Here the original manuscript reads “the Gospel of the Land”, which is clearly wrong. Orthographically, the n of Land is definitely not an r since scribe 2 of 𝓞 consistently writes his r ’s differently from his n ’s. Oliver Cowdery, when copying from 𝓞 to 𝓟, interpreted the n as an r, probably because Oliver’s own n ’s and r ’s are very similar and are sometimes mixed up. And since scribe 2’s o ’s and a ’s are very similar, Oliver Cowdery readily interpreted Land as Lord.
Yet elsewhere in this passage there are four occurrences of “the gospel of the Lamb” (in verses 26, 29, 32, and 34) but none of “the gospel of the Lord”. In fact, nowhere else in the Book of Mormon do either of these two phrases occur. So this predominance of “the gospel of the Lamb” in 1 Nephi 13 suggests that the occurrence of “the Gospel of the Land” in verse 24 of the original manuscript is a scribal error for “the gospel of the Lamb”.
It is quite easy to see how scribe 2 of 𝓞 might have misinterpreted lamb as land. When Joseph Smith dictated lamb, scribe 2 could well have misheard Joseph’s /læm/ as the phonetically similar /læn/, a common pronunciation of the word land. In normal speech, the final d of land is usually not pronounced when a pause follows or the following word begins with a consonant. Here Joseph, in his dictation, probably paused after having read off “the gospel of the Lamb”. After mishearing the nasal m as a nasal n, scribe 2 could then have readily interpreted the resulting /læn/ as the word land.
This emendation and explanation was first brought to my attention by Zane Kerby, Merilee Knoll, and Rebecca S. Wilson, three students in my fall 1996 class on textual criticism of the Book of Mormon.
Summary: Emend 1 Nephi 13:24 to read “the gospel of the Lamb”, in accord with the four subsequent occurrences of “the gospel of the Lamb” in 1 Nephi 13; scribe 2’s Land is most reasonably a mistake for Lamb, not Lord; Oliver Cowdery interpreted Land as Lord when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟.