1 Nephi 15:11 Textual Variants

The original manuscript (in scribe 2’s hand) reads thing. When Oliver Cowdery initially copied this word, he accidentally wrote things, but he immediately caught his mistake and erased the plural s. But the 1830 compositor set the plural anyway, probably because the text often refers to “the things which” (127 times), although there are also examples of “the thing which” (23 times). The singular reading works perfectly well here since the text is referring to one particular thing the Lord has said (namely, “if ye will not harden your hearts ... surely these things shall be made known unto you”).

There is one other place in the text where the 1830 typesetter made this same mistake:

• Alma 24:24
  • and there were many whose hearts had swollen in them for those of their brethren who had fallen under the sword for they repented of the [thing 1|things ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] which they had done

For further discussion of this second example, see Alma 24:24.

Scribes have frequently caught themselves either adding or dropping the s in the phrase “the thing(s) which”. Besides the example in 1 Nephi 15:11, there are four other examples, with errors occurring in both directions:

• 1 Nephi 14:29 (Oliver Cowdery in 𝓟)
  • and I bear record that I saw the [thing > things 1|things ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] which my father saw
• Jacob 7:14 (Oliver Cowdery in 𝓟)
  • what am I that I should tempt God to shew unto thee a sign in the [things >% thing 1|thing ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] which thou knowest to be true
• Alma 7:17 (scribe 2 of 𝓟)
  • yea concerning the [thing > things 1|things ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] which I have spoken
• Mormon 1:1 (scribe 2 of 𝓟)
  • and now I Mormon make a record of the [thing > things 1|things ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] which I have both seen and heard

In cases where either singular or plural will work, we use the earliest textual sources to determine the correct reading.