1 Nephi 7:5 Textual Variants

Scribe 3 of 𝓞 initially wrote hole, then inserted the same word (hole) above the line, so that the text reads “and also his hole hole”. When copying into 𝓟, Oliver Cowdery interpreted this “hole hole” as the word household, which is one possible emendation.

From a semantic viewpoint, all other Book of Mormon instances of household involve a universal quantifier (11 times). There are ten cases in positive clauses where we find either all or whole as the universal quantifier:

In one case, the clause is negative, and there the universal quantifier is implicit:

• Ether 13:22
  • Coriantumr repented not neither his household

In other words, none of Coriantumr’s household repented. If all or whole were added to the negative construction (for instance, “Coriantumr repented not / neither his whole household”), the resulting scope of negation could imply that part of his household actually repented. So in order to semantically obtain the equivalent of a universal quantifier in Ether 13:22, no universal quantifier should be stated.

The example in Alma 22:23 (“his whole household”) suggests that the original phrase in 1 Nephi 7:5 was “and also his whole household”. The similarity in pronunciation for whole and -hold would explain the repetition of hole in the original manuscript (but not the missing house ). When Joseph Smith read off the text for 1 Nephi 7:5, the final d of household may have been left unpronounced, or scribe 3 may simply have misheard it. In any case, scribe 3 ended up writing down hole for -hold. And the first hole, of course, is a homophone for whole.

David Calabro has suggested (personal communication) that scribe 3 may have intended to write house above the line but instead accidentally wrote hole and thus ended up creating a dittography (hole hole). Such an argument could be used in support of Oliver Cowdery’s conjecture (household). However, such a correction is inconsistent with what we know about all the scribal dittographies in both manuscripts. In the extant portions of 𝓞, we have over 50 examples of dittography (including seven by scribe 3), while in 𝓟 there are over 100 examples. Yet all of these dittographies, it turns out, were written inline and never directly in the correction itself. In other words, dittographies tend to occur as a scribe initially writes down the text. But when errors are corrected, dittographies are unlikely simply because the scribe is concentrating on making the correction. Thus there is no independent manuscript evidence to support the proposal that hole hole is a dittography based on the hold in household. Rather, the most reasonable assumption is that scribe 3’s correction was an attempt to provide a second hole, in this case the word whole. Obviously some conjecture for 1 Nephi 7:5 is required since the phrase “hole hole” is impossible. The emendation “whole household” is consistent with usage elsewhere; it also more readily explains why scribe 3 ended up writing “hole hole” in 𝓞.