2 Nephi 13:20 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
the bonnets and the ornaments of [the 1ABDEFIJLMNOPQRST|their CGHK] legs and the headbands and the tablets and the earrings

Isaiah 3:20 (King James Bible) the bonnets and the ornaments of the legs and the headbands and the tablets and the earrings

The 1840 edition introduced their in place of the as the determiner for legs. This change may represent editing on the part of Joseph Smith or possibly a typo. The their is different from the their that appears in the editing of verse 18 (“the bravery of their tinkling ornaments”). Its motivation here in verse 20 seems to be consistent with the their used earlier in verses 16–17, where their is used to assign attribution to body parts:

Here in verse 20, the Hebrew original has only a single word for the phrase “and the ornaments of the legs”. In modern English the word would be translated as “ankle bracelets”. If the their had occurred in the Hebrew, it could have been attributed only to the ornaments themselves (perhaps as “and their ankle bracelets”).

The reading with their continued in the RLDS textual tradition until the 1908 RLDS edition removed it, most probably by reference to the printer’s manuscript. The critical text will maintain the earliest text here, which agrees with the King James reading.

Summary: Maintain the original phrase “and the ornaments of the legs” in 2 Nephi 13:20.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 2

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