2 Nephi 27:34 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
they shall sanctify my name and sanctify the Holy One of [Israel > Jacob 1|Jacob ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] and shall fear the God of Israel

Isaiah 29:23 (King James Bible) they shall sanctify my name and sanctify the Holy One of Jacob and shall fear the God of Israel

The expression “the Holy One of Israel” is the expected phraseology in the scriptures, occurring 40 times in the Book of Mormon. On the other hand, “the Holy One of Jacob” occurs only here in 2 Nephi 27:34 (but in agreement with the corresponding King James reading in Isaiah 29:23). Thus it is not surprising that Oliver Cowdery initially wrote “the Holy One of Israel”, then nearly immediately corrected it—there is no difference in ink flow—to “the Holy One of Jacob”, which was undoubtedly the reading of the original manuscript (no longer extant here).

The tendency to replace Jacob with the expected Israel is also found in the phrase “the house of Jacob”:

In the first example, the text cites Isaiah 48:1, which in the King James Bible reads “hear ye this O house of Jacob”. The original manuscript is extant for 1 Nephi 20:1 and also reads “O house of Jacob”. In the second example, the 1830 edition is a firsthand copy of 𝓞 for this passage, and it too reads “the house of Jacob”; thus 𝓞 (which is not extant here) undoubtedly also read “the house of Jacob”.

Summary: Retain in 2 Nephi 27:34 Oliver Cowdery’s virtually immediate correction in 𝓟 to the reading of the original text (“the Holy One of Jacob”), which is the same as the corresponding King James reading for this passage.

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

References