3 Nephi 27:14 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross [ 1ABCDEGHKPS|that FIJLMNOQRT] I might draw all men unto me [ 1|; ABCDEFGHIJLMNOQ|: KPS|, RT] that as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father …

There has been some difficulty in this passage with the subordinate conjunction that. First of all, there is a that occurring with after. The that here is not a pronoun, nor has it been interpreted as such; that is, no comma can follow the that (see under Alma 5:5 for examples of the prepositional phrase “after that”). Instead, this particular that represents an archaic Early Modern English construction which Joseph Smith, in his editing for the 1837 edition, almost totally removed from the Book of Mormon text. But from 3 Nephi to the end of the Book of Mormon, Joseph left a few examples of “ that <finite clause>” when he edited the text for the 1837 edition, as in the following nearby instances of unedited after that:

For a brief discussion of this usage, see under 1 Nephi 1:17; for a complete listing, see under subordinate conjunctions in volume 3.

Here in 3 Nephi 27:14, the 1852 LDS edition added an extra subordinate that between the after- clause and the following clause, thus directly conjoining that clause with the earlier that- clause: “and my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross and … that I might draw all men unto me”. What the original text intends here is a parenthetical compound sentence: “and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross / I might draw all men unto me”. This sentence implies something like ‘as a result of having been lifted up upon the cross, I am able to draw all men unto me’. The critical text will remove the secondary that introduced in the 1852 edition.

This compound sentence is then followed by another that- clause, but this one is an adverbial that- clause and the that here means ‘so that’. It is supposed to be conjoined with the first adverbial that- clause near the beginning of the verse:

More modern editions have attempted to show this coordination by replacing the 1830 edition’s semicolon with either a comma (the LDS text) or a colon (the RLDS text). Perhaps this relationship could be shown even better by using dashes or parentheses:

Summary: Restore in 3 Nephi 27:14 the earliest text by removing the intrusive that before the clause “I might draw all men unto me”; the compound sentence “and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross / I might draw all men unto me” is parenthetical and should be set off from the rest of the sentence by dashes or parentheses; in addition, the archaic use of that in the subordinate clause “after that <finite clause>” will be maintained in this sentence.

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

References