2 Nephi 14:5 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and upon her assemblies a cloud [of > & 1|and ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] smoke by day

Isaiah 4:5 (King James Bible) and upon her assemblies a cloud and smoke by day

The original manuscript is not extant here. Oliver Cowdery, as he was copying from 𝓞 to 𝓟, initially wrote “a cloud of smoke” since this expression is what we expect in English. Almost immediately Oliver caught his error and crossed out the of and supralinearly inserted the ampersand. The level of ink flow is unchanged for both the crossout and the ampersand. The insert mark itself may have been inserted later (perhaps after redipping the quill) since its ink flow is distinctly heavier. In any event, it seems clear that the original text here read identically to the King James text (“a cloud and smoke”).

Summary: Maintain the corrected reading in 𝓟 for 2 Nephi 14:5 (“a cloud and smoke by day”); the correction appears to be nearly immediate and agrees with the King James reading.

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

References