3 Nephi 29:8 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
yea and ye need not any longer hiss nor spurn nor make game of the Jews nor [𝓢① NULL > 𝓢② of 1|of A| BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] any of the remnant of the house of Israel

In the printer’s manuscript, scribe 2 wrote the text without the repeated of before any (“nor make game of the Jews nor any of the remnant of the house of Israel”), but later Oliver Cowdery, when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞, corrected 𝓟 by inserting the of before the any (“nor make game of the Jews nor of any of the remnant of the house of Israel”). Since the 1830 edition also has the repeated of here, the original manuscript probably did too.

In the 1837 edition, the repeated of was again omitted, perhaps accidentally since either reading is theoretically possible. Also note that Joseph Smith did not remove the repeated of in 𝓟 when he edited the text for the 1837 edition. Nonetheless, one could argue that the repeated of was omitted for stylistic reasons, namely, in an attempt to reduce the frequency of the of in this phrase (“nor of any of the remnant of the house of Israel”). There is one other case of a repeated of involving the conjunction nor, but this one has never been removed from the text:

Of course, there is only one instance of of in “nor of my revelations”, so there would have been less of a need to omit the repeated of. In any event, the original repeated of will be restored in 3 Nephi 29:8 since there is nothing wrong with it and it occurs as the 1830 reading as well as the corrected reading in 𝓟.

Summary: Restore the repeated of in 3 Nephi 29:8 since the earliest textual sources have the of (thus “nor make game of the Jews nor of any of the remnant of the house of Israel”).

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

References