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< Book of Mormon textual changes
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This change was a deliberate editorial change by Joseph Smith to clarify the meaning of the term "white" in the original:
In this edition numerous corrections were made to the text of the 1830 (first) edition to bring it back to the reading in the original and printer's manuscripts. Joseph Smith also made a number of editorial changes to the text, as was his right as the translator of the text.
Joseph probably made this change because he realized that readers were seeing this as a literal issue (i.e., skin color), rather than symbolic (i.e., righteous). The change removed the ambiguity.
Unfortunately, this change went unnoticed in subsequent editions, until the preparation of the 1981 edition. So, the 1981 edition restored a reading that went back to 1837; the change is not (as the critics want to portray it) a "recent" change designed to remove a "racist" original.
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