Ether 13:15 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and it came to pass that in that same year [ 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|in RT] which he was cast out from among the people there began to be a great war among the people

As discussed under Helaman 13:22, in the Book of Mormon text the preposition in can be lacking at the head of a relative clause when it is immediately preceded by a prepositional phrase headed by in, not only here in Ether 13:15 but also in two other cases:

In order to deal with the awkwardness of the earliest reading in each of these three cases, the 1920 LDS edition added a preposition before the relative pronoun which, either in (in 2 Nephi 2:22 and Ether 13:15) or with (in Helaman 13:22). For another case of this kind of grammatical editing, see under Ether 11:21, where the preposition by was editorially inserted in a similar situation. Here in Ether 13:15 the critical text will restore the earlier reading without the preposition in before which.

Summary: Remove in Ether 13:15 the textually intrusive preposition in before the relative pronoun which; the earliest text lacks the expected preposition here, but this reading, however awkward, appears to be intentional since such usage can be found elsewhere in the original text.

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

References