Mosiah 1:4 Textual Variants

Oliver Cowdery initially wrote “the commandments of the Lord” here in 𝓟 but soon thereafter crossed out the Lord and supralinearly inserted God (there is no change in the level of ink flow). Elsewhere the text has examples of both “the commandments of the Lord” and “the commandments of God”, with the first dominating in the small plates of Nephi and the second elsewhere in the text. As might be suspected, the scribes sometimes mixed these up. Here I list several examples where the scribe initially made an error as he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟:

• 1 Nephi 3:21 (Oliver Cowdery in 𝓟)
  • that they might be faithful in keeping the commandments of [ 0ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|the Lord > NULL 1] God
• Mosiah 29:11 (Hyrum Smith, scribe 3 of 𝓟)
  • for we will appoint wise men to be judges that will judge this people according to the commandments of [the LorD > NULL 1| ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] God
• Alma 30:3 (Oliver Cowdery in 𝓟)
  • and the people did observe to keep the commandments of [the Lord 0ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|God > the Lord 1]

Errors can occur in both directions, although the stronger tendency has been to write “the commandments of the Lord” (three out of the four cases). The critical text will, in each instance, follow the earliest textual sources in determining whether we have “the commandments of the Lord” or “the commandments of God”.