Mormon 4:12 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and there never had been so great wickedness among all the children of Lehi nor even among all the house of Israel —according to the words of the Lord— as [were 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ|was RST] among this people

The original text has were here in Mormon 4:12, but the ellipted subject is obviously the singular wickedness, not the nearby plural words (which probably led to the original text having the plural were). The 1920 LDS edition and the 1953 RLDS edition each made the grammatical change to was. The critical text will restore the original were despite its ungrammaticality in standard English. See under subject-verb agreement in volume 3 for examples in the earliest text where subjectverb agreement was based on proximity rather than semantics.

Summary: Restore the original were in Mormon 4:12; although the subject for the verb is the singular wickedness (which occurs considerably earlier in the passage), the nearer plural words led to the use of the plural were in the original text.

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

References