Mosiah 12:11 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
even as a dry stalk of the field which is [ran 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNP|run OQRST] over by the beasts and trodden under foot

In Jacob 5:37, we have an example of overran rather than the standard overrun as the past participle for the compound verb overrun (see the discussion there). Here in Mosiah 12:11, we have a case involving the phrasal verb run over. In the LDS text, the nonstandard use of ran in this passage was replaced by the standard run first in the 1907 LDS vest-pocket edition. In the RLDS text, the change was made in the 1953 edition.

There is only one other occurrence in the text of the past participle for the verb run, and in that case the earliest textual sources also have the nonstandard ran:

In this instance, the grammatical emendation of ran to run was made by the 1830 typesetter.

The critical text will maintain the ran of the earliest text in both Mosiah 12:11 and Alma 30:59. For further discussion regarding the use in the original text of the simple past-tense form for the past participle, see under past participle in volume 3.

Summary: Restore in Mosiah 12:11 (as well as in Alma 30:59) the original nonstandard use of ran as the past participle for the verb run.

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

References