2 Nephi 32:2 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
do ye not remember that I said unto you that after [that >+ NULL 1| ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] ye [have >+ had 1|had ABCDEFGIJLMNOPQRST|have HK] received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of angels

Here in verse 2, we have a couple of corrections that Oliver Cowdery apparently made somewhat later, perhaps when he was proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞 (although conceivably these two changes could be due to editing on Oliver’s part). The ink flow for both corrections is heavier, especially the crossouts, which implies that both corrections were made together but at a later time.

In the first case, Oliver wrote that after the subordinate conjunction after, probably because he had gotten used to the biblically styled subordinate construction “after that ”, which occurred very frequently in the original text (but which was, for the most part, edited out of the text in the 1837 edition). The simultaneous use of that both before and after the subordinate conjunction after is quite rare in the original text, with only one clear example of its use in the earliest textual sources:

In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith deleted both of the that ’s in 1 Nephi 11:9, so that the 1837 and all subsequent editions have read “and it came to pass after I had seen the tree”. But we note that Oliver Cowdery himself did not emend the text for 1 Nephi 11:9 when he copied it from 𝓞 into 𝓟. It is therefore quite possible that in 2 Nephi 32:2, Oliver’s deletion of the second that was the result of his proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞 rather than editing.

The second correction in 𝓟 for 2 Nephi 32:2 replaced the present perfect have that Oliver Cowdery originally wrote (“that after that ye have received the Holy Ghost”). Later, apparently at the same time when he deleted the repeated that, he crossed out the have and supralinearly inserted the had. Both crossouts were done with heavier ink flow, but the level of ink flow for the supralinear had is only somewhat heavier. Like the deletion of the that, this emendation of have to had is more likely the result of proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞.

The use of the perfect had received as well as the past-tense modal could is expected here in 2 Nephi 32:2 for two reasons. First, Nephi’s statement is in the subjunctive since he is speaking conditionally: he is not saying that they have received the Holy Ghost, but rather that after they do receive it, they will be able to speak with the tongue of angels. And second, the preceding pasttense clause (“I said unto you”) leads to the use of the past tense in the following indirect quote. Such tense shifting in subordinate clauses is common in English (as in the sentence “I told him that I was coming tomorrow”). Thus we end up here in 2 Nephi 32:2 with the past-tense subjunctive forms had received and could. Nonetheless, the tendency to replace the had with have in this verse has persisted in the text. Thus the 1874 RLDS edition reintroduced have here in this passage, but the had was restored to the RLDS text in the 1908 edition, probably by reference to the corrected reading in the printer’s manuscript.

Summary: Retain in 2 Nephi 32:2 Oliver Cowdery’s two corrections in 𝓟: namely, his removal of the extra that and his replacement of have with had; both corrections are probably the result of his proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞 (which is no longer extant here).

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

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