Ross Geddes points out (personal communication, 26 September 2004) that this verse contains two unusual expressions, “to wax strong in years” and “to become for oneself ”. Although 𝓞 is not extant, both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition read identically, so 𝓞 must have read this way (“and began to wax strong in years that they became for themselves”). The first expression must mean something more than simply ‘to grow up’, perhaps something more literalistic and specific like ‘to become large in number of years’. Although the actual phrase “to wax strong in years” is not found on Literature Online , this source has comparable examples from Early Modern English that mean something like ‘to become large in number of X”:
The language in 3 Nephi 7:11 also supports this usage, but with the verb be rather than wax: “they were not so strong in numbers” (that is, ‘they were not so large in number’). These examples argue that the expression “to wax strong in years” in 3 Nephi 1:29 is fully intended.
The expression “to become for oneself ” means something like ‘to become independent’ or ‘to be on one’s own’. Don Brugger (personal communication) has provided the following example of this expression from a 19th-century translation of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy:
Thus there is some evidence for “they became for themselves” here in 3 Nephi 1:29, and it will be retained in the critical text, despite its unusualness.
Robert Baer (personal communication, 5 July 1989) suggested emending “that they became for themselves” to “and they began to act for themselves”. His emendation creates a parallelism with the preceding predicate “and began to wax strong in years”; in fact, he proposes replacing the that with and in order to increase the parallelism. In my mind, the change from an original began to act to become seems rather implausible. If such an error occurred, it must have taken place when Joseph Smith dictated the text to Oliver Cowdery since both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition agree.
In a later communication (20 July 1989), Baer suggested another possible type of emendation for the clause “they became for themselves”: perhaps the original text had an adjective after became that was accidentally lost during the dictation. Here are some possibilities that Baer proposes:
The word accountable actually appears in the Book of Mormon text, and words related to the two other adjectives are used elsewhere in the text in a semantically similar way:
Perhaps accountable would be the most appropriate emendation of this sort here in 3 Nephi 1:19, if one is to be made. Another possibility is to interpret “they became for themselves” as meaning ‘they became accountable for themselves’ but without explicitly stating the adjective accountable.
Summary: Maintain in 3 Nephi 1:29 the agreed reading of both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition, including both of its unusual expressions, “to wax strong in years” and “to become for oneself ”; the former means something like ‘to become large in number of years’ and the second ‘to become independent for oneself ’ or ‘to become accountable for oneself ’.