The original manuscript did not have the word saying in this verse. Oliver Cowdery added it when he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟. Typically, scribe 3 of 𝓞 does not omit words except subject pronouns, so this addition seems to be based on Oliver’s expectation that saying belonged here.
When we examine the word saying in the text, we discover that after participial clauses headed by saying, we almost always have a direct quote rather than an indirect one. In fact, when there is a preceding clause with the past-tense spake, we always get a direct quote after saying, as in these nearby examples in 1 Nephi (the words set in bold show that the quote is direct):
When we examine the earliest textual sources for all occurrences of “X spake ... saying Y”, we find 76 examples—and for every one of them, the quote following saying is always a direct quote. (The King James Bible, in fact, follows this same use of the direct quote, with 240 examples.)
Among the 76 Book of Mormon examples, there are five cases where the subordinate conjunction that immediately follows saying, yet the that does not force the quote to be indirect (contrary to our expectations in modern English). Interestingly, all five of these examples refer to the promise that the Lord made to Nephi in 1 Nephi 2:19–24:
The structural similarity between these five passages is quite astounding, even down to the same formulaic use of “saying that”:
which he spake unto X
saying that
inasmuch as
If we move beyond the cases where the verb in the preceding clause is spake, we encounter 151 additional examples involving saying. Here we do find a few cases where saying is followed by an indirect quote rather than a direct one:
In the first example, the indirect quote is actually part of a direct quote (a quote within a quote). In the two other examples, the word saying is followed by the subordinate conjunction that, which suggests a minor tendency to have “saying that” followed by an indirect quote.
There is one interesting case where the quote in the earliest textual sources first starts out as an indirect quote (through the first verb), then switches to a direct quote (for the second verb and the final pronoun):
This passage may well contain an early textual error. In the original text the whole quote may have been direct. The occurrence of “saying that” in this passage may have led the scribe (or Joseph Smith in his dictating) to change a present-tense is to the past-tense was. For further discussion of this possibility, see Alma 19:26.
Taken all together, the 76 examples with the phraseology “X spake … saying Y” imply that Oliver Cowdery’s decision to add saying in 1 Nephi 7:1 was in error since the quote there is defi- nitely an indirect one:
In support of this conclusion, consider six additional cases (most of them in 1 Nephi) where the verb spake occurs but there is no saying before a following subordinate conjunction that. In each of these examples, as with 1 Nephi 7:1, the quote is an indirect one:
Summary: Since the following quote is indirect, the intrusive word saying should be removed from 1 Nephi 7:1; the reading of the original manuscript (without the word saying) is consistent with usage elsewhere in the text.