1 Nephi 12:19 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and while the angel [spake 0BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|spoke >js spake 1|spoke A] these words …

Throughout the history of the Book of Mormon text, there has been a minor tendency for the modern English simple past-tense spoke to replace the biblical past-tense spake, but in no case has this tendency towards modernization persisted in the text. In this example, Oliver Cowdery accidentally replaced spake with spoke when he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟; the 1830 typesetter copied the spoke, but Joseph Smith restored the original, archaic spake in his editing for the 1837 edition.

Elsewhere, there have been a couple of manuscript examples where the scribe’s spake could have been interpreted as spoke (since the scribe’s a looked like an o), yet in both of these cases the verb was correctly copied as spake:

In one instance, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote spoke in 𝓟, but then he immediately corrected it to spake:

And in one final case, the 1906 LDS large-print edition set spoke accidentally:

Except for these few fleeting occurrences of spoke, the Book of Mormon text has only spake for the simple past-tense form of the verb speak (with 170 examples of spake in the original text). For further discussion, see past tense in volume 3.

Summary: Maintain the use of spake everywhere in the text; there are no occurrences of spoke in the original text, nor has the occasional intrusion of spoke into the text persisted.

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

References