Ether 12:4 Textual Variants

Greg Wright (personal communication, 26 November 2002) suggests that here either maketh is an error for making or there is an and missing. The second suggestion seems more plausible from the point of view of manuscript errors, especially if the and was written as an ampersand. 𝓞 is not extant for this particular part of the sentence, but an original and in 𝓞 would have been written with an ampersand since Oliver Cowdery was the scribe. Of course, it is also possible that Oliver omitted the and in 𝓞 when he took down Joseph Smith’s dictation. There is some evidence that Oliver occasionally omitted and in 𝓞 and 𝓟, if only momentarily. We have, for instance, the following three cases where he initially omitted the and before a finite verb form:

• Alma 29:13 (omission in 𝓞 before hath)
  • yea and that same God hath called me by a holy calling to preach the word unto this people [NULL >– & 0|& 1|and ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] hath given me much success
• Alma 30:52 (omission in 𝓟 before wrote)
  • and Korihor put forth his hand [& 0|NULL >+ & 1|and ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] wrote saying I know that I am dumb
• Alma 51:33 (omission in 𝓟 before went )
  • Teancum and his servant stole forth [& 0|NULL > & 1|and ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] went out by night

Thus Oliver could have omitted the and in Ether 12:4, either in 𝓞 or in 𝓟.

The basic problem here in Ether 12:4 is that the earliest text has an asyndetic conjoining of predicates within a relative clause. There are no examples of this kind of relative clause construction elsewhere in the text. The reason for this is that without the and one expects an asyndetically attached predicate to apply to some noun phrase that precedes the relative pronoun which or who. Thus it is not surprising that elsewhere in the text, out of 93 instances of conjoined predicates in relative clauses involving which or who, all but one have the coordinating conjunction and between each predicate; for the one other case, the conjunction is but:

• Helaman 5:35
  • now there was one among them who was a Nephite by birth who had once belonged to the church of God but had dissented from them

In particular, and consistently occurs between predicates in relative clauses with multiple conjoined predicates:

• 1 Nephi 12:17
  • and the mists of darkness are the temptations of the devil which blindeth the eyes and hardeneth the hearts of the children of men and leadeth them away into broad roads that they perish and are lost
• 1 Nephi 13:5
  • behold the formation of a church which is most abominable above all other churches which slayeth the saints of God yea and tortureth them and bindeth them down and yoketh them with a yoke of iron and bringeth them down into captivity
• Mosiah 2:20
  • I say unto you my brethren that if you should render all the thanks and praise which your whole souls hath power to possess to that God who hath created you and hath kept and preserved you and hath caused that ye should rejoice and hath granted that ye should live in peace one with another …

If any of the and ’s were omitted from these passages, we would immediately misread the asyndetically conjoined predicate as referring to some noun phrase that precedes the which or who. We should also note that this use of connecting and ’s between conjoined predicates holds for cases of “whose ” and “which ”:

• 1 Nephi 10:12
  • that they should be compared like unto an olive tree whose branches should be broken off and should be scattered upon all the face of the earth
• 2 Nephi 9:16
  • and their torment is a lake of fire and brimstone whose flames ascendeth up forever and ever and hath no end
• Alma 5:24
  • do ye suppose that such an one can have a place to sit down in the kingdom of God with Abraham with Isaac and with Jacob and also all the holy prophets whose garments are cleansed and are spotless pure and white
• Ether 7:9
  • he returned to the city Nehor and gave battle unto his brother Corihor by which means he obtained the kingdom and restored it unto his father Kib

Here in Ether 12:4, since the and is missing before maketh, we immediately think that “maketh an anchor to the souls of men” refers to some noun phrase preceding “which hope cometh of faith”, which is wrong. The asyndetic “maketh an anchor to the souls of men” refers to the noun hope, as is clear from the parallel language in the following New Testament passage:

• Hebrews 6:18–19 (King James Bible)
  • that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us which hope we have as an anchor of the soul

In Ether 12:4, the nearby noun hope is the subject for the finite verb form maketh (thus “which hope … maketh an anchor to the souls of men”). Here the critical text will emend Ether 12:4 to read “which hope cometh of faith and maketh an anchor to the souls of men”, thus making sure that the relative clause correctly reads with two predicates conjoined by and. In this case, it appears that the connecting and was lost during the early transmission of the text.