Changes to the Book of Mormon
In 1829, Egbert B. Grandin’s staff in Palmyra, New York, began production on printing the Book of Mormon. For first editions of books, printers at the time usually received handwritten manuscripts from authors and supplied editorial changes like punctuation, spelling, and grammar while setting the type. For this project, Joseph Smith’s assistant and scribe, Oliver Cowdery, created a copy of the original manuscript for the typesetter, John Gilbert, to use. This “printer’s manuscript,” like the original, contained very little punctuation and some inconsistencies in spelling. The printer’s manuscript also contained minor discrepancies relative to the original manuscript. In typesetting the book, Gilbert supplied punctuation and paragraph divisions. The first edition of the Book of Mormon had no verse numbering.
Original manuscript page of the Book of Mormon containing the text of 1 Nephi 8:11–27.
Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery prepared a second edition in 1837. Their approach in updating the Book of Mormon resembled how publishers of the Bible at the time improved editions for English readers. Publishers and readers commonly understood that production errors could creep into the typesetting process for any book, so publishers often provided prefaces assuring readers of their efforts to catch and repair any inconsistencies noticed in earlier editions. Over two months in 1837, Joseph and Oliver approached the first edition of the Book of Mormon with similar intentions, introducing over a thousand minor corrections in the second edition as well as a few important clarifications. For instance, they adjusted references about Jesus in 1 Nephi rendered in the manuscripts and 1830 edition as “the mother of God,” “the Eternal Father,” and “the Everlasting God” to “the mother of the Son of God,” “the Son of the Eternal Father,” and “the Son of the everlasting God,” respectively. Joseph and Oliver’s preface stated, “Individuals acquainted with book printing, are aware of the numerous typographical errors which always occur in manuscript editions. [This text] has been carefully re-examined and compared with the original manuscripts, by elder Joseph Smith, Jr. the translator of the book of Mormon, assisted by the present printer, brother O. Cowdery.”
The last edition of the Book of Mormon supervised by Joseph Smith was the third edition published in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1840. The work of the third edition began with Ebenezer Robinson, who used a copy of the second edition with revisions marked in pencil by Joseph Smith. One important change in the third edition corrected the language describing Nephites as a “white and delightsome people” to a “pure and delightsome people.” Because some future editions of the Book of Mormon based their text on the second edition of 1837, uncorrected verbiage persisted until the 1981 edition reverted the text to Joseph Smith’s 1840 correction. Robinson used stereotype plates in preparing the third edition for print. This technology allowed for multiple reprintings, a first for the Book of Mormon. With stereotyped plates in hand, Joseph Smith treated the book as more or less secure for the foreseeable future, and he deposited the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon in a cornerstone of the Nauvoo House in 1841.
Since the third edition in 1840, other editions and dozens of reprintings based on the 1837 and the 1841 European editions introduced minor changes to the Book of Mormon. The 1879 edition prepared by Orson Pratt featured shorter chapters and numbered verses that have remained the standard through all subsequent editions. The 1920 edition prepared by the Scriptures Committee of the Church, a group of five Apostles chaired by George F. Richards, standardized the titles of books (like Third Nephi and Fourth Nephi) within the Book of Mormon, divided the text into a two-column layout, and added chapter summaries and a pronunciation guide.
Despite its many cross-references, the 1920 edition was still typeset separately from English editions of the Bible. In the 1970s, the Scriptures Publication Committee chaired by Elder Thomas S. Monson launched a review of the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price to produce a complete edition of the standard works. The committee consulted the original and printer’s manuscripts and previous editions of the Book of Mormon to identify and track typographical and semantic variants. Some human errors were corrected, like straight having been confused for strait (words with the same sound but with different meanings), and formation in the printer’s manuscript having been typeset as foundation in 1 Nephi 13. The committee also rediscovered and incorporated Joseph Smith’s revisions in the 1840 edition. The 1981 edition introduced a new layout across the standard works and featured updated cross-references, chapter headings, and reference materials.
Both scriptures committees in 1920 and in the 1970s consulted the work of scholars who had examined source texts and printed editions available in their respective times. Such scholarship accelerated in 1988 with the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, eventually headed by Royal Skousen, a professor of linguistics and English language at Brigham Young University. Skousen’s work to identify all changes across Book of Mormon texts, whether editorial or accidental, unearthed scribal patterns in the manuscripts and variants across printed editions, which led to a flowering of scholarship on the text of the Book of Mormon. In 2001, the Joseph Smith Papers Project began collecting and presenting all of Joseph Smith’s surviving papers, including his contributions to the Book of Mormon. The modern archival work and documentary editing practices of this project furthered the study of the Book of Mormon and its history, making available yet more documentation of changes to the Book of Mormon than before.
The physical deterioration of the English printing masters of the 1981 edition prompted urgent production of a new edition. The resulting 2013 edition took the occasion to correct lingering typographical inconsistencies, like standardizing instances of first-born to firstborn in 2 Nephi 2, 4, and 24, and correcting minor typographical errors like becoming as Gods to becoming as gods in Alma 12:31 and the peoples’ to the people’s in Helaman 13:17.
Emerging digital publishing technologies also brought new formats for digital publication. Software offered readers keyword-searching, reference links, and scripture-marking tools, as well as over a hundred language options. In 2022, the Book of Mormon app further enhanced digital functionality, linking the text to multimedia and other digital content and providing instant sharing capabilities.
Related Topics: Printing and Publishing the Book of Mormon