Jacob 2:27 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
for there shall not any [more > man 1|man ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] among you have save it be one wife and concubines he shall have none

Here in the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote “any more among you”, then almost immediately crossed out the more and supralinearly inserted man (the level of ink flow is unchanged). The error here is a visual one, especially since Oliver Cowdery’s a and o as well as his n and r are written similarly. (For another instance where there may have been some mix-up between men and more, see Alma 59:9.)

Theoretically, the nominal use of more is possible here, although the gender-specific noun man is more plausible. Elsewhere, the phrase “any more” is typically used as an adverb (17 times), as in “they need not look forward any more for a Messiah to come” (2 Nephi 25:18). There are four cases where “any more” modifies a following noun:

In only one place can the more of “any more” be considered a nominal head (although here “any more” could be interpreted as adverbial):

Even here the more does not refer to people. There is only one place where more refers to people, but in that case, instead of “any more”, we have its negative equivalent, “no more”:

This is the only example of this usage in the Book of Mormon text (excluding the initial manuscript reading here in Jacob 2:27). On the other hand, there are 14 other occurrences of “any man” in the text. Theoretically, either more or man is possible in Jacob 2:27, but the critical text will accept man in Jacob 2:27 since the corrected reading (“any man”) appears to be virtually immediate.

Summary: Accept in Jacob 2:27 Oliver Cowdery’s corrected reading in 𝓟: “there shall not among you have save it be one wife”.

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

References