In the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially omitted the phrase “the prophets of the Lord”, but virtually immediately he supralinearly inserted it (there is no change in the level of ink flow for the correction). The 1830 edition, on the other hand, reads “the prophets of the land”, but this is undoubtedly an error prompted by the two preceding occurrences of land in the sentence (“unto the land of Zarahemla to the governor of the land”). The 1837 edition restored the reading of the printer’s manuscript, “the prophets of the Lord”. (For an example of the word land that Oliver Cowdery interpreted as Lord, see under 1 Nephi 13:24; in that instance, Land was the reading in the original manuscript but was a mishearing for Lamb.)
Elsewhere the text never refers to “prophet(s) of the land”, only to “prophet(s) of the Lord” (seven times) or to “prophet(s) of God” (three times). The words land and Lord are, of course, visually similar; along with the two preceding occurrences of land, this visual similarity could have played a role in the 1830 typesetter’s misreading of the original manuscript. Perhaps Lord was spelled in 𝓞 with a lowercase l (as lord ), which would have led more easily to the error land. Such a misspelling of Lord as lord is fairly rare on Oliver Cowdery’s part; even so, there are five examples in the manuscripts where Oliver wrote a lowercase lord, of which two were corrected in the manuscripts to Lord. In the following list, I retain the original spellings in the manuscripts:
Summary: In 3 Nephi 6:25 the original manuscript undoubtedly read “the prophets of the Lord” (the reading in 𝓟), not “the prophets of the land” (the 1830 reading); the critical text will maintain the expected reading with Lord.