Joanne Case (personal communication, 20 December 2003) has suggested that use of the definite article the before angel in Mosiah 27:11 (“the angel of the Lord”) seems strange since this is the first time this angel (or any angel) has appeared to Alma. Case also notes that when this same angel appears to Alma later on in Alma 8, the text then uses the indefinite article an:
The original manuscript is not extant for either passage. One might wonder if the usage shouldn’t be reversed: an in the first case (in Mosiah 27:11) and the in the second case (in Alma 8:14).
A similar kind of variation is found in the Gospel of Matthew in the King James Bible, although the biblical text does not make it clear whether the angel of the Lord is the same angel in the three different dreams:
This biblical usage in Matthew is strikingly similar to the usage in the Book of Mormon in that the first occurrence (as well as the second) refers to “the angel of the Lord” but the last one refers to “an angel of the Lord”. This similarity suggests that there is no need to emend the definite article in Mosiah 27:11 or the indefinite article in Alma 8:14.
In the Greek for the Gospel of Matthew, the biblical text never uses the definite article before angel when the angel of the Lord first appears to Joseph in any given dream. Each of these initial references should therefore be translated as “an angel of the Lord” (which is how they are translated in modern translations such as the Revised Standard Version and the New International Version). But when the angel of the Lord is referred to later within the same dream, then the definite article appears in the Greek and in the modern translations, as also in the King James text:
So the Greek usage is consistent in its choice of the article: there is no article when the angel first appears in a dream, but the definite article does occur for any subsequent reference to the angel in the same dream. (The lack of the article means indefiniteness since in the Greek of the time there was no explicit indefinite article like the English a /an.) On the other hand, the King James translation of the Greek is quite inconsistent in its choice of the article, as is the Book of Mormon text.
As far as the Hebrew of the Old Testament is concerned, David Calabro (personal communication) points out that the Hebrew expression is invariant and should be systematically translated as “the angel of the LORD”. Excluding the book of Judges, the King James Bible consistently reads “the angel of the LORD” (37 times). In Judges, on the other hand, we get variation: 13 cases of the correct “the angel of the LORD” but 6 of “an angel of the LORD”.
Summary: Maintain the mixture of “the angel of the Lord” and “an angel of the Lord” in the Book of Mormon text; such variation is also found in the King James translation: in the New Testament (but not in the original Greek) and in the book of Judges in the Old Testament (but not in the original Hebrew).