Mosiah 26:39 Textual Variants

Here the 1888 LDS large-print edition accidentally deleted the repeated preposition to in this conjunctive structure (“to his sins or to the sins which he had committed”). This particular edition was never used as a copytext, and so this typo was never transmitted into any subsequent LDS edition.

There are a number of other examples of “to X or to Y” elsewhere in the text (where X and Y are nouns):

• 1 Nephi 11:25
  • I beheld that the rod of iron which my father had seen was the word of God which led to the fountain of living waters or to the tree of life
• Alma 24:23
  • neither would they turn aside to the right hand or to the left
• Alma 41:4 (omission of the repeated to in the first printing of the 1852 edition)
  • raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom of God or [to 01ABCDEGHIJKLMNOPQRST|NULL > to F] endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil
• Alma 41:5 (omission of the repeated to in copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟) t
  • he one restored to happiness according to his desires of happiness or [to 0| 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] good according to his desires of good
• Alma 54:20
  • and we will wage a war which shall be eternal either to the subjecting the Nephites to our authority or to their eternal extinction

The tendency to eliminate the repeated to is fairly strong, as exemplified by the two instances in Alma 41. For additional discussion, see under conjunctive repetition in volume 3. The critical text will maintain instances of the repeated preposition whenever they are supported by the earliest textual sources.