3 Nephi 26:15 Textual Variants

The printer’s manuscript has “of the blind” here in 3 Nephi 26:15, but the 1830 edition reads “of their blind”. (It should also be noted that the 1906 LDS edition replaced the their of the earlier printed editions with the, but this change was not passed on to subsequent LDS editions since the 1906 edition never served as a copytext.) The the in 𝓟 could have come from the following “of the deaf ”, or the their in the 1830 edition could have come from the preceding “all their sick and their lame”. It is more probable that the latter happened since the their would have been already stated twice when the 1830 compositor came to setting “of the(ir) blind”. In addition, in this passage the pairwise syntactic parallelism of the conjuncts argues for the the:

• 3 Nephi 26:15 (the reading in 𝓟) after having healed all their sick and their lame and opened the eyes of the blind and unstopped the ears of the deaf

It should also be noted that it is improbable that the original passage had their all four times since in the last line (“and unstopped the ears of the deaf”) we have the before deaf in both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition.

Elsewhere in the text, when we get conjoined examples of sick, lame, blind, and deaf, we always get complete agreement (either all with the or all with their):

• 2 Nephi 9:31–32
  • and woe unto the deaf that will not hear for they shall perish woe unto the blind that will not see for they shall perish also
• 2 Nephi 27:29 (quoting Isaiah 29:18 from the King James Bible)
  • and in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness
• Mosiah 3:5
  • such as healing the sick raising the dead causing the lame to walk the blind to receive their sight and the deaf to hear
• 3 Nephi 17:9
  • all the multitude with one accord did go forth with their sick and their afflicted and their lame and with their blind and with their dumb
• 4 Nephi 1:5
  • insomuch that they did heal the sick and raise the dead and cause the lame to walk and the blind to receive their sight and the deaf to hear

These examples do not provide direct evidence for determining the original text in the mixed situation of 3 Nephi 26:15, but it is worth noting that syntactic parallelism is always maintained.

Here in 3 Nephi 26:15, evidence from scribal transmission is not too helpful. There are no clear examples where scribe 2 of 𝓟 ever wrote the in place of their, not even momentarily (although there are three clear cases where he momentarily wrote their in place of the). Conversely, there are no clear examples where the 1830 compositor accidentally replaced the with their (although in Alma 27:23 he appears to have consciously replaced an earlier the with their). On the other hand, there are three cases where he replaced their with the, but this is the opposite of what we need here in 3 Nephi 26:15. We are therefore required to rely on the strong parallelism of 3 Nephi 26:15 as well as the preceding occurrence of the two their’s to argue that the original text first had a pair of their’s and then a pair of the’s. The critical text will therefore adopt the reading in 𝓟, “and opened the eyes of the blind”.