1 Nephi 20:6 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
thou hast [heard & seen 0|seen & heard 1|seen and heard ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] all this

Isaiah 48:6 (King James Bible) thou hast heard / see all this

The reading of the original manuscript follows the word order in Isaiah (a form of the verb hear, followed by a form of the verb see ); the King James Bible has the two verbs in different clauses, separated by a comma. In copying from 𝓞 to 𝓟, Oliver Cowdery accidentally switched the order of “heard and seen” to “seen and heard”. Both orders occur with equal frequency elsewhere in the text (with seven occurrences of “seen and heard” and seven of “heard and seen”). There is, however, one other instance that shows Oliver’s tendency to place the verb hear after the verb see —namely, his change in 1 Nephi 14:28 of “the things which I saw” to “the things which I saw and heard”.

Summary: Restore in 1 Nephi 20:6 the original word order “heard and seen” (the reading of the original manuscript); this reading is closer to the reading of the King James Bible.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 1

References