As discussed under 1 Nephi 18:17–18, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a because-of phrase should be attached to the end of the preceding sentence or to the beginning of the following sentence. Here in 2 Nephi 28:11–12, we have three because-of phrases that show this difficulty (numbered above as 1, 2, and 3). The punctuation in the printed editions (all of which derive from John Gilbert’s 1830 punctuation) assigns each of these three because-of phrases to the beginning of the following sentence. But it is possible that one or more of these because-of phrases could be assigned to the end of the preceding sentence.
Let us first consider the third case. Nearby verses clearly show that pride is associated with puffed up:
The text here reads “in their pride”, not “of their pride”. Another nearby verse supports the collocation of pride and puffed up:
A more distant passage also has this collocation of pride and puffed up:
In any event, the immediately following verses for 2 Nephi 28:12 support associating the word pride with puffed up.
Nonetheless, there are examples where pride collocates with lifted up, with at least 18 occurrences involving the phraseology “lifted up in pride” (for a 19th possibility, see the discussion under Mormon 8:28). The nearest of these occurrences is not as close as 2 Nephi 28:14 is to 2 Nephi 28:12:
There are five other passages where pride occurs with the verb lift up:
Since pride collocates with lifted up as well as puffed up, the phrase “because of pride” near the end of 2 Nephi 28:12 can be assigned to either “and their churches are lifted up” or “they are puffed up”, although the nearest examples (in fact, twice in the following three verses) associate pride with puffed up, not lifted up. Another factor to consider is that the text appears to read more connectedly when we assign “because of pride” to the following “they are puffed up”. The previous “and their churches are lifted up” already has an initial conjunctive and that provides a connected reading, but the following “they are puffed up” seems awkward and disconnected unless “because of pride” is assigned to it. Thus it seems that the most reasonable solution would be to accept the current punctuation for the third case of because-of in 2 Nephi 28:11–12 (“because of pride they are puffed up”).
Let us now turn to the first two cases of because-of. There are three possible ways to parse these contiguous because-of phrases (here given with minimal accidentals):
(1) a conjoined pair of because-of phrases at the end of the preceding sentence:
They have become corrupted because of pride and because of false teachers and false doctrines.
Their churches have become corrupted and their churches are lifted up.
(2) the first because-of phrase at the end of the preceding sentence, the second one at the beginning of the following sentence:
They have become corrupted because of pride.
And because of false teachers and false doctrines their churches have become corrupted and their churches are lifted up.
(3) a conjoined pair of because-of phrases at the beginning of the following sentence:
They have become corrupted.
Because of pride and because of false teachers and false doctrines their churches have become corrupted and their churches are lifted up.
The 1830 typesetter chose the third option, and this parsing has been followed in all the printed editions.
When we consider other instances of contiguous because-of phrases in the text, we find examples for all three options:
(1) both attached to the end of a clause:
(2) attached to two different clauses:
(3) both attached to the beginning of a clause:
Syntactically, all three parsings are therefore possible in 2 Nephi 28:11–12.
From a semantic point of view, the second option presents a nice balance: people are corrupted by pride, and churches are corrupted by false teachers and false doctrines. It is also the only option that provides a narrative connector (namely, and ) between the two sentences. The critical text will therefore accept the second option, which separates the two because-of phrases. It should be noted, however, that the decision causes a minor difficulty with respect to the LDS and RLDS versifications: both systems of versification start a new verse with “because of pride”. Given the proposed punctuation change in the standard text, the more natural place to begin the new verse would be after “because of pride”.
Summary: Emend the punctuation for 2 Nephi 28:11–12 so that the phrase “because of pride” is attached to the preceding sentence (thus “they have become corrupted because of pride”); maintain the punctuation for the last sentence in verse 12, which attaches the because-of phrase to the following sentence (thus “because of pride they are puffed up”).