1 Nephi 14:10 Textual Variants

Joseph Smith edited the text here from “there is save it be two churches” to “there are save two churches only”. The singular is seemed incongruous with the following plural (“two churches”), so Joseph changed the is to are and decided that the it be of “save it be” needed to be removed. Although save alone implies ‘only’, Joseph Smith inserted the word only after “two churches”. His editing here conforms with one other example in the text, although in this instance there is no only:

• 2 Nephi 25:18
  • for there is save one Messiah spoken of by the prophets

In this example the singular is maintained because the delayed subject (“one Messiah”) is in the singular.

There is a similar example where Joseph Smith edited is to are but then changed his mind since he apparently decided that none was singular:

• Ether 4:3
  • and there [is >js are >js is 1|is ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] none save it be the Lamanites

In this example Joseph left unchanged the phrase “save it be”, which suggests that he could have edited 1 Nephi 14:10 to read “there are save it be two churches” (and without the only).

The phrase “save it be” is quite frequent throughout the text, occurring at least 45 times (where be is the main verb, not a helping verb). In all these examples, either the it is an expletive or it explicitly refers to a singular noun or nominalization. (There is one other case where the text may have originally read “save it be”. See Helaman 13:18 for discussion.)

Although the original phraseology in 1 Nephi 14:10 is awkward and nonstandard in terms of subject-verb agreement, it is understandable and was undoubtedly intended.