1 Nephi 17:1 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and it came to pass that we did again take our journey in the wilderness and we did travel nearly eastward from that time forth and we did travel and wade through much affliction in the wilderness and our women [bare 01|did bear ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] children in the wilderness

The 1830 typesetter added the auxiliary verb do, undoubtedly because of the extensive use of the paraphrastic do earlier in the verse (“we did again take our journey … and we did travel ... and we did travel”). The original bare is, of course, perfectly acceptable. There are, for instance, other well-supported instances of the simple past-tense bare in the Book of Mormon text, including the following three involving quotations from Isaiah:

There are other examples in the transmission of the text where the auxiliary verb do has been accidentally added; in the following two instances, Oliver Cowdery added the do as he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟:

(See the discussion under these two passages.) Here in 1 Nephi 17:1, there is no reason why the original bare should not be restored.

Summary: Replace did bear in 1 Nephi 17:1 with bare, the reading of the two manuscripts.

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

References