4 Nephi 1:20 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and there was still peace in the land save it were a small part of the people which had revolted from the church and [took 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|taken RT] upon them the name of Lamanites

Here the 1920 LDS edition replaced took with taken. The assumption behind this editing is that the original text conjoined two past-perfect verb phrases, equivalent to “had revolted ... and had took” but without repeating the had. Thus the 1920 editing is basically replacing the nonstandard “had took” with the standard “had taken”. This same change has been made in several other places in the text. For a list, see under Alma 8:26. The critical text will restore the original took since “had took” is possible in the original Book of Mormon text. (Theoretically took could simply be the simple past-tense form of the verb take. For this possibility, see the discussion of the phrase “had read and saw” under 1 Nephi 1:14.)

Summary: Restore in 4 Nephi 1:20 the original use of took as either the past-participial form or the simple past-tense form for the verb take.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 6

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