1 Nephi 13:37 Textual Variants

In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith simplified the complex structure of the original text in 1 Nephi 13:37 (“yea whoso shall publish peace—that shall publish tidings of great joy— how beautiful upon the mountains shall they be”). Although the replacement of yea with and at the beginning is not marked by Joseph Smith in the printer’s manuscript, this change is clearly related to the other changes (which Joseph Smith did mark in 𝓟).

This passage is a paraphrase of Isaiah 52:7. In the following collation, the words that are exactly the same are in bold. We should especially note that the word order is not the same:

The phrase “tidings of great joy” is closer to the language of Luke 2:10 (“behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people”) than it is to Isaiah’s “good tidings of good”.

Joseph Smith’s editing does not attempt to bring the text closer to its Isaiah source, but instead it represents his attempt to remove what he apparently felt was the awkwardness resulting from having two different relative pronouns (whoso and that) in such close proximity and the virtually immediate repetition of the word publish. Of course, such repetition is found in the Isaiah source, but there the relative pronoun is always the same (namely, that, occurring four times) and the verbs publisheth and bringeth alternate so that the verbs are not immediately repeated.

The critical text will, of course, restore the original text in 1 Nephi 13:37; with a little parenthetical punctuation (such as the use of dashes), the second relative clause is fully understandable. Once more, Joseph Smith’s editing here represents the stylistic kinds of changes he tended to make in the first part of his editing for the 1837 edition.