2 Nephi 23:8 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
they shall be amazed one at another

Isaiah 13:8 (King James Bible) they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth they shall be amazed one at another

The Book of Mormon text is missing a clause that may have been lost in transmission because two succeeding clauses begin with the same words (“they shall be”). Stan Larson, on page 568 of his 1978 article “Conjectural Emendation and the Text of the Book of Mormon” (Brigham Young University Studies 18:563–569), lists this example as a possible case where the Book of Mormon text may be missing a part of the original text (as found in the King James Bible).

There is not as much similarity between the two corresponding Hebrew clauses, which suggests that this omission (if it is accidental) occurred in the early transmission of the Book of Mormon text, with the eye skipping from the first “they shall be” to the second one. The original manuscript is not extant here, so one possibility is that the first clause could have been lost when Oliver Cowdery copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟. Another possibility is that the clause could have been omitted as Joseph Smith himself read off the text to Oliver.

On the other hand, there are quite a few cases where more than a few words are missing from the Isaiah quotations as they appear in the Book of Mormon text (when compared with the King James reading), and these do not seem to involve visual skipping. For 15 examples of such omissions from the Isaiah quotations, see the discussion under 2 Nephi 8:15. These other cases suggest that we should accept the reading of the original manuscript here in 2 Nephi 23:8, with its missing clause “they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth”. Clearly, the Book of Mormon reading will work, despite the loss in the parallelism of the King James reading. Nonetheless, there remains the distinct possibility of scribal error here in 2 Nephi 23:8.

Summary: Maintain in 2 Nephi 23:8 the reading of the earliest extant source (the printer’s manuscript), where the King James clause “they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth” is not found; it is possible that this is an omission due to the eye skipping from one “they shall be” to the next one.

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

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