Mosiah 14:3 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and we hid as it were our [ faces 1AT|face BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS] from him

Isaiah 53:3 (King James Bible) and we hid as it were our faces from him

The earliest Book of Mormon source for this passage, the printer’s manuscript, has the plural faces, which agrees with the King James translation in Isaiah 53:3. This plural reading was changed to the singular in the 1837 edition, perhaps accidentally since the use of the plural faces is perfectly acceptable; note also that Joseph Smith did not mark this change in the printer’s manuscript. The 1981 LDS edition restored the plural, but the RLDS text has kept the singular face despite the fact that the printer’s manuscript reads in the plural. For additional discussion regarding textual variation for face and faces in Isaiah quotations, see under 2 Nephi 6:7 and 2 Nephi 26:20.

Summary: Maintain in Mosiah 14:3 the original plural faces in “and we hid as it were our faces from him”; the plural faces is also found in the corresponding King James reading for Isaiah 53:3.

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

References