2 Nephi 18:2 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and Zechariah the son of [Jerebechiah 1|Jeberechiah ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]

Isaiah 8:2 (King James Bible) and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah

The printer’s manuscript has the spelling Jerebechiah instead of the King James Jeberechiah. We do not have the original manuscript here, but somewhere in the early transmission of the text, the order of the r and the b in this name was switched. This metathesis of consonants could have occurred in the Hebrew source, although a more likely possibility is that the error occurred as Oliver Cowdery copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟. One contributing factor to such an error is that the text otherwise has a number of names where r follows an initial J (Jared, Jarom, Jeremiah, Jershon, and Jordan), but no other names where b follows an initial J. The name Jeremiah is particularly close to the misspelled Jerebechiah. The 1830 typesetter undoubtedly checked his King James Bible and decided that the reading in 𝓟 was in error.

Summary: Maintain the spelling Jeberechiah in 2 Nephi 18:2 since the reading in 𝓟 is probably a scribal error introduced by the familiarity of names like Jeremiah.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 2

References