Ether 13:5 Textual Variants

Here the 1874 RLDS edition made a slight change in the text by dropping the indefinite article a. This appears to have been an accident, but one cannot be sure since there are no other occurrences in the text of “in (a) time of old”. What we do have is “in times of old”—that is, without the a but with the plural times (five times). The fact that the 1874 RLDS edition did not change time to times here in Ether 13:5 indicates that this is probably a typo. The critical text, of course, will follow the earliest reading, “in a time of old”, despite its uniqueness. The 1908 RLDS edition restored the original reading to the RLDS text. In support of this reading, Literature Online

cites the following example of “a time of old” from Early Modern English (original accidentals retained):

• George Daniel (1657)
  • alas, I know Our carefull Sires would tell a Time of old, When all was good;