2 Nephi 2:11 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
for it must needs be that there is an opposition in all things if not so my first born in the wilderness righteousness could not be brought to pass neither wickedness neither holiness nor misery neither good nor bad wherefore all things must needs be a compound in one wherefore if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead having no life neither death nor corruption nor incorruption happiness nor misery neither sense nor insensibility

Corbin T. Volluz has suggested (personal communication) that the phrase “neither holiness nor misery” may be an error for “neither happiness nor misery”. The text here shows no variance with respect to the word holiness, but the original manuscript is not extant. When we look elsewhere in the text (including later on in this same verse), misery is always opposed to happiness (nine times), never holiness:

The word happiness is much more reasonable as the opposing member for both occurrences of misery in 2 Nephi 2:11; happiness is an opposite to misery, but holiness is not, except by some kind of conjectured inference (perhaps only those who are holy are happy).

Orthographically, holiness and happiness are similar, so it is quite possible that the original manuscript (which is not extant here) read happiness and was accidentally copied as holiness. In fact, this error would have been facilitated if happiness was actually spelled in 𝓞 as hapiness (that is, with only one p). Although elsewhere Oliver Cowdery consistently spelled happiness with two p’s (15 times in extant portions of 𝓞, 26 times in 𝓟), he did occasionally spell happy as hapy (twice in 𝓟: Mosiah 2:41 and Alma 56:11); his six other spellings of happy are correct (three in extant portions of 𝓞, three in 𝓟). Related evidence comes from Oliver’s spellings of the similar-sounding word happen. Out of 18 occurrences (17 of happened, 1 of happen), he spelled happened eight times with one p (three times in extant portions of 𝓞, five times in 𝓟). So if Oliver Cowdery wrote happiness as hapiness, then the chances are even higher of the word happiness being miscopied as holiness. Often Oliver Cowdery’s a’s look like o’s, and his p has a high ascender, which means that the p of hapiness could have easily been misread as an l.

Summary: Emend “neither holiness nor misery” in 2 Nephi 2:11 to “neither happiness nor misery” in accord with all other pairs of happiness and misery in the text.

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

References