2 Nephi 5:12 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and I Nephi had also brought the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass and also the ball or [the 0| 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] compass which was prepared for my father by the hand of the Lord

The repeated the in the conjunctive noun phrase “the ball or the compass” was accidentally removed by Oliver Cowdery when he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟. Virtually everywhere else Oliver faithfully copied such repeated the’s from 𝓞 into 𝓟. This kind of repetition is characteristic of the Book of Mormon text and could be considered a Hebraism when the determiner is the definite article the. English typically avoids such repetition. For further discussion, see conjunctive repetition in volume 3.

Summary: Restore in 2 Nephi 5:12 the reading of 𝓞, which has the repeated the in the conjunctive phrase “the ball or the compass”.

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

References