4 Nephi 1:33 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and they also cast them into dens of wild beasts and they did play with [the 1ABCDEFGIJKLMNOPQRST| H] wild beasts even as a child with a lamb

In this verse the typesetter for the 1874 RLDS edition accidentally omitted the definite article the from before the second occurrence of wild beasts, probably because the first occurrence lacks the the. The first occurrence, of course, introduces the noun phrase to the passage, so the use of the definite article with the following occurrence of wild beasts is what we expect in English. In this instance, the subsequent RLDS text (1892) restored the the, which is unusual for that edition; the 1892 edition rarely departs from the 1874 edition, its copytext, and then usually by accident.

Summary: Maintain the definite article the before the second occurrence of wild beasts in 4 Nephi 1:33; the first occurrence of wild beasts lacks the the because it introduces this phrase to the passage.

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

References