Moroni 10:4 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart with real intent / having faith in Christ [& 1|and A| BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] he will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of the Holy Ghost

Here we have the final example in the text of an original Hebrew-like if-and construction. Such constructions are, of course, ungrammatical in English; thus the and was removed in the 1837 edition. We have already noted many examples of this kind of construction elsewhere in the text. For another example involving an if- clause, see nearby under Ether 14:1. For a general discussion, see under hebraisms in volume 3.

Summary: Restore in Moroni 10:4 the original Hebraistic and that separated the if- clause from its following main clause; such usage was fairly common in the original text of the Book of Mormon.

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

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