Lyle Fletcher (personal communication, 22 September 2004) suggests two possible emendations for power upon here: either hold upon or power over. We will consider each of these in turn.
Elsewhere in the text we can find evidence for predicates similar to “have hold (up)on the hearts of X”:
One problem with the proposed emendation of replacing power with hold is that the mix-up of these two distinct words seems rather unlikely (there are, for instance, no examples of such a mix-up in the history of the text). Another problem is that the other examples listed above show additional differences in word choice, either in the use of the verb get rather than have or in the occurrence of great before hold.
The possible mix-up of the prepositions upon and over seems more reasonable (although admittedly there are no examples of such mix-ups in the history of the Book of Mormon text). Elsewhere we can find examples of the expression “to have power over the hearts of X” (where X refers to people), and for these examples the similarity in word choice is closer to the language in Ether 8:26:
In addition, there are 43 more instances of “power over”. On the other hand, there are three instances of “power upon” that refer to the power of God coming upon someone, either negatively or positively:
There are two additional examples of “power upon” in the text, but these are fundamentally different from the case here in Ether 8:26 since they refer to having power in general:
The King James Bible has two examples of “power upon”, but they do not refer to having power over someone:
The King James Bible also has 17 instances that refer to “power over”.
So if an emendation is to be made here in Ether 8:26, the replacement of upon with over seems to be more reasonable than replacing power with hold. Ultimately the question is whether upon is impossible here in Ether 8:26. Based on internal evidence, power over is the expected reading, but the current reading power upon will work here in Ether 8:26, despite its uniqueness when compared with the rest of the Book of Mormon text. And as already noted, we have no textual evidence for mix-ups between upon and over. The critical text will therefore retain the current reading with the preposition upon even though there is a distinct possibility that this is an error for over.
Summary: Maintain the unexpected use of the preposition upon in Ether 8:26 (“that Satan may have no power upon the hearts of the children of men”); usage elsewhere in the text argues that upon is an error for over, but the earliest reading is not impossible.