3 Nephi 7:23 Textual Variants

For the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith here deleted “it came to pass that” in the printer’s manuscript. In his editing for that edition, Joseph removed the phrase “it came to pass” in 48 instances (see the discussion under 1 Nephi 10:17). For a complete list of these deletions, see under COME TO PASS in volume 3. In most cases, Joseph removed “it came to pass” when there was another instance of that phrase close by. Here in 3 Nephi 7:23, however, it appears that he was trying to avoid the repetition of the verb pass in “and it came to pass that thus passed away the thirty and second year also”. There is no nearby occurrence of “it came to pass” that could have motivated the deletion of this one. Yet even if the redundancy of “it came to pass that thus passed away” motivated the change here in 3 Nephi 7:23, Joseph never removed 28 other instances of this kind of redundancy from the text, including none of the following examples:

• Jacob 1:1 for behold it came to pass that fifty and five years had passed away
• Jacob 5:15 and it came to pass that a long time passed away
• 3 Nephi 2:1 and it came to pass that thus passed away the ninety and fifth year also
• 3 Nephi 7:21 and it came to pass that the thirty and first year did pass away
• 3 Nephi 10:9 and it came to pass that thus did the three days pass away

Note that the example in 3 Nephi 2:1 has precisely the same structure as the original reading here in 3 Nephi 7:23. And the example in 3 Nephi 7:21 is close by. Yet only here in 3 Nephi 7:23 did Joseph remove this particular redundancy.

It should also be noted that in the printer’s manuscript, Joseph Smith did not cross out the and at the beginning of “it came to pass”. Thus 𝓟, as corrected by him, reads “& thus passed away the thirty & second year also”. But the 1837 edition ended up omitting the and, perhaps accidentally. Of the 48 instances where “it came to pass” was deleted in the 1837 edition, 46 were preceded by and. In 40 cases, Joseph marked the deletion of “it came to pass” in 𝓟. And for those cases, we get the following statistics for the editing of the preceding and:

consistent editing

• retained in both 𝓟 and the 1837 edition 35 times
  deleted in both 𝓟 and the 1837 edition 1 time (1 Nephi 10:17)
  changed to now in both 𝓟 and the 1837 edition 1 time (Alma 24:21)

inconsistent editing

• deleted in 𝓟 but retained in the 1837 edition 1 time (Mosiah 28:6) 
  changed to and now in 𝓟 but now in the 1837 edition 1 time (Alma 14:5)
  deleted in the 1837 edition but retained in 𝓟 1 time (3 Nephi 7:23)

The inconsistency in the deletion of and for the last three types shows that the variation in the deletion of the and in 𝓟 and the 1837 edition may be unintentional, at least in these instances. In any event, the critical text will restore every original instance of “and it came to pass” whenever it is supported by the reading of the earliest textual sources.