3 Nephi 19:29 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
I pray not for the world but for them which thou hast given [unto 1A| BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] me out of the world

Here in 3 Nephi 19:29, it appears that the typesetter for the 1837 edition accidentally dropped the preposition unto. This kind of error is natural since in the original text we have 21 occurrences of “give me” but only 8 of “give unto me”. The text itself favors the modern-sounding “give me” rather than the archaic reading with the preposition unto. For two other instances in the textual history where unto has been lost from “give unto me”, see under Alma 7:4 and Mormon 3:4 (both of these deal with the phrase “give unto me to know”).

Summary: Restore the preposition unto in 3 Nephi 19:29 (“which thou hast given unto me out of the world”); for each case of “give (unto) me”, we follow the earliest reading.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 6

References