Ross Geddes (personal communication, 28 July 2005) notes that the expression “Christ was the God the Father of all things” seems strange. He suggests that the original text here may have read “Christ was the God and the Father of all things” (with an additional and ) or “Christ was God the Father of all things” (without the definite article the before God ).
Geddes notes that Mosiah 3:8 and Helaman 14:12 have a similar kind of multiple asyndetic conjoining of noun phrases that refer to Christ:
These two readings would suggest that there is no need to add an and in Mosiah 7:27.
Alternatively, Geddes suggests that there may be a missing prepositional phrase after the God, such as of Israel (thus “Christ was the God of Israel / the Father of all things”). Another possibility, following the two passages listed above, would be to insert Son of in Mosiah 7:27, giving “Christ was the Son of God / the Father of all things”. Two other verses support this possibility:
Further, here in Mosiah 7:27 Limhi is referring to the preaching of Abinadi, and we have clear evidence that Abinadi used the specific phrase “the Son of God” along with “the Father” to refer to Christ:
And Abinadi continued to refer to Christ as the Father and the Son (from verse 3 through 9 of Mosiah 15). So if the text is to be emended here in Mosiah 7:27, the most probable reading would be “Christ was the Son of God / the Father of all things”. Thus far, however, I have been unable to find any independent examples in the manuscripts where Son of has been accidentally lost. To be sure, Joseph Smith added a few instances of the Son of in his editing for the 1837 edition, but these additions were textually unnecessary (see the discussion under 1 Nephi 11:18, 21).
Ultimately, it is probably safest here in Mosiah 7:27 to maintain the earliest reading, despite its difficulty: “Christ was the God the Father of all things”.
Summary: Although in Mosiah 7:27 the noun phrase “the God the Father of all things”, the earliest extant reading, may be an error (it is both awkward and unique to the text), the critical text will maintain it since it is understandable.
David Calabro points out (personal communication) a few other examples in the King James Bible of that as an equivalent for that which:
Here in the citation for Alma 57:29, the initial error in 𝓟 was “the land of Zarahemla”, not just “the land”. Oliver Cowdery crossed out of Zarahemla in 𝓟 and overwrote the the
as that, yet the 1830 typesetter ended up setting “the land” instead of the correct “that land”. The variant on line 15 of page 1242 should read as follows:
to [that land 0|the land of Zarahemla > that land 1| the land ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]
(This variant is correctly specified in the write-up for Alma 57:29 in part 5.) Thus on lines 16–17 of page 1242, the text should read as follows:
Oliver Cowdery himself initially wrote “to the land of Zarahemla” in 𝓟, but then he caught his error and corrected the text to read “to that land”.
The description at the top of page 1259 regarding the ink flow for the correction in 𝓞 for Alma 46:33 (given on line –1 on page 1258) is not correct. Like the correction in 𝓞 for Alma 43:47 (also listed on page 1258), the ink flow for the correction in Alma 46:33 is slightly heavier (and it is also unevenly applied). Thus one could argue that in both Alma 43:47 and 46:33, Oliver Cowdery simply redipped his pen when making the correction in 𝓞 (that is, the correction was virtually immediate); or, contrary to this, one could argue that Oliver corrected 𝓞 at the time he made the correction in 𝓟. In any event, the citation for Alma 46:33 at the bottom of page 1258 should read as follows: