Mosiah 14:12 Textual Variants

Isaiah 53:12 (King James Bible) and he bare the sin of many

Oliver Cowdery usually wrote the past-tense verb form bare as bear. Here the 1830 compositor correctly interpreted bear as the past-tense bare and therefore set bare. The 1879 LDS edition reverted to bear, and this spelling was followed in the LDS text by the 1888 large-print edition and the 1907 vest-pocket edition. Most LDS editions in the early 1900s had the correct bare (1902, 1905, 1906, and 1911). The 1920 edition maintained the past-tense reading but intentionally changed bare to bore (the change is marked in the 1920 committee copy, a large-print 1911 Book of Mormon). This one change of bare to bore is inexplicable, given that the 1920 edition elsewhere either maintained the verb form bare or emended the text to bare rather than bore:

• 2 Nephi 8:2 (quoting Isaiah 51:2)
  • look unto Abraham your father and unto Sarah she that [bear 1ILMN|bare ABCDEFGHJKOPQRST] you
• 2 Nephi 18:3 (quoting Isaiah 8:3)
  • and she conceived and [bear 1ABCDEIJLMNOQ|bare FGHKPRST] a son
• 3 Nephi 17:21
  • and the multitude [bear 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|bare RT] record of it
• 3 Nephi 18:37
  • but the disciples [bear 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|bare RT] record that he gave them power to give the Holy Ghost

At the time the 1920 edition was being prepared, there were three cases of bore in the LDS text (1 Nephi 11:7, Alma 1:25, and Alma 53:13). In other words, these three instances of bore date from earlier in the text; they were not introduced into the 1920 edition. For further discussion of the problem between bear and bare, see under 1 Nephi 11:7 as well as under bear and past tense in volume 3. Of course, here in Mosiah 14:12 the original text undoubtedly read bare, just as in the King James Bible.