Moroni 8:16 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
behold I speak with boldness / having authority from God [ for > & 1|and ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] I fear not what man can do for perfect love casteth out all fear

Here in the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote “for I fear not what man can do”. Virtually immediately Oliver corrected the for to and, crossing out the for and supralinearly inserting an ampersand (there is no change in the level of ink flow for the correction). His initial error was probably the result of his anticipating the for that occurs in the next clause (“for perfect love casteth out all fear”). The critical text will maintain the corrected reading in 𝓟 with the and.

Summary: Maintain in Moroni 8:16 the conjunction and that Oliver Cowdery initially miswrote in 𝓟 as for.

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

References