Mosiah 28:5 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and it [came 1ABCDEFGIJLMNOPQRST|did come HK] to pass that they did plead with their father many days that they might go up [to 1ABCDEFGIJLMNOPQRST| H|NULL > to K] the land of Nephi

Here the 1874 RLDS edition accidentally introduced two errors into the text. First, came was replaced with did come, probably because of the following did plead. The 1892 RLDS edition followed this reading, but the 1908 RLDS edition restored the original came to the RLDS text. Theoretically, either came or did come is possible, but “it did come to pass” actually occurs only once in the original Book of Mormon text (in Helaman 11:20: “and thus it did come to pass that the people of Nephi began to prosper again in the land”). The 1874 RLDS edition made a similar error later on in the text:

The second change in the 1874 RLDS edition for Mosiah 28:5 involved the loss of to in “to the land of Nephi”. The resulting typo (which creates the very odd “that they might go up the land of Nephi”) was originally copied as such into the 1892 RLDS edition but was later corrected in that edition.

Summary: Maintain in Mosiah 28:5 the original came in “it came to pass” as well as the to in “go up to the land of Nephi”.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 3

References