Ether 1:6 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
he that wrote this [account >+ record 1|record ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] was Ether

Here in the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote account. Later, with heavier ink flow, he crossed out account and supralinearly inserted record. This correction likely occurred when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞. Oliver probably wrote account originally in 𝓟 because of the preceding seven instances of the word account in this opening passage of the book of Ether, including one in the immediately preceding text: “and on this wise do I give the account”. Elsewhere the text has examples of both “writing an account” (three times) and “writing a record” (four times), so either reading is theoretically possible here. The critical text will follow the corrected reading in 𝓟, “he that wrote this record was Ether”.

Summary: Maintain in Ether 1:6 the word record, the corrected reading in 𝓟.

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

References