Moroni 7:25 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
wherefore by the ministering of angels and by every word which [proceeded > proceded 1|proceeded ABCDEFGHIKLMNOQRT|proceedeth JPS] forth out of the mouth of God men began to exercise faith in Christ and thus by faith they did lay hold upon every good thing and thus it was until the coming of Christ

The 1888 LDS large-print edition and the 1908 RLDS text independently changed the past-tense proceeded to the present-tense proceedeth. The 1888 edition never served as a copytext; thus no subsequent LDS edition has the present-tense form. On the other hand, the RLDS text has continued with the present-tense form.

Clearly, the past-tense form is correct. The verse reads in the past tense and refers to events prior to the coming of Christ (“men began to exercise faith in Christ and thus by faith they did lay hold upon every good thing and thus it was until the coming of Christ”). The introduction of the present-tense form proceedeth was apparently prompted by the present-tense usage in the well-known King James scripture in the New Testament, which derives from the Old Testament:

Summary: Maintain the past-tense proceeded in Moroni 7:25, the reading of the earliest text; the present-tense proceedeth that was introduced into the RLDS text (in 1908) and that also occurred in the 1888 LDS edition apparently derives from the well-known phraseology in Matthew 4:4, “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 6

References