2 Nephi 9:22 Textual Variants

The question here is whether there should be an and separating great and judgment. All the existing textual sources for 2 Nephi 9:22 have the and, although the original manuscript is not extant here. There are many examples in the text of great conjoined with an adjective, with both conjuncts modifying day. And in all these examples, day refers to a day of judgment (including a day of physical destruction):

Consider, in particular, the example “great and last day”. Here last day acts more as a unit, much like a compound noun, than as an adjective and a noun. In a similar way, the noun judgment modifies day, with the result that judgment day (like last day) acts as a unit. For this reason, the phrase “great and judgment day” parallels “great and last day” and should be retained.

There is another example of this type of conjunctive usage in the original text:

• Helaman 9:10
  • and it came to pass that on the morrow the people did assemble themselves together to mourn and to fast at the burial of the great [& 1|and A| BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] chief judge which had been slain

The 1837 edition deleted the conjunction and in Helaman 9:10, yet even here the original text is like “great and judgment day” and “great and last day”. The adjective chief can occur only in attributive position (as in chief judge), not as a subject complement for judge (thus the impossible “the judge was chief ”). Thus chief judge acts as a compound noun, just like judgment day and last day. For that reason, the original text in Helaman 9:10 is undoubtedly correct, even though it may seem strange to modern readers. (For further discussion, see Helaman 9:10.)