1 Nephi 8:4 Textual Variants

The archaic methought initially caused some confusion for Oliver Cowdery as he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟. In place of methought, he initially wrote the modern English “I thought”, but he immediately caught his error. All the printed editions have retained the archaic usage. There is one other use of methought in the text:

• Alma 36:22
  • yea and methought I saw even as our father Lehi saw God sitting upon his throne surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God

These occurrences in 1 Nephi 8:4 and Alma 36:22 involve the same phraseology (“methought I saw”). Elsewhere the Book of Mormon text uses only the normal subject pronoun form I with thought (or think):

• 1 Nephi 4:15
  • yea and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord
• Alma 36:15
  • O thought I that I could be banished and become extinct both soul and body
• Alma 36:19
  • and now behold when I thought this I could remember my pains no more

The archaic words methinks, methinketh, and methought (deriving from Old English) were occasionally still used in the 1800s, although not in normal spoken English:

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1832)

At last methought that I had wander’d far In an old wood.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1863)

Methinks a person of delicate individuality … could never endure to lie buried near Shakespeare.

This usage was much more prevalent in Early Modern English: Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (1599)

Methinkes you are sadder.

King James Bible, 2 Samuel 18:27 (1611, original accidentals)

Mee thinketh the running of the foremost is like the running of Ahimaaz the sonne of Zadok.

See the Oxford English Dictionary under methinks for additional citations.