Moroni 9:10 Textual Variants

Here the 1905 LDS edition accidentally added the definite article the before wild beasts. This reading was followed by the 1907 LDS vest-pocket edition (apparently by reference to the 1905 edition) and by the 1911 LDS edition (which used a later printing of the 1905 edition for its copytext). The 1920 LDS edition restored the correct reading without the the to the LDS text.

Normally, the Book of Mormon text has simply wild beasts without the article the (13 times, including this one in Moroni 9:10). But in three passages, we have the wild beasts. One of those cases is in a quotation from the King James Bible, which also contains one of the instances of wild beasts without the the:

• 2 Nephi 23:21–22 (Isaiah 13:21–22)
  • but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures and owls shall dwell there and satyrs shall dance there and the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses and dragons in their pleasant palaces

David Calabro points out (personal communication) that in the Hebrew original there is no definite article for either case of wild beasts; in fact, the Hebrew word translated as wild beast differs for these two instances of wild beasts (although the two nouns are phonetically similar). Perhaps the King James translators allowed the definite article the for the second case because in the English translation there was a preceding instance of the same noun phrase, wild beasts.

For another instance of the wild beasts in the Book of Mormon (but not in a biblical quotation), there is a preceding wild beasts:

• 4 Nephi 1:33
  • and they also cast them into dens of wild beasts and they did play with the wild beasts even as a child with a lamb

In this case one could argue that the the before the second wild beasts is necessary because of the immediately preceding instance of wild beasts; in other words, the text has already brought up the topic of wild beasts.

And finally, in one passage we get the wild beasts without any preceding reference to the specific phrase wild beasts:

• Mosiah 12:2
  • and the vultures of the air and the dogs
    — yea and the wild beasts— shall devour their flesh

Even so, the definite article is used with the wild animals listed as scavengers in the preceding text: “the vultures of the air and the dogs”; thus the text has the with the following wild beasts.

Textually, we expect Moroni 9:10 to lack the definite article the before wild beasts. Here the critical text will maintain the earliest reading without the the.