2 Nephi 4:15 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and my heart pondereth them and writeth them for the learning and [the 1ABCDEFGHIJLMNOPQRST| K] profit of my children

This passage has an example of the repeated the in the conjoined noun phrase “the learning and the profit of my children”. The 1892 RLDS edition accidentally dropped the second the, but it was restored in the subsequent RLDS edition (1908). For other examples of the tendency for the text to omit the repeated the, see under conjunctive repetition in volume 3.

Although the the is repeated here, we do not get such repetition when the determiner is a possessive pronoun (such as our and your):

Note also that the word order is different; in these two examples, profit comes before learning.

Summary: Maintain the repeated the in 2 Nephi 4:15 (“for the learning and the profit of my children”).

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

References