1 Nephi 18:11 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and it came to pass that Laman and Lemuel did take me and bind me with cords and they did treat me with much harshness nevertheless the Lord suffered it that he might shew forth his power unto the fulfilling of his word which he [hath 0|hath >js had 1|hath A|had BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] spoken concerning the wicked

The actual reading of the original manuscript here is not obvious: the th at the end of hath could also be interpreted as a d. However, for all other examples of the word had on this page of the original manuscript (page 37 of 𝓞, with 12 occurrences of had ), the d looks consistently different than the supposed d of this single occurrence of hath. Therefore, it seems reasonable to interpret the word in this verse as hath rather than had. When Oliver Cowdery copied this word from 𝓞 into 𝓟, he was copying his own hand, and he correctly interpreted the word as hath and wrote that in 𝓟. But Joseph Smith changed hath to had in his editing for the 1837 edition. Undoubtedly, Joseph was influenced by the abundant use of the past-tense form throughout this narrative of Nephi’s, in particular the specific reference earlier in this verse to Laman and Lemuel tying up Nephi: “Laman and Lemuel did take me and bind me with cords and they did treat me with much harshness nevertheless the Lord suffered it”.

The original text here in 1 Nephi 18:11 suggests that what the Lord has spoken concerning the wicked is eternally true, so the present tense hath is perfectly acceptable, even if it is found in a narrative that frequently uses the past tense. We do find cases of “the Lord had spoken” elsewhere in the Book of Mormon, but in each of these instances the reference is to some specific statement of the Lord’s found earlier in the narrative:

On the other hand, whenever the text refers to the eternal judgment of the Lord, we have the present perfect “hath spoken”. Besides the example here in 1 Nephi 8:11, we have these examples:

Thus the use of hath in 1 Nephi 18:11 is precisely correct.

Summary: Restore in 1 Nephi 18:11 the present-tense reading of the original manuscript (“unto the fulfilling of his word which he hath spoken concerning the wicked”).

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

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