Jacob 6:1 Textual Variants

As in the previous example of behold, Oliver Cowdery here supralinearly inserted the word prophet with heavier ink flow. This alteration seems to be a correction based on the original manuscript (which is not extant here). This correction, however, creates an unusual reading. Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon text, there are three distinct ways, besides the common use of X alone, to refer to a prophet X (where X is a name): either “the prophet X”, “X the prophet”, or “this (same) X”:

the prophet X

X the prophet

this (same) X

In the last of these three types, the X can refer to any individual, not just a prophet. But outside of Jacob 6:1, there are no occurrences of “this prophet X”—or even with some other title such as captain, general, chief judge, or governor. Interestingly, in 3 Nephi 3:12, we have a case where the title follows the name as an appositive (“this Lachoneus the governor was a just man”), but the title does not come between this and the name (as in “this governor Lachoneus”).

This contrastive patterning suggests that the original manuscript in Jacob 6:1 actually read “the prophet Zenos”. Such a reading would be consistent with all prior occurrences of “the prophet Zenos” (two by Nephi in 1 Nephi 19 and one by Jacob himself at the beginning of the olive tree allegory in Jacob 5:1). By the time the reader gets to Jacob 6, Zenos is already known, and thus one could argue that there is no need for Jacob to use this when he has already referred to Zenos as “the prophet Zenos” (in Jacob 5:1). Otherwise in the text, the demonstrative this prefaces a name soon after the individual’s name has first been mentioned or in a quote of someone else’s speech where the person’s name would have been new to the speaker and his audience at the time (see, for instance, Alma 10:10, where Amulek refers to Alma, who is already well known to the reader, as “this Alma”).

Now if Oliver Cowdery, when copying “the prophet Zenos” from 𝓞 into 𝓟, accidentally missed the word prophet, he could have initially written “this Zenos” since “the Zenos” would have been impossible. Later, while proofing against the original manuscript, he noticed that the word prophet was missing, so he inserted it but neglected to correct the this to the. In this way, Oliver would have ended up creating a unique reading, “this prophet Zenos”.

In contrast to this argument, the use of “this prophet Zenos”, despite its uniqueness, is not especially difficult here in Jacob 6:1. Jacob has just finished reading the long olive tree allegory, and the this here seems to be used more in the sense of ‘this prophet Zenos that I have just been quoting from’. Even though we may have an error here in Jacob 6:1, the earliest reading is possible. Unique readings do occur in the Book of Mormon text and should not be removed simply because they are unique. Thus the critical text will retain the corrected reading “this prophet Zenos” here in Jacob 6:1.