3 Nephi 24:13 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
your words have been stout against me saith [ 1|the ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] Lord

Malachi 3:13 (King James Bible) your words have been stout against me saith the LORD

Here we have an obvious loss of the before Lord in 𝓟. Undoubtedly, 𝓞 read “saith the Lord” and scribe 2 of 𝓟 accidentally omitted the definite article here. The 1830 edition and the King James text have the expected the. There is some evidence that scribe 2 tended to omit the. Here are two other cases in this part of the text where it appears that scribe 2 of 𝓟 omitted the definite article:

In these two cases, however, the reading in 𝓟 is theoretically possible. See under each passage for the evidence that scribe 2 of 𝓟, not the 1830 typesetter, is responsible for the textual variation (that is, scribe 2 omitted the the, just as he obviously did here in 3 Nephi 24:13).

Summary: Maintain in 3 Nephi 24:13 the expected the in the phrase “saith the Lord”.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 6

References