Jacob 1:11 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and thus they were called by the people let them be of [whatsoever 1|whatever ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] name they would

There are 72 occurrences of whatsoever in the current Book of Mormon text. On the other hand, the current text has two occurrences of the word whatever, here in Jacob 1:11 and later in the text:

Yet in Helaman 3:5, both the original and printer’s manuscripts read “whatsoever parts”, not “whatever parts”. In one other case, an original occurrence of whatsoever has been edited out of the text:

Thus the original Book of Mormon text had no occurrences at all of the word whatever, only whatsoever (75 times). In two cases, the 1830 typesetter accidentally replaced whatsoever with whatever, with the result that these two instances of whatever have continued in all the printed editions. Obviously, these two passages should be changed so that only whatsoever occurs, thus restoring the original consistency of the text for this word choice. (And of course, the deleted “whatsoever was” will be restored in Helaman 6:20.)

Summary: Replace whatever in Jacob 1:11 and Helaman 3:5 with the original word, whatsoever; the original Book of Mormon text had no instances of the word whatever.

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

References