Here the original manuscript has “they was”, an obvious dialectal form. The was was copied as such into the printer’s manuscript, but the 1830 typesetter changed it (perhaps unintentionally) to the standard “they were”. In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith marked the grammatical emendation in the printer’s manuscript, even though the 1830 edition had already made the change. (Very frequently, Joseph altered the printer’s manuscript to agree with the 1830 edition. In a few cases, Joseph’s editing actually perpetuated textual mistakes that had been made by the 1830 compositor.)
The question here is whether the original text actually read “they was”. As in the case of drownded in verse 2, it is possible that “they was” resulted from the scribe writing down his own dialectal language rather than what Joseph Smith actually dictated. Or Joseph himself might have accidentally read off his own dialectal form rather than what he actually saw by means of the interpreters or the seer stone.
Elsewhere in the text, we find five other examples (in the earliest textual sources) of was being used with a plural subject pronoun. In his editing for the 1837 and 1840 editions, Joseph Smith ended up changing these examples to read were in place of the earlier was:
The last passage shows variation, with two examples of the dialectal “they was” and one of the standard “they were”.
This use of was instead of were is definitely in the minority in the text. For instance, in the current LDS text there are 632 occurrences of “they were”, 36 of “we were”, and 22 of “ye were”. The vast majority of these exhibit were in the earliest textual sources; only a handful have was. So perhaps each example of was could be due to dialectal overlay (so to speak), from either Joseph Smith or his scribes. In support of this possibility, we have a number of similar examples involving they in the manuscripts where the scribe initially wrote the dialectal “they was”, but then corrected the text to “they were”. Except for the first of the following examples, where the ink flow is weaker, these scribal corrections seem to be immediate. And the last three of these corrections are found in the original manuscript:
In all of these examples, the scribe is Oliver Cowdery. Obviously, Oliver himself tended to write the dialectal was instead of the standard were. So there is a distinct possibility that the scribes themselves were responsible for the few examples of “they was”, “we was”, and “ye was” in the earliest textual sources.
In opposition to this argument from scribal errors, we have abundant evidence in the original text that the dialectal was frequently had a plural subject in other contexts:
subject noun phrase in the plural
subject noun phrase in the plural postmodified by a prepositional phrase having a singular noun
a subject noun phrase composed of conjoined singular nouns
in relative clauses with a plural antecedent
after an existential there, with a delayed plural subject
after a clause-initial adverbial phrase or adjective, with inverted subject-verb order
in negative contexts, with a delayed plural subject
in a conjoined predicate with a plural subject
Notice in this last example the use of were when immediately preceded by the plural pronoun they (“they were surrounded”), but the repeated use of was at the head of each of the following conjoined predicates.
Finally, we also have evidence in the original manuscript that the scribe sometimes corrected the standard were to the dialectal was:
Here Oliver Cowdery initially wrote the standard “there were sent two thousand men”, but immediately corrected the were to the dialectal was (there is no change in the level of ink flow). This correction suggests that Oliver was correcting to Joseph Smith’s dictation. Here the use of the dialectal was appears to be intentional.
In all, there are over two hundred examples of the dialectal was being used with a plural subject in the original text. (For a more complete discussion, see subject-verb agreement in volume 3.) Although the occurrence of was right after a plural pronoun (they, we, and ye) is fairly rare, these instances are consistent with the many other occurrences of was with a plural subject. For this reason, the safest tack to take in determining the original text is to follow the earliest textual sources in determining whether any particular verb form should be the dialectal was or the standard were. By following such a procedure, we avoid the temptation of trying to assign every dialectal form to transmission error. In the case of “they was”, the number of occurrences is relatively rare, while at the same time there is an obvious tendency for scribes to accidentally write “they was”. But such evidence is not found for any of the other cases of nonstandard use of was.
There are just too many other examples of was with a plural subject to assume that they are all due to dialectal influence on the transmission of the text. For this reason we should conservatively retain even those few cases of “they was” (and “we was” and “ye was”) that seem so outrageous to our modern standards of English usage.
Summary: Follow the earlier textual sources in order to determine whether the original text read was or were with plural subjects.