Mormon 8:14–15 Textual Variants

As discussed under Alma 1:1, there are four places in the text that show variation between no one and none. One case involves editing by Joseph Smith for the 1837 edition, where he changed no one to none (along with the verb form was to were):

• Alma 6:5
  •  one were BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] deprived of the privilege of assembling themselves together to hear the word of God

Interestingly, the three other variants involve scribe 2 of 𝓟. Besides the two here in Mormon 8:14–15, there is one at the beginning of Alma:

• Alma 1:1
  • king Mosiah having gone the way of all the earth having warred a good warfare walking uprightly before God leaving [𝓢① no one >+ 𝓢② none 1|none ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] to reign in his stead

As is argued under Alma 1:1, Oliver Cowdery’s correction of scribe 2’s no one to none appears to be an attempt to follow the copytext (namely, 𝓞), not the result of editing on Oliver’s part.

Here in Mormon 8:14 we apparently have another case where scribe 2 of 𝓟 mixed up no one and none. Once more, Oliver Cowdery corrected the reading in 𝓟. Since the 1830 edition reads no one and Oliver corrected 𝓟 from none to no one, 𝓞 also probably read that way (here both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition are firsthand copies of 𝓞). Note further that scribe 2 of 𝓟 started a new page at this point, which could easily explain why he was unable to correctly remember no one. So we seem to have two fairly clear cases where scribe 2 of 𝓟 mixed up no one and none. On the other hand, we have no explicit evidence for either Oliver Cowdery or the 1830 typesetter mixing up these two words. Scribe 2 of 𝓟 copied only about 15 percent of the Book of Mormon text, yet at least twice he mixed up no one and none. Oliver twice wrote down the majority of the text (in taking down Joseph Smith’s dictation and in copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟). The 1830 compositor, John Gilbert, set the type for nearly all the text.

These two errors by scribe 2 of 𝓟 suggest that in the third case, in Mormon 8:15, scribe 2 is also responsible for the variation. In that case, 𝓟 reads no one, while the 1830 edition reads none. Note that in this case, unlike the two others, Oliver Cowdery did not correct 𝓟 when he proofed that manuscript against 𝓞. One could argue from this that 𝓞 actually read no one. But another possibility is that Oliver accepted no one in verse 15 because of its earlier occurrence in verse 14 (not only in 𝓞 but also in his corrected no one in 𝓟). The editors for the 1908 RLDS edition also accepted no one, the uncorrected reading in 𝓟 for verse 15, perhaps not only because it was the reading in 𝓟 but also because of the correction to no one in verse 14. All in all, the most probable conclusion is that scribe 2 of 𝓟 was the one that tended to mix up no one and none, not Oliver or the 1830 compositor. The critical text will therefore accept the 1830 reading in Mormon 8:15 (“for none can have power to bring it to light”) rather than the reading in 𝓟 (“for no one can have power to bring it to light”).