Symbolism: The path is another universal symbol. Roads represent journeys, changes in both location and status. In Lehi’s dream, the path not only leads beside the fountain, but also to the “large and spacious field, as if it had been a world.” I hypothesize that Nephi added “as if it had been a world,” since he apparently is less comfortable with symbols than Lehi. These are the kinds of details that Lehi would understand but which are more explicit in Nephi’s recounting.
In the vision, the iron rod guides travelers along the path. Its extent and location seem to be more important than its exact form. In Joseph Smith Sr.’s vision which included the same symbolic archetypes, a rope serves the same purpose. (See commentary accompanying 1 Nephi 8:2–3.)
Reference: The language of the “straight [sic] and narrow” path echoes Matthew 7:14. In the 1981 edition of the Book of Mormon, all references to “straight and narrow” were changed to “strait and narrow.” Nevertheless, it is not clear whether Joseph would have understood this phrase in the sense of strait “narrow” or straight “not crooked.” Clearly the two words are homophonous; and it appears that, in the more fluid spelling of the day, the scribes might use either spelling for either meaning.
Skousen notes that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) documents “straight and narrow” in English usage, though the OED also suggests that the underlying source for straight was the biblical strait. There is evidence that other locations in the text depend upon the “not crooked” meaning. For instance, 2 Nephi 9:41 says “behold the way for man is narrow but it lieth in a straight course before him.” This usage led both Royal Skousen and Noel B. Reynolds to suggest: “We think the more recent revisions of six additional Book of Mormon passages (which describe the path as both “straight and narrow”) to read “strait and narrow” may lead readers to misread the intentions of the original Book of Mormon authors.”
The key to understanding this issue is found in the phrases from the Oxford English Dictionary. The phrase “straight and narrow” clearly entered the literary mind of the English world. The biblical “strait” is the more accurate translation of the Greek; the homophony leading to its substitution for the more familiar straight. That easily explains the existence of “straight and narrow” as a known phrase in English usage.
It would appear that this underlying shift witnessed by the OED was also present in the common vocabulary available to Joseph Smith and his scribes. Thus, they too would have the tendency to regularize the phrase to the more common meaning by selecting straight rather than the more archaic strait. While the original phrase depended upon a reference to the New Testament, the actual usage in the Book of Mormon depends upon the substitution of the more regular word and meaning. I therefore both agree and disagree with Reynolds and Skousen when they say that this is a case where returning the text to strait might “misread the intentions of the original Book of Mormon authors.” I think they are correct when they suggest that there was an intent to use straight in the context of “not crooked.” However, I believe that this word demonstrates the intentions of the translator and scribes rather than the original authors. This conflation of reference and new meaning occurs because of an English homophone. Neither the original referent nor the English ambiguity was available to the original authors. Because Skousen holds to a tight theory of translation, he would suggest that the selection of the English words accurately replicated the underlying language. My reading of the translation process suggests that it was a much looser process where the English was free to reference later biblical texts while preserving the meaning of the underlying text. In this case, I think the best explanation for the presence of this particular language is a reference to the New Testament phrase as modified through English practice as recorded in the OED. The conflation of strait and straight that led to the phrase “straight and narrow” continued to inform other passages that relied upon the same language.