounced—we only have the outline of the tetragrammaton to suggest possible pronunciations, all of which Judaism and Churchianity have outright rejected—choosing instead to use our Father’s title and descriptor and a bastardized transliteration of our Master’s name to refer to the Creator of the Universe and His Son. So for me, the Cepher’s attempt to restore the names of the Father and Son to the Biblical record was acceptable to me, despite my preference to the names Yahovah and Y’shua.

Oh, and the other thing about the Cepher that was sort of an initial annoyance for me was the placement and dispersement throughout the entirety of the Biblical text—I believe it to be 2,400 separate places to be exact–of the Hebrew letters “aleph” and “tav,” followed by the English letters eth—which the writers of the Cepher claim are found throughout the extant manuscripts that they referenced to produce the Cepher Bible. As it relates to “Eth” (i.e., the aleph—tav), the writers and developers of the Cepher offer an interpretation of “divine” and Cepher is Hebrew for “Book.” Thus when put together, Eth-Cepher means—the Divine Book. Now, I’d be alright with this if it actually made sense to the context where it is numerously found throughout the Cepher Bible—mainly, the Eth showing up in hundreds of places throughout the entirety of the Cepher and assuming the Eth means divine, somehow I don’t always get how the term divine works in most of the places the Cepher writers placed it in the body of the text. The writers indicate that the Eth or Aleph and Tav are found in the manuscript text they used to create or develop the Cepher and thus to stay true to the holy aspect of the Scriptural texts, they’ve elected to leave it in place. The problem is that their rationale does not hold true for the entirety of their work—staying true to the best extant manuscripts for their translation, that is. What I mean by this I’ll discuss momentarily. Nevertheless, running across this throughout the text was a bit annoying, but again, I could live with it.

Little did I know that over the last several months, members of our Hebrew Roots community began discovering some interesting things about this Bible that would ultimately lead to my questioning the validity of this Bible for our community. It is these discoveries and questions about the Cepher Bible that I am thinking and reflecting upon as the primary focus of this episode.

Before I go on, let me first say that I’ve not done a thorough examination of this Bible to qualify me as a true expert or witness for or against its validity. I actually have the 2nd Edition of this Bible. Apparently the 1st edition has been out for a number of years, so the Cepher is not a brand new Bible, to say the least.

However, I’ve done a good amount of reading and referencing of the Cepher’s contents over the last few weeks, but I have not critically examined the Cepher itself—which may not be a bad idea at some point in the future. I’ll have to consult Father if this is something that He’d have me do. But suffice to say, I have come across at least two areas of concern regarding this Bible that have given me cause for pause and question: the one area has to do with the Cepher Bible’s Gospel’s accounting of the lineage of Y’shua which one gentleman I found on YouTube took issue with. I still need to finish listening to his concern about the Cepher’s treatment of the lineage of our Master before I say anything further on it. But another area that is of concern to me is Cepher’s apparent rewording of Philippians 2:11, whereby the developers of the Cepher admit to rewording and reworking the passage to fit their specific Christian beliefs in the divinity of Y’shua Messiah. But like one individual I recently came across on a YouTube recording said of the Cepher, if the developers and translators working on the Cepher are willing to alter the Philippians passage to say what they want it to say in order that it match their personal religious beliefs or doctrines, what other passages in the Holy Writ have they taken liberty with? Certainly, given the size of this thing, it may take some time to find the answer to that question. And it is the altering of this Philippians verse where I personally take a great deal of umbrage—that is the intentional altering of a passage of Scripture to match one’s beliefs and doctrinal stance, yet maintain the selling point for this Bible as stated in the following review:

“The Cepher is the most advanced, yet the most correct to antiquity, of any collection of Biblical material available today. If a Disciple of the history of what has been considered “Bible” from 1450 BCE through the Common Era of the First Century were to compile a collection of what they would call Bible, it would include the Cepher. As a disciple and teacher of the Bible, I believe it to have been one of the greatest services to be inclusive of the writings that have shaped the faith of true believers for more than 2400 years – without the exclusions of books and proper Names that have been slanted by Councils, self-serving individuals and Societies for hundreds of years…The scholarship and literary inclusion found in the Cepher is, to my knowledge, the best available in one volume to the Disciple today. I personally recommend the Cepher for study to show oneself approved, properly dividing the Word of Truth.” F. Andy Tryon, Jr., Ph.D., Th.D. Pastor Emeritus, West Valley Fellowship

Assuming this is the case, how would one then explain the rationale behind altering a passage of scripture such as Philippians 2:11, such that it departs from that which is commonly found in all other translations and versions of that passage. The only answer that comes readily to my mind is that the developers and writers and translators of the Cepher intentionally took liberties with their translation of this passage—and God only knows what other passages—for purposes of influencing their readers and advancing their own agenda and doctrinal stance. Is this indeed the case however?

Before proceeding further on this issue, let’s look at the Cepher’s actual rendering of this passage in comparison to other translations of the same passage:

The Cepher says: V.11 ~ “And that every tongue should confess that YAHUAH is YAHUSHA HAMASHIACH, to the glory of YAH the Father.

Now let’s compare it to other translations:

The King James Version reads: “And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (kurios=master), to the glory of God the Father.”

The New American Standard Version reads: “and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (kurios=master), to the glory of God the Father.”

The English Standard Version reads: “and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The other translations that I consulted in my BibleWorks software package, with the exception of the Complete Jewish Bible, all refer to Jesus Christ as Lord or Master. The CJB refers to Y’shua as Adonai.

Now don’t misunderstand me fellow saints: I am not here today to debate the divinity of Y’shua Messiah. That is a topic that I have not been led to discuss at this juncture—maybe sometime in the future. The point I’m trying to make here goes beyond the issue and topic of the divinity of Christ. The point is the perceived brazen intentional hubris of the editors and writers and translators of the Cepher Bible to translate Philippians 2:11 and then record and print it in the Bible they claim to be accurate and I would think, unbiased—with the expressed intent to support and further their doctrine of the divinity of Y’shua Messiah. And let me just say that I am not spouting my own personal opinions here as it relates to the Cepher’s staff’s intentions. Allow me to state from their very own website the reason why they’ve taken it upon themselves to alter this passage:

“I will try to summarize our thinking. Let’s begin with the passage that has drawn the ire of those who deny MASHIACH, who deny the divinity of YAHUSHA, and who otherwise have converted to Judaism…” What follows is the editor’s attempt to support their alteration to this verse by the use of various reference or support verses to include I Corinthians 12:1-3 where the term “Lord” (small letters) or “kurios” is translated into Yahuah; John 14:9 whereby our Master said that those that have seen Him have seen the Father; and John 17:14-22 whereby our Master attested to us that He was one with the Father. I will conceded that all of these are fair verses to use when defending one’s position in favor of the divinity of Y’shua—that is if you believe in the divinity or that Y’shua is Yahovah. Interestingly, the Cepher folks did not alter these support verses, but allowed them to remain consistent with other translations. In other words, they chose not to tamper with these verses as they did with Philippians. Not sure why they didn’t. I’d be interested to find out why.

But consider what this same editor says after putting forth these support verses on the Cepher website:

“Now, there are those who are outraged with our generous interpretation of the Greek (and Aramaic, upon which we also relied for this interpretation).” So clearly there was intent on the part of the translators to bend the verse to read in accordance with their beliefs and doctrines on this subject. Suffice to say, from there, the editor expends a great amount of space on the company’s website expounding upon the terms: kurios, Lord and Master, with expert manipulation of the support verses to justify their alteration to Philippians 2:11.

And that my friends borders on the “unforgivable” if not “blasphemous.” Already, at least one fundamental Christian website has referred to the Cepher as heretical (reference: christianresearchnetwork.org). And given the Cepher’s publishers’ self-proclaimed affiliation with the Hebrew Roots community, this same organization—The Christian Research Network—goes on to refer to our community and our Faith as “dangerous.” And no wonder! Granted this Christian-based organization and others like it are more concerned with the Cepher’s use of the sacred names and the inclusion of the apocryphal books to the established Protestant canon of Scripture, but when we add to the mix the Cepher’s translators’ willingness to alter passages of Scripture at will with utter manipulation of support documentation in the way of other Scriptural verses, I believe there’s good reason to harbor concern about this book and how it may erroneously affect and misrepresent our Faith.

As a Faith community, we already have enough credibility problems with the rest of the world. I generally don’t care what the outside world thinks about our Faith. But then, in all fairness, we’ve brought a lot of the outside world’s hatred and disrespect of us upon ourselves. When we consider the unbridled infighting between our various factions and with one another; when we consider our absolute focus on the Torah—almost to the point of Torah worship; and when we consider our rejection of Spirit Living; when we consider the epidemic of Biblical illiteracy that plagues our community; when we consider our stand-offishness; our pompous attitude that we know it all and those Christian folk are just stupid, misguided individuals; when we don’t seek to do our part in the great commission but remain holed up in our homes on the Sabbath and during the Feast Days, there’s no wonder the rest of the world looks down upon us and sees us as the wayward ones. And quite frankly, I personally believe the Cepher will only add to our already existing woes.

Why should we care about all that I’ve just outlined to you? Simply put my friends, the Cepher is problematic and quite conceivably a violation of Torah. Not just because of the divinity issue that they bring up in their blatant support of their intentional translation alteration, which is beside the point. The reason the Cepher is a problem and conceivably a violation of Torah is that the Cepher is adding to and altering that which Father instructed us not to add to His Word, especially adding to His Torah—Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Proverbs 30:6. I will concede that this commandment pertained primarily to the Torah. However, when we look at how all the remaining books of the Bible point back to Torah, we can not take for granted the care that must be taken when transmitting the whole of the Bible. If we are willing to take liberties in our interpretations of passages of the Bible, record them and place them into a Bible; to the point of completely altering the meaning of words and even inserting names where a clear title existed in the manuscript, we are no doubt capable of manipulating and altering even the Father’s Torah. This type of behavior can not stand and we in Hebrew Roots, regardless where we individually stand on this issue of the divinity of our Master, should not; can not; must not support such a publication—we must speak out against it and that is what I am doing here today my friends.

I call upon the publishers and translators and writers of the Cepher Bible to abandon their reckless behavior; stay true to their original calling which was to produce a version of the Bible that would be the most accurate Bible on the market today and that would restore the sacred names of our Father and the Son and the people and places recorded in the Bible. I call upon them to remove their so-called “generous interpretations.” I call upon them to remain unbiased in their work and allow the Father to speak to their readers through an untampered version of the Holy Writ. I would further call upon these same people to fix or correct the 2nd Edition of the Cepher and make the book consistent with the extant manuscripts that they referenced to create the Cepher in the first place. If you really care about your patrons and you want to come clean and explain yourself, I would certainly entertain a response from any representative you select from your organization. The Bible does not belong to you. It does not belong to anyone. Thus, it is not ours to tamper with and to use as a medium to further any one organization’s agenda and doctrinal stance.

Assuming the Cepher folks are not about to do that which I have demanded, I will simply admonish each of you and every Hebrew Rooter out there who has expressed an interest in purchasing a Cepher: use that $100 for something else; do not purchase this Bible; do not be made a mockery of by these people. There are many other excellent Biblical resources that you could put your $100 towards and gain much more insight and blessings from. But then, it ultimately falls upon you to decide where you fall out on this issue. These are just my thoughts and I do not in any way wish to shove my thoughts down your throats. As always, this is part of the overall journey that we as Hebrew Rooters must walk. There is a sifting process going on as we head towards the End Times. How we react and what we learn and adopt from such things is what this journey—this walk with Messiah is all about.

Is the Cepher a violation of Torah? Well, I would say it depends. If the intentions of the Cepher organization was to manipulate their readers and put advance their own agenda and doctrine, then I would say it certainly borders on a violation.

This Sabbath Thoughts and Reflections has by no means pleased me to deliver. I’m essentially speaking out against a group of individuals who are using our community to further their doctrinal agendas and religious purposes—whatever those agendas and purposes may be. As Hebrew Rooters, our entire existence rests upon the purity and accuracy of the Holy Scriptures. We have no time for such liberal and backstabbing behavior as I believe is being perpetrated through the production of the Cepher Bible. So please, before you go out and purchase the Cepher Bible, give the content of this Sabbath Thoughts and Reflections some serious prayerful consideration.