3 Nephi 16:15 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and they shall be as salt that hath lost [its > his >js its 1|his A|its BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] savor which is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of my people / O house of Israel

Matthew 5:13 (King James Bible)but if the salt have lost his savor wherewith shall it be salted it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men

As discussed under 3 Nephi 12:13, the original text here in 3 Nephi 16:15 seems to have read “his savor”—that is, in agreement with the parallel passage in the King James Bible (“his savor”), not the earliest reading in 3 Nephi 12:13 (“its savor”, the expected modern usage). Here in 3 Nephi 16:5, Oliver initially wrote its, then virtually immediately corrected it to his (there is no change in the level of ink flow for the supralinear his). In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith replaced the archaic his with its. The critical text will restore the original his in this passage.

Summary: Restore the original archaic usage “his savor” in 3 Nephi 16:15, the reading in the 1830 edition as well as the reading of the virtually immediate correction in 𝓟.

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

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