Mosiah 27:13 Textual Variants

Here scribe 2 of 𝓟 initially wrote “save it is the transgressions of my people”—that is, he wrote the plural transgressions. But he immediately corrected the text to the singular transgression by erasing the word-final plural s. In general, the earliest text allows either singular or plural forms for the noun transgression, with 31 of the singular and 13 of the plural. Scribe 2 of 𝓟 tended to accidentally write the plural in place of the singular, as noted in two out of the three other cases where he was required to copy the singular transgression:

• Alma 3:6 (error immediately corrected by erasure)
  • because of their [transgressions >% transgression 1| transgression ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRT|trangression S]
• Alma 9:23 (error corrected later when 𝓟 was proofed by Oliver Cowdery)
  • if they should fall into [𝓢① transgressions > 𝓢② transgression 1| transgression ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]
• Alma 10:19 (no error here in copying)
  • if the time should come that this people should fall into transgression

Elsewhere in the text, we consistently get the singular “transgression of X” when X refers to Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit in the garden (which was a single transgression):

• 2 Nephi 2:21 the transgression of their parents
• Mosiah 3:11 the transgression of Adam
• Alma 30:25 the transgression of a parent

More generally, we normally get the plural transgressions in the phrase “transgression(s) of X”, where X is semantically plural:

• Mosiah 14:8 the transgressions of my people
• Alma 11:40 the transgressions of those who believe on his name
• Alma 34:8 the transgressions of his people

When we expand our search to include “their transgression(s)”, we find that the original text is evenly divided between the singular and plural:

• their transgression
  • Mosiah 7:29, Alma 3:6, Alma 37:42, Helaman 4:26, 3 Nephi 5:12
• their transgressions
  • Enos 1:10, Mosiah 15:9, Mosiah 15:12, Alma 7:13, Alma 9:14

The tendency in the transmission of the text has been to replace the singular with the plural, not only here in Mosiah 27:13 but also in Alma 3:6 and Alma 9:23 by scribe 2 of 𝓟 (see above) as well as once by Oliver Cowdery as he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟:

• Alma 37:42
  • therefore they tarried in the wilderness or did not travel a direct course and were afflicted with hunger and thirst because of their [transgression 0|transgressions 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]

These more general results suggest that we should follow the earliest textual sources in determining whether transgression should be singular or plural when postmodified by a prepositional phrase headed by of.