2 Nephi 4:17 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
my soul grieveth because of mine [iniquity >+ iniquities 1|iniquities ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]

Oliver Cowdery’s correction in 𝓟 of iniquity to iniquities is just like the previous one of mine to my. The y of iniquity is crossed out and the correct ies is supralinearly inserted, with darker and heavier ink flow from a broader or duller quill.

Either the singular or plural will work here in 2 Nephi 4:17. In fact, if we consider all examples in the text of a possessive pronoun preceding iniquity or iniquities, it is very clear that either singular or plural is possible (even though the plural is almost twice as frequent):

my iniquity 0 my iniquities 1
mine iniquity 0 mine iniquities 1
thine iniquity 1 thine iniquities 4
his iniquity 2 his iniquities 4
our iniquity 2 our iniquities 6
your iniquity 5 your iniquities 16
their iniquity 25 their iniquities 30

In all, we have 35 occurrences of the singular and 62 of the plural. There was therefore no grammatical motivation in 2 Nephi 4:17 for Oliver Cowdery to have emended “mine iniquity” to “mine iniquities”. Most probably, his correction in 𝓟 was simply to make the text agree with the reading in 𝓞.

Summary: Maintain in 2 Nephi 4:17 the plural “mine iniquities”, the corrected reading in 𝓟.

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

References