2 Nephi 1:20 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and he hath said that inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land but inasmuch as ye will not [NULL > keep his commandments > keep my commandments 0|keep my commandments 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] ye shall be cut off from [his > my 0|my 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] presence

Here the originally dictated text in 𝓞 shows a shift from my to his. In the first inasmuch-clause, Lehi directly quotes the words of the Lord, but in the second inasmuch-clause, Lehi shifts to his own words. Oliver Cowdery had some difficulty writing down the second clause. The transcript of 𝓞 shows two levels of correction:

my keep^ commandments my but in as much as ye will not ^ ye shall be cut off frompresance

Initially, Oliver got ahead of himself and wrote the second clause with an ellipsis: “but in as much as ye will not / ye shall be cut off from his presance”. He then corrected what he had just written (the level of ink flow is unchanged) by supralinearly inserting the missing “keep his commandments”. But then somewhat later Oliver apparently realized that in going from the first to the second inasmuch-clause, the text had shifted from first person to third person, so he crossed out both instances of his and supralinearly inserted my, thus making the second clause into a direct quote. The original manuscript here is severely damaged, and it is difficult to determine whether the two supralinear my’s were written with heavier ink flow. (The crossouts of the two his’s do not appear to have been done with particularly heavier ink flow.) The important point here is that Oliver’s initial supralinear correction (“keep his commandments”) would probably never have occurred unless Joseph Smith had actually dictated his both times. In other words, the initial correction implies that the original text for the second clause read “but inasmuch as ye will not keep his commandments / ye shall be cut off from his presence”.

This promise of the Lord’s that by keeping the commandments one would prosper is found throughout the Book of Mormon. Initially, the Lord’s promise is given in a direct quote and is stated positively:

The first time the promise is referred to in 2 Nephi, it is still positively stated but now indirectly:

Later on in 2 Nephi 1, we get the first occurrence of the promise in a negative form. Yet this passage also includes the positive form of the promise. In the earliest form of the text, the initial positive statement of the promise is a direct quote, while the negative statement of the promise is indirect:

It is as if the Lord gave only the positive form of the promise and that the negative form of the promise was formulated by Lehi himself. Yet the next reference to the promise (in 2 Nephi 4) includes both the negative and positive forms, and in this instance both are direct quotes:

Oliver Cowdery’s editing of 2 Nephi 1:20 makes the text conform to the language of 2 Nephi 4:4.

Elsewhere we have five additional passages where the promise occurs in both a positive and a negative form. In two cases, both forms are directly quoted:

In two cases, both forms of the promise are indirectly quoted:

Finally, in one case we get precisely the same construction as the original text in 2 Nephi 1:20— namely, the positive form of the promise is directly quoted and then the negative form of the promise is indirectly quoted:

In fact, in the 1953 RLDS edition for this last example, the two occurrences of the possessive pronoun his were edited to my, just like Oliver Cowdery’s editing of 2 Nephi 1:20. Clearly, there has been a strong tendency to remove the shifting from a direct quote to an indirect one. For further discussion, see Alma 37:13.

To complete this analysis, I list a number of single references to the Lord’s promise to Lehi elsewhere in the text; most are positive and are indirect quotes:

positive and direct:

positive and indirect:

Summary: Restore in 2 Nephi 1:20 the original text that Oliver Cowdery wrote down in the original manuscript (“but inasmuch as ye will not keep his commandments / ye shall be cut off from his presence”); the shift from a direct quote to an indirect one is also found in Alma 37:13.

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

References