3 Nephi 7:7–8 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and they did cause a great contention in the land insomuch that the more righteous part of the people— although they were nearly all become wicked yea there were but few righteous men among them— and thus six years had not passed away since the more part of the people had turned from their righteousness

Brent Kerby (personal communication, 15 December 2008) wonders if the word since isn’t a mistake in this passage. The context implies that the meaning here is ‘six years had not passed away before the more part of the people had turned from their righteousness’. Kerby suggests a number of emendations, including the possibility that since is an error for and. One other possibility is that in this passage since has the meaning of ‘before’ or ‘until’, although no direct evidence for this meaning can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary. (Under definition 4 for the adverb since, the OED lists the meaning ‘ago, before now’, but none of the citations listed there are appropriate for the expression in 3 Nephi 7:8, where since is a subordinate conjunction.) Despite the difficulty of the use of since here, the critical text will maintain it; the context here makes the since- clause readily understandable.

Summary: Maintain in 3 Nephi 7:8 the subordinate conjunction since, in spite of its unusual use here; in modern English, we expect before or until rather than since.

3 Nephi 8:17, page 3316, line –17

The definite article the before small words should be omitted, giving “the loss of small words like thus is more likely”.

3 Nephi 10:4, page 3336, between lines 8 and 9

The line of space between the second and third instances of “yea O ye people of the house of Israel” should be removed since these two instances belong to the same verse (3 Nephi 10:5). The two other lines of space in this citation will be maintained since they separate off the two other verses (4 and 6) from verse 5.

3 Nephi 12:34, page 3374, lines 19–20

The word edition should follow 1830, thus “since both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition, the earliest textual sources, read that way”.

3 Nephi 17:17, page 3418, lines 10–11 and 18

The citation from Moroni 9:19 at the bottom of page 3417 unfortunately prompted me to twice write “tongue cannot tell” rather than the correct “tongue cannot speak” on the following page. On lines 10–11, the phrase should read “and no tongue cannot speak”; and at the end of line 18, the phrase should read “and tongue cannot speak”.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 5

References