Mosiah 23:28 Textual Variants

The printer’s manuscript lacks a repeated their before children. Normally, the Book of Mormon text repeats the determiner in conjuncts involving wives and children (30 times in the original text):

their wives and their children 21 times

our wives and our children 5 times

your wives and your children 2 times

for their wives and for their children 1 time

the wives and the children of the guards 1 time

In two of these cases, the repeated determiner has been omitted at some time in the history of the text; in the first case, the omission was restricted to only one edition, but in the second case the omission has continued in all subsequent editions:

• Mosiah 23:38 (the repeated the omitted only in the 1906 LDS edition)
  • and the remainder of them went to the land of Nephi and a part of them returned to the land of Helam and also brought with them the wives and [the 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMOPQRST| N] children of the guards
• Alma 35:14 (the repeated their omitted in the 1837 edition and all subsequent editions)
  • and they have taken up arms to defend themselves and their wives and [their 01A| BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] children and their lands

These examples show once more the tendency to remove repeated determiners from conjunctive noun phrases (for a complete discussion, see conjunctive repetition in volume 3).

However, there are three other cases where the earliest source for the text (the printer’s manuscript in each instance) has the determiner in front of only the first conjunct, wives:

• Alma 14:8
  • and they brought their wives and children together
• Alma 15:2
  • and they related unto them all that had happened unto their wives and children
• Ether 14:2
  • and every man kept the hilt of his sword thereof in his right hand in the defence of his property and his own life and they of his wives and [ 1ABCEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|his D] children

Note in the last instance how the 1841 British edition accidentally inserted a repeated his before children, but this repeated determiner did not continue in subsequent editions.

Thus there appears to be some evidence that the determiner is not always repeated when wives and children are conjoined. The critical text will in each case follow the earliest textual sources in determining whether the determiner is repeated.