3 Nephi 19:33 Textual Variants

Here scribe 2 wrote dod in 𝓟. The 1830 edition reads did, which is undoubtedly correct. Later, when Joseph Smith edited 𝓟 for the 1837 edition, he corrected the dod to did. Scribe 2’s dod appears to be a scribal slip rather than a misspelling of doed (which is what we might expect a child to say for the past-tense form of the verb do). There are a few cases in the history of the text where the irregular past-tense form has been replaced by a regular form:

• 1 Nephi 20:21 (cleaved in 𝓟 originally and in the 1830 edition)
  • he [claved >+ clave 0|cleaved >js cleav 1|cleaved A| clave BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] the rock also
• Alma 1:11 (pleaded introduced into the LDS text in 1879)
  • he stood before Alma and [ pled 1|plead ABCDEFGHKPS|pleaded IJLMNOQRT] for himself with much boldness
• Alma 23:14 (perhaps dwelled initially in 𝓞)
  • whithersoever they [dweld > dwelt 0|dwel > dwelt 1| dwelt ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]
• Alma 36:18 (catched in 𝓞)
  • now as my mind [caghed >% cached >% cacht 0| caught 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] hold upon this thought …

Here in 3 Nephi 19:33, scribe 2 of 𝓟 seems to have simply written dod because he was used to writing do (note the preceding “do bear record”), not because he was trying to write a rather improbable past-tense doed. It should be noted that scribe 2 made this same scribal slip later on in 3 Nephi:

• 3 Nephi 22:1 (quoting Isaiah 54:1)
  • sing O barren thou that [𝓢① dodst >+ 𝓢② didst 1|didst ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] not bear

In this case, Oliver Cowdery later corrected the impossible dodst to didst when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞.