Citing the “written” text, which appears consistently throughout the 3 Nephi version of this sermon, recognizes that the New World lacked the particular long oral tradition of the Old World to which Jesus referred. Comparisons to the law had to come from the written text. John W. Welch suggests: “Being cut off from most sources of oral or customary Israelite law, the Nephites saw the law primarily as a written body (1 Ne. 4:15–16) and viewed any change in the written law with deep suspicion (Mosiah 29:22–23). The Jews in Jerusalem in Jesus’ day, on the other hand, had an extensive body of oral law to accompany the written Torah, and the oral law was very important in the pre-Talmudic period of Jewish legal history.” Nevertheless, “ye have heard it hath been said by them of old time” may well have been understood by Jesus’s Old World listeners as a reference to the written text, even though it was not explicit.
The next important change is 3 Nephi’s removal of “without a cause.” Even in Matthew, this phrase appears to have been a later insertion, attempting to qualify the natural human reaction of anger. Its removal restores a more accurate structural parallel, improving the understanding of the relationship between anger and murder. The phrase was certainly added to acknowledge and avoid condemning the very human emotion of anger, at times provoked naturally by other’s actions. Nevertheless, the Savior is teaching that any anger, regardless of the provocation, might lead to a soul-harming condition. When human beings become angry, they most frequently get over it quickly. The problem is not in that we might lose our temper, but that it might lead to losing our soul.
Interestingly, while Joseph removed this obvious addition, which attempts to make the absolute prohibition against anger more reasonable, he attempts another kind of reconciliation. “The judgment” becomes “his judgment”—not God’s final judgment, but the more human realm of interpersonal differences and soured relationships. Unfortunately, that change misses the point. It really is danger of God’s judgment of which we should be aware when we indulge in anger; the parallels between the penalties for murder and anger spell out the same potential consequences. (True, “his judgment” may refer to God in the previous verse, but this is a strained reading, since the more obvious referent is the immediately preceding “his brother.”)