2 Nephi 28:1–2 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
wherefore I know that they must surely come to pass [& 1| ABDEFIJLMNOQR|And CGHKPST] the things which shall be written out of the book shall be of great worth unto the children of men

The printer’s manuscript begins verse 2 with an and (written as an ampersand), but the 1830 compositor missed it when he set the type for this verse. The 1840 edition restored the and, perhaps because the sentence seems to need some kind of connector to the previous text. It is possible, but unlikely, that Joseph Smith used the original manuscript to restore the and. For the 1840 edition, Joseph used 𝓞 to restore some longer phrases that had been lost when copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟, but he generally did not use 𝓞 to restore minor changes such as missing and ’s. The 1981 LDS edition also restored the and, perhaps by reference to the printer’s manuscript or the 1840 edition.

Summary: Maintain the sentence-initial and at the beginning of 2 Nephi 28:2; although this and was omitted in the 1830 edition, the current LDS and RLDS texts have both restored it.

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

References