(BA) NHEB

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28 July 2022 - 25 September 2023

The New Heart English Bible (NHEB) is an online Bible translation project in the public domain, based on the World English Bible (WEB). I cannot trust it. The editing of it is still in progress, but I've noticed that between 2019 and 2022 some serious damage has been done to it.

Beginning at Genesis 2:4, Mitchell begins systematically removing the name YHWH from the book of Genesis. In Genesis 2:4, the text and its footnote read as follows.

This is the account of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, at the time when ^j God made the earth and the heavens.

^j2:4 LXX OL. MT adds “LORD”

To someone who hasn't seen the whole pattern of behavior yet, this might look like just a typical text-critical decision and note. Yes, Mitchell does accurately known that the LXX reads only "God" here. Let's say that his "OL" refers to the Old Latin, and grant for the sake of argument that Mitchell is reading this correctly too. So far, things don't look too odd.

But it's worth comparing his notes to those of Biblia Hebraica Quinta. On the side of reading "LORD", BHQ also cites the Vulgate, Syriac, and Targums. Why are these left out of Wayne Mitchell's apparatus?

Moving on the next verse, Wayne Mitchell has scoured the available resources for readings that drop YHWH with such thoroughness that he sites "Bo Ms", that is, a single Bohairic manuscript, as one of the witnesses for dropping "LORD". But he only cites the MT on the side of "LORD", leaving out the Vulgate.

The one-sided practice continues through 2:6, 8, 9, 15, 16, 18, 19, 21, and 22. No source is too insignificant to cite if it drops "LORD", no source but the Masoretic Text is ever cited if it contains it. He continues in chapter 3: 1, 8, 9, 13, 14, 21, and 22.

Finally, at 4:1 Mitchell begins to explain his motivation:

4:1 LXX OL Bo(pap. Bodmer III) Bo Ms Chr, cf. 4:25. The Masoretic Hebrew text (MT) reads “from Yahweh.” One will notice in the footnotes an interchange of God and Yahweh or God to Yahweh in the manuscripts and quotations in early commentaries for Genesis. For example, at Genesis 15:6 the LXX and quotations in Romans 4:3, Galatians 3:6, and James 2:23 have God, while the MT has Yahweh. Some sections of MT Genesis escaped the later scribal changes from God to Yahweh, e.g., Genesis 31:5-48, 31:50-35:15, where it exclusively reads God, angel of God, and building an altar to God (35:1,3). Surely if Jacob and others knew the name Yahweh they would have used it in those sections. There are also cases where Yahweh was clearly added, since the shortest reading lacks the name, e.g., 2:19; 3:22; 9:26; 14:22; 15:2,8; 16:13; 19:13(2), 24(2); 21:1(2); 24:7,12,27(x2),42,48(2),52,56; 25:21; 27:7,20; 28:13(2); 32:9,23(2). In addition, in Genesis we have Mehai-el and Methusha-el (4:18), Mahalal-el (5:12), Abima-el (10:28), Beth-el (12:8), El Paran (14:6), El Elyon (14:19), Ishma-el (16:11), El Ro’i (16:13), El Shaddai (17:1), El Olam (21:33), Kemu-el (22:21), Bethu-el (22:22), Peni-el (32:30), El Elohe Israel (33:20), El Beth-el (35:7), Reu-el (36:4), Mehetab-el (36:39), Magdi-el (36:43), Jemu-el (46:10), Hamu-el (46:12), Jachle-el (46:14), Malki-el (46:17), and Jachze-el (46:24). Thus, we find -el rather than -yah, the only possible exception being the land of Moriah (22:2). So the question is, was the name Yahweh known to people before Moses?

In other words, for reasons he has briefly sketched out, Mitchell has decided that the name YHWH shouldn't appear anywhere in Genesis, and he has then bent over backwards to prune text-critical data in such a way as to make it appear that there is more support for his theory in the ancient witnesses than there really is.

But there is still more background here that Mitchell is not mentioning. In Exodus 3:16, God reveals something about the meaning of the name YHWH to Moses, and slightly later, in Exodus 6:2-3, God says the following (NHEB):

I am the LORD. And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make myself known to them by my name 'the LORD.'

One possible reading of this is that the name "YHWH" was first introduced by Moses, and that it was not known before. The major problem with this view is that the name YHWH is used many, many times before Exodus. Indeed, it appears in over 100 verses in Genesis.

What's more, the name YHWH appears in runs -- there'll be runs of text that read "Elohim", and runs that read "YHWH", and sometimes stories get retold in such a way that biblical scholars have concluded that Genesis was stitched together from multiple sources. The whole thing is something of an inconvenient mess for some types of very conservative readings.

And Wayne Mitchell has come up with a method of stacking up text-critical data selectively in such a way as to give the impression that the name "LORD" does not in fact appear over and over in Genesis.

This is not a person you can trust. What Wayne is doing is not textual criticism in the ordinary sense of the term -- it's whitewashing.