2 Nephi 8:1 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
hearken [to 1|unto ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] me ye that follow after righteousness

Isaiah 51:1 (King James Bible) hearken to me ye that follow after righteousness

The original manuscript is not extant here, but the printer’s manuscript reads to. The 1830 typesetter changed the to to unto, thus moving the Book of Mormon text further away from the King James text for Isaiah. The printer might have been influenced by the more frequent use of the phrase “hearken unto me”. See the nearby examples in 2 Nephi 8:4 and 2 Nephi 8:7, which read “hearken unto me” in both the Book of Mormon text and the corresponding Isaiah verses in the King James Bible. For further discussion of “hearken to” versus “hearken unto”, see 1 Nephi 16:3.

Summary: Restore in 2 Nephi 8:1 the preposition to (“hearken to me”), the reading of the printer’s manuscript as well as Isaiah 51:1 of the King James Bible.

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

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