3 Nephi 14:9 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
or what man is there of you [whom 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ|who RST] if his son ask bread will [he 1ABCDEFGHKPS| IJLMNOQRT] give him a stone

Matthew 7:9 (King James Bible) or what man is there of you whom if his son ask bread will he give him a stone

The original Book of Mormon text here agrees with the “ungrammatical” King James Bible reading (having the “extra” pronoun he as well as whom rather than who). The 1879 LDS edition removed the pronoun he, while the 1920 LDS edition changed the whom to who (as did the 1953 RLDS edition). The critical text will, of course, restore the original Book of Mormon reading since it agrees precisely with the King James reading in Matthew 7:9.

The original King James Bible reading here in 3 Nephi 14:9 parallels (in part) the syntax of the following verse:

Actually, the whom in the King James Bible for verse 9 belongs with the following conditional relative clause; that is, the text (as reflected in the original Greek) means ‘of whom his son asks bread’. The relative pronoun in the Greek is the accusative hon rather than the nominative ho, so the whom of the King James Bible is actually intended, the result of a too literal translation. A similar example of whom rather than who is found in the King James text for Matthew 16:13: “whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?” (similarly in Mark 8:27). In this case, the corresponding Greek original has the accusative interrogative pronoun tina rather than the nominative tis.

Summary: Despite its difficulty in modern English, restore the original text in 3 Nephi 14:9: “or what man is there of you whom if his son ask bread will he give him a stone”; this reading agrees with the corresponding King James reading in Matthew 7:9.

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

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