evidence-specific-text

Book of Mormon English Studies Papers Sources Donate

Manuscript evidence of a specific, revealed text

Unnecessary manuscript editing of the English usage.

David whitmer claimed that the scribe regularly repeated the dictated text back to Joseph Smith in 1829. For further discussion, see TXT 71 (in the text-critical essay titled “The Witnesses of the Book of Mormon”).

There is substantial evidence in the original manuscript (O) that Joseph Smith was given a specific text and that he understood that his assigned task was to get this text written down, word for word, as accurately as he and his scribe could manage to do.

⬥ ⬥ ⬥

There are fifteen corrections in O meeting two conditions:

the initial reading was perfectly acceptable English usage
there was no need or motivation to change it,
only a perceived need to get the text down correctly
the correction was made with a different level of ink flow
implying that the correction was not an immediate one

The citations of these fifteen corrections are (in dictation order): aa2402, aa2512, aa2912, aa3002, aa3513, aa3811, aa4612, aa4735, aa5012, aa5037, aa5201, aa5836, 1n0219, 1n1740, 2n2516. Skousen discusses these fifteen instances at TXT 72–76.

⬥ ⬥ ⬥

For the last of the fifteen corrections (2n2516), Oliver Cowdery originally wrote:

“and then at that time will the day come that it must needs be expedient
that they should believe these things”

The modal verb will precedes the subject the day.

Later, with somewhat heavier ink flow, Oliver changed this sentence to read:

“and then at that time the day will come that it must needs be expedient
that they should believe these things”

The modal verb will follows the subject the day.

There is no identifiable textual motivation for this shift in word order, since both types of word order are amply represented in the text.

Some think Joseph Smith was trying to project prophetic authority through archaism. [link] This is easily disproven. In this case, this change would not have been made, since it reduced the level of archaism. The originally scribed word order was more archaic. In addition, if this were true, many of the edits Joseph made for the 1837 second edition would not have been made, since they substantially reduced the level of archaism.

One bit of archaism in the above excerpt is the phrase “it must needs be.” The way this phrase is used in the text is an additional indication that Joseph did not word 2n2516. [link]

⬥ ⬥ ⬥