The October ed of the Mormon rag, The Ensign, is a Book of Mormon/Gold-plate special edition.
Among other steaming piles of bovine dung they attempt to answer this tough question:
I have heard that changes have been made to the Book of Mormon since it was first published. What was changed and why?
The answer to this question depends on understanding a little about the Book of Mormon translation and publication process.
1. As Joseph Smith translated the golden plates by the power of God, he dictated the words to a scribe. The scribes occasionally made spelling and grammatical mistakes as they wrote down his words. For example, in 1 Nephi 7:20 the words “were sorrowful” were transcribed as “ware sarraful.” The scribes weren’t uneducated, but spelling hadn’t been standardized at the time.
2. The original handwritten manuscript of the translation was then copied to make a new handwritten manuscript for the printer. At this stage, some spelling and grammatical errors were corrected, and punctuation was added. But some new errors also crept in as words were miscopied.
3. The printer did his best to accurately set the type. However, he occasionally introduced still other errors. For example, in Alma 57:25 he misread the word “joy” and instead typeset “foes.”
4. The Prophet Joseph Smith looked carefully at the first three editions of the Book of Mormon, and he continued to help make refinements and adjustments. But some errors weren’t found until later editions. In 1981 a printer’s error in Alma 16:5 was finally corrected, changing “whether” to “whither”—making it conform to the original manuscript as the Prophet had translated it from the golden plates.
5. Other changes included new chapter and verse breaks and footnotes with cross-references.
So, the original, "white and delightsome," rather than the recent corrected version, "light and delightsome," was what, a trivial mistake from a scribe? An insignificant copying error by the printer? Or an inadvertent oversight when Joseph Smith was reviewing the transcript?
Really, the deception is worse than the problem.
PR 101... admit to just barely enough of the accusation so you can't be accused of lying by denying it, then spin it as you want it to be understood making the accusers look ridiculous for even mentioning it.
(sigh)
~td~
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live." Nisargadatta Maharaj
6. As church theology was still evolving during the 1830s, many doctrinal changes were made, such as references to Jesus being God were changed to Son of God. Also, the phrase white and delightsome was changed to pure and delightsome to reduce the level of racism in the book.
"We have taken up arms in defense of our liberty, our property, our wives, and our children; we are determined to preserve them, or die." - Captain Moroni - 'Address to the Inhabitants of Canada' 1775