In this passage we have two variants involving the conjunction and. In the 1837 edition, an extra and was introduced before “that he will come” (listed above as 1); in addition, Joseph Smith removed the and before “he will make himself manifest unto all” (listed above as 3). It is possible that the introduction of the extra and may simply be a typo in the 1837 edition since the resulting reading doesn’t really make much sense, nor was this change marked by Joseph in his editing of 𝓟 (unlike the deletion of the and, which he did mark in 𝓟). This extra and introduced in the 1837 edition was removed from the LDS text in 1879 (apparently by reference to the 1830 edition) and from the RLDS text in 1908 (apparently by reference to 𝓟).
The removal of the last and (listed above as 3) needs to be discussed more fully. The earliest text (the reading in 𝓟 and the 1830 edition) is clearly a difficult reading:
but now that they may foresee that he will come and that he remembereth every creature of his creating and he will make himself manifest unto all …
This passage could be interpreted as a Hebraistic construction, where initially we have a conjunctive subordinate clause (“that they may foresee that he will come and that he remembereth every creature of his creating”) followed by the main clause but with a Hebrew-like conjunctive and before the main clause (“and he will make himself manifest unto all”). For other examples of this kind of Hebraistic use of and, see the discussion under 1 Nephi 4:8–9 (for when-clauses) and under 1 Nephi 8:13 (for as-clauses); more generally, see under hebraisms in volume 3.
This interpretation of the last clause in Mosiah 27:30 as a main clause seems to be behind Joseph Smith’s editing for the 1837 edition when he removed the and. For some reason, in the third printing in 1907 of the 1905 LDS missionary edition, the and was restored to the text (perhaps by reference to the 1830 edition), although one wonders why since the 1907 printing did not otherwise restore similar cases of and that had been deleted by Joseph in his editing for the 1837 edition. The 1907 decision was clearly a conscious one since the change was made in the stereotyped plates that had originally been made for the first printing in 1905. The 1911 LDS edition followed this reading (since it was typeset from a 1907 or later printing of the corrected stereotyped plates). In any event, the 1920 LDS edition removed the and, thus restoring Joseph’s 1837 reading.
But there is a problem with interpreting this strange initial sentence as a Hebraism—namely, the third clause does not appear to be a conclusion to the preceding dependent clause “that they may foresee … ”. Instead, it seems to be one more example in a list of what may be foreseen. In fact, this third clause seems to be associated with the immediately preceding clause—that is, the text seems to be saying that they (the fathers) will foresee (1) that Christ will come and (2) that he will manifest himself unto all because he remembers every individual:
but now that they may foresee
that he will come
(2a) and that he remembereth every creature of his creating
(2b) and he will make himself manifest unto all …
Immediately after this listing of what will be foreseen, Alma suddenly breaks off (at the beginning of verse 31) to declare that all will bow before the Lord (“yea every knee shall bow and every tongue confess before him”). Going on from there, Alma never does state what will be the result of the fathers foreseeing the coming of Christ and his manifesting himself to everyone. Ultimately this long sentence in verses 30–31 never achieves closure. Joseph Smith’s editing, of course, creates closure here in Mosiah 27:30 but seems to state that Christ’s manifesting himself unto all of his creation is somehow the result of the fathers’ foreseeing.
David Calabro (personal communication) suggests another possibility: perhaps the original text for Mosiah 27:30 involves elision of the phrase “I know”—that is, the meaning of the initial clause is as if the text read “but now I know that they may foresee”. This kind of awkward elision is quite rare in the Book of Mormon text; one similar possibility is the proposed elision of “shall be lifted up” in Mormon 8:28 (see the discussion there). But Calabro’s suggestion can be taken one step further: perhaps the original text in Mosiah 27:30 actually read that way:
Notice what this single emendation achieves. First of all, now we have closure and there is no need to delete the final and in this verse. Secondly, the text now forms a whole with Alma’s preceding language. In this part of his discourse, Alma makes three comparisons between his earlier sinful state and what has now happened to him as a result of his repentance:
Each of these three comparisons begins with a past-tense statement and is immediately followed by a corresponding but contrastive present-tense statement. The conjunction but is consistently used to separate the pairs of contrastive statements. The first and third pairs also use the presenttense adverb now to emphasize Alma’s present state of repentance in comparison to his sinful past. Moreover, the third pair implies that earlier Alma denied the possibility that the Nephite fathers could have had revelations about the coming of a Savior, much like the apostates Sherem and Korihor also argued:
The phrase “now I know” is fairly common in the text, where now is a present-tense adverb (I ignore those cases where now is used more as a sentence connector than as an adverb referring to the present):
The probable reason for the proposed loss of I know from Mosiah 27:30 would be the visual similarity between now and know, which could have led to a visual skip when copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟. We may conjecture that the original manuscript, not extant here, read “but now I know that they may foresee”. When scribe 2 of 𝓟 came to copy this phrase, he first wrote but now but then accidentally skipped over the I know since both end in now. There is also a similarity in contour between but now and I know. The letters b and t in but now have ascenders as do the letters I and k of I know.
Yet it should be pointed out that Oliver Cowdery, when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞, did not catch this proposed loss of I know. One possible reason for this is that the know in 𝓞 could have been accidentally misspelled as now (as “but now I now”). If so, the chances of skipping from one now to a second now would be quite high. In fact, when copying the text here, scribe 2 of 𝓟 might have assumed that “but now I now” was some kind of dittography, which he then simplified to simply “but now”. (Similarly, Oliver could have accepted the reading “but now” in 𝓟 since “but now I now” in 𝓞 might have seemed simply inexplicable rather than an error for “but now I know”.)
In support of the possible misspelling know as now in the original manuscript, there are a number of cases in 𝓞 where the scribes initially spelled know or inflected forms of know without the initial k. In all cases but one, the scribes caught their error:
scribe 3 of 𝓞:
Oliver Cowdery in 𝓞:
Presumably, Oliver Cowdery was the scribe in 𝓞 for Mosiah 27:30.
The critical text will emend the text here in Mosiah 27:30 to read “but now I know that they may foresee that he will come”. This conjectural emendation readily clears up the many difficulties with the current reading. And we can explain the loss of I know as a visual skip from the end of but now to the end of I know in 𝓞, perhaps as an attempt to deal with an inexplicable reading in 𝓞: “but now I now”.
Summary: Emend Mosiah 27:30 by adding I know so that the initial clause reads “but now I know that they may foresee that he will come”; this emendation clears up the difficulties that the earliest reading and its edited readings have posed for readers in deciphering the larger passage; thus the and that Joseph Smith deleted in his editing for the 1837 edition should be restored (“and he will make himself manifest unto all”); in addition, the intrusive and before “that he will come” (which was accidentally inserted in the 1837 edition and later removed from the LDS and RLDS texts) can be ignored.