Mormon 8:37 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
for behold ye do love money and your [𝓢① substances > 𝓢② substance 1|substances ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOQ|substance PRST] and your fine apparel

Here both scribe 2 of 𝓟 and the 1830 typesetter copied the word from 𝓞 as substances, in the plural. Later Oliver Cowdery, when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞, corrected the plural in 𝓟 to the singular by crossing out the plural s. This was probably editing on his part. He seems to have written down substances in 𝓞, then later decided to correct it in 𝓟. The plural s was removed from the RLDS text in 1908, from the LDS text in 1920.

Elsewhere in the text, as one might suspect, there are only singular occurrences of substance (26 times). The word always acts as a mass noun rather than a count noun, as in these examples involving lists of possessions (like Mormon 8:37):

In the last example, the 1892 RLDS edition has the plural substances, thus showing that this error can occur (for a brief discussion, see under 4 Nephi 1:25).

Oliver Cowdery frequently added and deleted plural s’s in taking down Joseph Smith’s dictation. In the following examples in 𝓞, he initially added the plural s to nouns where the context does not permit the plural:

Note, in particular, the case of the mass noun apparel in Alma 31:28, which Oliver initially wrote down as a plural count noun. So it is quite possible that in Mormon 8:37 he accidentally added the plural s to the mass noun substance as he took down Joseph’s dictation. Although the plural substances is not totally impossible, it is highly unlikely. The critical text will therefore accept the modern-day LDS and RLDS emendations of the plural to the singular substance here in Mormon 8:37.

Summary: Retain the singular substance in Mormon 8:37, the reading in both the current LDS and RLDS texts; the Book of Mormon otherwise uses substance only as a mass noun (that is, in the singular); the plural usage seems implausible.

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

References