1 Nephi 15:5 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
for I considered that mine afflictions [was >+ were 0|were 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] great above all because of the destruction of my people

Here scribe 2 of 𝓞 originally wrote “mine afflictions was”, then later in considerably heavier ink flow overwrote the as portion of was with ere, thus making the verb agree grammatically with the plural subject. This change was definitely not immediate and suggests later editing on the part of scribe 2.

Elsewhere the plural afflictions takes was rather than were in the earliest text:

In all three of these cases, Joseph Smith made the grammatical change of was to were in his editing for the 1837 edition. Thus all the other examples in the earliest text support the original reading of “mine afflictions was” in 1 Nephi 15:5.

Another possibility for 1 Nephi 15:5 is that the plural afflictions is an early error for the singular affliction—that is, “mine affliction was great above all”. One could argue for the same possibility in the other three examples. The problem with this argument is that in three of the four cases, nearby sentences also use the plural afflictions:

In each of these examples, the reference is to the same afflictions.

Summary: Based on the earliest textual sources, we accept the plural afflictions with the singular was in 1 Nephi 15:5, Mosiah 21:5, Mosiah 24:10, and Alma 4:3.

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

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