1 Nephi 7:6 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
behold Laman and Lemuel and two of the daughters of Ishmael and the two sons of Ishmael and their families did rebel against us yea against [i 0|I 1ABCDEGIJLNP|me > I F|me HKOQRST|I > me M] Nephi and Sam and their father Ishmael and his wife and his three other daughters

The original manuscript reads “against I Nephi”, even though the text just previously reads “against us” (not “against we”, which seems impossible). The nonstandard usage “against I Nephi” was corrected to “against me Nephi” in the first printing of the 1852 edition, but then the text was changed back to “against I Nephi” in the second printing (probably by reference to the 1840 edition). Finally, the standard “against me Nephi” was permanently implemented in the LDS text in the third printing (in 1907) of the 1905 Chicago edition. The RLDS text made this grammatical change in the 1953 edition.

Most likely, the source for the nonstandard “against I Nephi” is the prevalence of “I Nephi” over “me Nephi” in the text. Elsewhere in 1 and 2 Nephi, there are 87 occurrences of “I Nephi”

(all in subject position, of course). There are just so many exemplars of “I Nephi” that “against I Nephi” sounds acceptable, even if immediately preceded by “against us”. The highly expected “I Nephi” also explains why numerous editions were printed before editors permanently replaced the nonstandard phraseology.

Similar results are found for other names. For most other narrators in the Book of Mormon text (Mormon, Enos, Alma, and ten others), we only get the form I. Two names, however, show variance in accord with grammatical position:

“I Jacob” (16 times) versus “me Jacob” (3 times)
“I Moroni” (17 times) versus “me Moroni” (1 time)

The subject forms clearly dominate.

In general, the critical text restores ungrammatical usage; thus the reading of the original manuscript (“against I Nephi”) should be followed here in 1 Nephi 7:6. For a complete listing of such nonstandard pronominal usage, see pronouns in volume 3.

Summary: Restore the nonstandard usage “against I Nephi” in 1 Nephi 7:6.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 1

References