2 Nephi 30:17 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
there is nothing which is secret save it shall be revealed there is no [works 1ABCDEG|work FHIJKLMNOPQRST] of darkness save it shall be made manifest in the light and there is nothing which is sealed upon earth save it shall be loosed

Parallelism in this passage suggests that the original text probably read “work of darkness” rather than “works of darkness”. Both the preceding and following sentences consistently use the singular (“there is nothing which is secret save it shall be revealed … and there is nothing which is sealed upon earth save it shall be loosed”. Even more significant, “there is no work(s) of darkness” is immediately followed by the same singular pronoun it (“save it shall be made manifest in the light”), which argues for the singular work.

Scribes typically had problems adding and deleting the plural s, but all manuscript instances involving work(s) show that for this lexical item the tendency was to accidentally drop the plural s from works rather than add it to the singular work:

Since there are no manuscript examples of an original work being incorrectly replaced by works, there is some question here of whether the plural “there is no works of darkness” in 2 Nephi 30:17 is actually a scribal error. (See 1 Nephi 15:33, Alma 12:14, and 3 Nephi 21:5 for discussion of the more complicated cases listed above.)

In addition, the original text had examples of “there be verb> no ”, as in the following four examples involving was:

In each of these cases, Joseph Smith edited the singular was to the plural were. These examples show that the earliest reading in 2 Nephi 30:17 is therefore possible: “there is no works of darkness”. Even so, the following singular it does seem very odd (“there is no works of darkness save it shall be made manifest in the light”). Thus the 1852 LDS edition and the 1874 RLDS edition replaced the plural works with the singular work (rather than attempting to make the whole sentence plural: “there are no works of darkness save they shall be made manifest in the light”).

The anomalous works here in 2 Nephi 30:17 may simply be the result of an early error in the transmission of the text, especially given the dominance of the plural “works of darkness” elsewhere in the text:

Note, in particular, the three occurrences of the plural “works of darkness” earlier in 2 Nephi 25–26. In fact, the only occurrence of “work of darkness” (in Helaman 6:29) may be an error for “works of darkness” since preceding and following verses have the plural:

In fact, the third instance closely parallels the second:

to still carry on the work of darkness and of secret murder
he doth carry on his works of darkness and secret murder

For further discussion of this example, see Helaman 6:29.

Summary: Maintain the emended singular in 2 Nephi 30:17: “there is no work of darkness save it shall be made manifest in the light”; parallelism with the other sentences in this verse argues for the singular; the probable source for the plural works (the earliest text here) is the dominance of the plural “works of darkness” elsewhere in the text, including three times in 2 Nephi 25–26.

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

References