2 Nephi 7:8 Textual Variants

Isaiah 50:8 (King James Bible) let us stand together who is mine adversary let him come near to me

This verse shows Oliver Cowdery’s continuing difficulties in copying from 𝓞 to 𝓟 in 2 Nephi 7. He initially wrote “let him”, then corrected the pronoun him to us. Here Oliver was probably influenced by the following “let him come near me”. Later on in this verse, he initially wrote “let him come near”, then added the me supralinearly.

With respect to the second correction, we note that the King James text has the preposition to after near (“near to me”). It is possible that Oliver Cowdery accidentally dropped this to as he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟. For this portion of the text, the original manuscript is not extant; the lacuna between extant words is so long that one cannot determine from the length of the lacuna whether the small word to was in 𝓞 or not.

Elsewhere the Book of Mormon text has examples of near with and without an additional preposition. Excluding the example here in 2 Nephi 7:8, we have the following statistics:

Correspondingly, we have the following statistics in the King James Bible:

In calculating these statistics, I excluded those cases where the to following near is the adverbial infinitive marker, as in “yea even they were near to be cast with sorrow into a watery grave” (1 Nephi 18:18).

Of course, modern-English readers expect no additional preposition after near. And the Book of Mormon text prefers that usage (at least 27 times), although there are examples of the two archaic usages (with to or unto) in the following nonbiblical passages:

• 1 Nephi 4:7 and as I came near unto the house of Laban
• Mosiah 9:4 which was near to the land of our fathers
• Alma 58:13 which was near to the city
• Helaman 5:25 neither durst they come near unto them
• Helaman 7:10 which tower was also near unto the garden gate
• Ether 15:8 and Shiz also pitched his tents near unto them

The example from Alma 58:13 is particularly germane. As he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote “which was near the city”, then later supralinearly inserted the preposition to. It appears that Oliver probably omitted the to because he was distracted when he wrote “which was near” at the end of the line in 𝓟. Later he supralinearly inserted the to in heavier ink at the beginning of the following line in 𝓟, probably when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞. Although 𝓞 is not extant for this part of the line, there would have been no reason for Oliver to have added the unexpected to in 𝓟 except that the to must have been in 𝓞. This example shows that Oliver could accidentally drop the to from “near to X”. Thus there is some evidence from scribal errors to support an original to in 2 Nephi 7:8.

There are four other places where the Book of Mormon text quotes biblical passages that use near as a preposition. In three of these cases, the Book of Mormon text follows the corresponding King James text with respect to any additional preposition; in fact, for these three biblical quotes, each example represents a different type:

But in the fourth case, the Book of Mormon text adds the preposition unto:

This last example suggests that the Book of Mormon text can indeed vary from the King James text with respect to prepositional usage after near.

Given the mixed evidence for 2 Nephi 7:8, it is probably safest to accept the current reading (“let him come near me”), which follows the earliest textual source (in this instance, the printer’s manuscript). Even though this reading is missing the to of the King James text, there is one other Book of Mormon biblical quote (in 2 Nephi 27:25) that alters the usage with respect to near. Of course, it is possible that Oliver Cowdery dropped the to in 2 Nephi 7:8 since we have evidence that for this part of the text, Oliver was quite tired as he copied from 𝓞 to 𝓟.