3 Nephi 12:11 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute [ you > NULL 1| ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake

Matthew 5:11 (King James Bible) blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake

In the King James Bible, the object pronoun you after persecute is in italics (the Greek text does not have an explicit direct object for this verb, but it is implied by the occurrence of you as the direct object for the preceding verb, thus equivalently in Greek “shall revile you and shall persecute”. Here in the Book of Mormon version, there was apparently no you after persecute in the original manuscript. When Oliver Cowdery initially wrote this passage in the printer’s manuscript, he supplied a second you, probably because of his familiarity with the Beatitudes. Virtually immediately, Oliver crossed out this you in 𝓟 (there is no observable change in the level of ink flow for the crossout). Since both 𝓟 (in its corrected form) and the 1830 edition agree here, the current text without the you should be retained.

Summary: Maintain in 3 Nephi 12:11 the current text without the pronoun you after persecute since both the 1830 edition and the corrected reading in 𝓟 lack the you; in this case, 𝓞 very likely lacked the extra you; here the original Book of Mormon text agrees with the Greek text of the Sermon on the Mount; this you occurs in the King James version but is in italics.

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

References