Mosiah 27:4 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
that every man should esteem his neighbor as himself laboring with their own [hand > hands 1|hands ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] for their support

Here scribe 2 of 𝓟 initially wrote “with their own hand for their support”; then almost immediately he corrected the singular hand by inserting inline a plural s at the end of the original hand. There are many instances in the manuscripts of the singular hand and the plural hands being mixed up; see the list under Mosiah 16:1.

Elsewhere in the text there are nine more instances of the phrase “to labor with one’s (own) hands”; all of these take the plural hands, including a nearby example in Mosiah 27:5, the next verse: “yea and all their priests and teachers should labor with their own hands for their support”. None of the nine other examples show any variation in number for hands.

Summary: Accept scribe 2’s virtually immediate correction in 𝓟 of hand to hands; the text is consistent in that only the plural hands is found for the verb phrase “to labor with one’s (own) hand(s)”.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 3

References