Jacob 1:4 Textual Variants

The plural heads here in Jacob 1:4 seems strange to today’s English readers, although it is not difficult from the context to guess that it means something like ‘the main points’. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the meaning ‘one of the chief points of a discourse’ for the noun head (under definition 27) and gives the following citations with the plural heads (here cited with original accidentals):

• J. Lee (1632)
  • The Contents or principall heads handled in this whole Discourse.
• Connop Thirlwall (1838)
  • The accusation comprised several heads.
• Benjamin Jowett (1875)
  • The heads of our yesterday’s discussion.

A related meaning for head under this same definition 27 is ‘category’. A common use is the expression “under this head”, as in the following OED citation:

• Thomas Macaulay (1849)
  • The expenditure under this head must have been small indeed.

The same meaning of ‘category’ for head is found in the Book of Mormon, and in each case the verb call is used to specify the category:

• Mosiah 5:7–8
  • and now because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ his sons and his daughters for behold this day he hath spiritually begotten you for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name therefore ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters and under this head ye are made free and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free
• Alma 3:10
  • therefore whomsoever suffered himself to be led away by the Lamanites were called under that head and there was a mark set upon him

In the first instance, the category is “the children of Christ”; in the second, it is “the Lamanites”. The critical text will maintain these unusual uses of the word head. The printed editions have also maintained these instances of head, despite their difficulty for modern readers.