Ether 9:2 Textual Variants

As noted under Alma 22:22–23, corrective or ’s are frequently found in the Book of Mormon text. The one here in Ether 9:2 is apparently the only one that corrects an incomplete statement or a syntactic error, presumably one that occurred on the plates themselves (as with other corrective or’s in the text). In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith eliminated the original or- correction by deleting “which were not or”, although initially he thought to keep it and simply replace the which with who. This is also the only corrective or that has been edited out of the text, perhaps because it involves a false start that was left incomplete. Otherwise the most difficult cases of corrective or have been retained in the Book of Mormon text, as in the following examples involving lexical choice:

• Alma 24:19
  • and thus we see that they buried the weapons of peace or they buried the weapons of war for peace
• Alma 35:15
  • and having been to declare the word or sent to declare the word among all the people in every city

These corrective or ’s do not appear to represent corrections of errors introduced by Joseph Smith himself in his dictation, mainly because those kind of errors are directly corrected by the scribe in the manuscript. (For an example of such a direct correction, see the discussion under Alma 36:4.) The critical text will restore the original corrective or here in Ether 9:2, especially since all other corrective or ’s in the text have been maintained.

One could argue that here in Ether 9:2 Joseph Smith initially dictated “which were not”, which was incorrect. In his attempt to correct his mistake, Joseph said or, then dictated the correct phraseology, “which did not seek his destruction”. Oliver Cowdery, the scribe here in 𝓞, did not recognize Joseph’s extra or as an attempt to tell him, Oliver, to cross out the preceding “which were not”; thus 𝓞 ended up reading “which were not or which did not seek his destruction”. Ultimately, however, there is evidence from witnesses of the translation as well as corrections within 𝓞 itself that Oliver would have read the completed text back to Joseph before going on. If so, this extracanonical or and the preceding “which were not” should have been crossed out in 𝓞 and never transmitted into 𝓟. This issue of reading the text back will be fully discussed in volume 3 of the critical text. For some preliminary discussion, see pages 82–84 of Royal Skousen, “Translating the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript”, in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, edited by Noel B. Reynolds (Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1997), 61–93.