Mosiah 10:12–13 Textual Variants

Here we have two virtually immediate corrections in 𝓟. Initially, Oliver Cowdery omitted the second while in this passage and wrote the instead of their in the phrase “in the land of their first inheritance”. Almost immediately, Oliver inserted the while and corrected the the to their. The first correction is supralinear; for the second, Oliver inserted the ir inline between the the and the following first. For both corrections, there is no change in the level of ink flow.

With respect to the first correction, the while is not required; the text could have read “they were wronged in the land of their first inheritance”. Thus it is unlikely that the correction in 𝓟 was the result of an attempt to remove a difficult reading. One could claim that the introduction of the while was due to the while in the preceding clause in verse 12: “and they were also wronged while crossing the sea”. But the virtual immediacy of the correction argues for the occurrence of the second while in the original manuscript. The correction was simply the result of making sure 𝓟 followed the reading in 𝓞.

With respect to the second correction in 𝓟, the the before first inheritance seems to be wrong. Elsewhere, every instance of first inheritance is preceded by a possessive modifier:

• 1 Nephi 22:12 the lands of their first inheritance
• Mosiah 9:1 the land of our fathers’ first inheritance
• Alma 22:28 the place of their fathers’ first inheritance
• Alma 54:12 the land of our first inheritance
• Alma 54:13 the lands of our first inheritance
• Ether 7:16 the land of their first inheritance

Although the correction in Mosiah 10:13 of the to their could be due to editing, it seems more reasonable to assume that Oliver was correcting 𝓟 to 𝓞, especially since there is no change in the level of ink flow.