Volume 4: Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon Part 6: 3 Nephi 19 – Moroni 10

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, the fourth volume in Professor Royal Skousen s ongoing Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, represents the central task of the project: the attempt to recover the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon. Volume 4 considers every significant textual change that has occurred in the English Book of Mormon over the 175 years since Joseph Smith first dictated it to his scribes; it also considers a number of conjectured revisions for specific passages.

Part 6 of volume 4 attempts to recover the original text of the Book of Mormon by identifying variations in the text that have been introduced through scribal, typesetting, and editing errors and inconsistencies. This last part of volume 4 of the critical text completes the basic textual analysis of the Book of Mormon. There is also an addenda section at the end of this part (covering almost 100 pages) that treats a number of additional conjectures to the text and, in a few cases, revises the analysis for several items already discussed in volume 4. With the completion of part 6, it is possible to reconstruct the historical text of the Book of Mormon that is, the earliest text, including conjectural changes based on evidence from usage and scribal practice elsewhere in the text.