1 Nephi 4:5 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and I caused that they should hide themselves without the [wall 0|walls 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]

In 1 Nephi 4:5, the original manuscript reads “without the wall”. Besides the example here in verse 5, we have two more later on in this chapter:

In the original manuscript, all three of these verses consistently have the singular wall. The first one is in the hand of scribe 2, the second and third in the hand of scribe 3. It is of course possible that the singular wall is the result of accidentally dropping the plural s. For this tendency in scribe 2, see the examples listed under 1 Nephi 3:16. For scribe 3, we have these examples:

In addition, scribe 3’s immediate corrections show the same tendency to accidentally omit the plural s:

But the question is whether the singular wall is an example of this scribal tendency to drop the plural s. All three instances of wall are used to describe where the brothers of Nephi are hiding (“without the wall”). In each case, there is no of prepositional phrase or other modifying phrase after the word wall. The only other passages in the Book of Mormon with the phrase “without the wall(s)” have the plural walls, but both are followed by a modifying prepositional phrase that begins with of:

The same singular/plural difference occurs in the phrase “without the gate(s)”. If postmodification occurs, we have the plural; otherwise, we have the singular:

The consistency of the three cases of “without the wall” in the original manuscript is thus supported by the use of “without the gate” in Mosiah 7:10. Only when postmodified by an of prepositional phrase do we find the plurals “without the walls” and “without the gates”.

Summary: Restore the three occurrences of the original singular “without the wall” in 1 Nephi 4.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 1

References