Jacob 5:71 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
ye shall have joy in the fruit [of > NULL 1| ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] which I shall lay up [ for > unto 1|unto ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] myself against the time which will soon come

Here in the printer’s manuscript we have two nearly immediate corrections by Oliver Cowdery. He initially wrote “in the fruit of which I shall lay up for myself ”; then without any change in the level of ink flow, Oliver deleted the of and corrected the for to unto by supralinear insertion. Theoretically, the of is possible in the expression “to lay up (of ) fruit”, as in Jacob 5:19: “that I may lay up of the fruit thereof ” (see the discussion under that passage).

The olive tree allegory is consistent in using the preposition unto in the expression “to lay up something unto oneself ”, with nine occurrences of it:

In addition, there are 11 occurrences in Jacob 5 of the expression “to preserve something unto oneself ”:

Thus the archaic preposition unto is expected in these expressions here in Jacob 5 rather than the preposition for that speakers of modern English would prefer.

Summary: Maintain in Jacob 5:71 the corrected text in 𝓟: “ye shall have joy in the fruit which I shall lay up unto myself ”.

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

References