3 Nephi 27:32 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
for they will sell me for silver and for gold and for that moth doth corrupt 1* and for that moth which doth corrupt 1c and for that which moth doth corrupt ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST and which thieves can break through and steal

Here scribe 2 of 𝓟 seems to have omitted the relative pronoun which when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟. Oliver Cowdery later supplied it when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞, but Oliver placed it in the wrong place, after moth rather than before it. The 1830 reading is clearly correct, especially when we compare the phraseology of that reading with the corresponding language of the King James Bible:

The persistent parallelism of the two passages argues that which needs to come before moth in the Book of Mormon passage (here I give the 1830 reading for 3 Nephi 27:32):

The critical text will therefore follow the 1830 reading, not Oliver’s corrected reading in 𝓟. And to be sure, the meaning supports the 1830 reading. No one would sell anything or anyone, much less the Lord, for “that moth which doth corrupt”. For further discussion of the possibility of omitting which after that, see under Mosiah 8:13.

Summary: Maintain in 3 Nephi 27:32 the 1830 reading, where which precedes moth; parallelism with the biblical language, as well as the intended meaning, supports the 1830 reading, not the impossible reading in 𝓟 (whether corrected or not).

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

References