Question:

Can you comment on the Cepher Bible translation and the claims that I have heard that it is the most accurate as well as the most complete Bible translation available today?

Answer:

This is a fairly obscure translation of the Bible which was published quite recently.   I have not used it (or even seen it!), so do not have much to say.   What I can see right away is that it is a more Jewish-friendly translation.   It is not the “most complete” Bible because, like the Cepher, all important Bibles contain the entire 66 books of the New and Old Testament canons.  A Bible cannot be more complete that to contain all 66 authorized books.  However, the Cepher does include some of the non-inspired books such as 1 Esdras and Wisdom of Sirach.  Some of these are not even found in the Catholic or Orthodox Bibles, which include the non-canonical Old Testament Apocrypha.  If one considers these inspired (I do not) then one could claim that this is a more complete Bible.  In my opinion, anyone who considers these books inspired is not a very good scholar.  Personally, I reject this claim about the Cepher translation that it is the most complete, but, of course, you will have to decide for yourself.

This causes me to be a bit skeptical of this Bible, but not having read it, I really cannot say.   My guess is that to a Jewish person, the use of words for God and some other words will be closer to Jewish usages (Jeshua instead of Jesus, YHWH instead of Jehovah, etc.) and therefore, according to the Jewish mind, this translation will be more “accurate.”   Accuracy is hard to define, but I doubt that most non-Jewish Christians will agree that this is the most “accurate” Bible.  Accuracy, like beauty, is to some extent in the eyes of the beholder.  Calling Jesus Jeshua does not make a Bible more accurate in my opinion and using more Jewish-friendly terminology does not make a translation more accurate either, but this is clearly debatable and some may disagree with my analysis on this point.  Sorry that I do not know much more about this translation.

John Oakes