java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: gherkin/lexer/Encoding

Download the latest version of the Gherkin jar (among others) from

http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/info/cukes/gherkin/

Below is the listing, where, on the webpage, each one is a directory-link containing the jar. My mistake was thinking that the bottom-most version is the most recent version. It's not. For all of the other jars, the bottom-most is indeed the most recent version.

When using the bottom-most Gherkin jar, I get the CNFX exactly as you describe:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: gherkin/lexer/Encoding
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: gherkin.lexer.Encoding

The version-number listing, as on the above webpage:

2.10.0/
2.11.0/
2.11.1/
2.11.2/
2.11.4/
2.11.5/
2.11.6/
2.11.7/
2.11.8/
2.12.0/
2.12.1/
2.12.2/
2.4.16/
2.4.17/
2.4.18/
2.4.19/
2.4.20/
2.4.21/
2.5.0/
2.5.1/
2.5.2/
2.5.3/
2.5.4/
2.6.0/
2.6.1/
2.6.2/
2.6.3/
2.6.4/
2.6.5/
2.6.6/
2.6.7/
2.6.8/
2.6.9/
2.7.0/
2.7.1/
2.7.2/
2.7.3/
2.7.4/
2.7.5/
2.7.6/
2.7.7/
2.8.0/
2.9.0/
2.9.1/
2.9.2/
2.9.3/