Enos 1:23 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and there was nothing save it was exceeding harshness preaching and prophesying of wars and contentions and destructions and continually reminding them of death and [of 1| ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] the duration of eternity and the judgments and the power of God

In this example of conjunctive repetition, the 1830 typesetter removed the preposition of before the second conjoined noun phrase so that of is found in front of only the first noun phrase. The resulting structure conforms to one of the two general conjunctive patterns in the Book of Mormon— namely, the preposition occurs only in front of the first conjunct. The other general pattern repeats the preposition before each succeeding conjunct. For a comparison of the two possibilities, see the nearby discussion under Enos 1:20 concerning the preposition in. The earliest reading here in Enos 1:23 has the of before the first and second conjoined noun phrases but not the third (“the judgments and the power of God”). It is possible that the original text actually didn’t have the second of; we no longer have the original manuscript here. On the other hand, there are no other examples in the Book of Mormon text of a conjunctive nominal complement for “remind someone of ”, so we are unable to refer to any parallel usage in this case.

Since the reading of the printer’s manuscript seems to work well enough, the critical text will accept the extra of before the second conjoined noun phrase in Enos 1:23. For a complete discussion, see conjunctive repetition in volume 3.

Summary: Restore in Enos 1:23 the repeated preposition of, the reading of the printer’s manuscript: “reminding them of death and of the duration of eternity and the judgments and the power of God”.

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

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