Alma 2:15 Textual Variants

The 1837 edition omitted the adverbial up that precedes the related preposition upon in the original text. This deletion was probably accidental since most other occurrences of up upon have been retained in the current LDS and RLDS texts:

• 1 Nephi 11:33 he was lifted up upon the cross
• 2 Nephi 18:7 the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river
• Mosiah 10:8 they came up upon the north of the land of Shilom
• Alma 16:11 their dead bodies were heaped up upon the face of the earth
• Helaman 3:9 whatsoever tree should spring up upon the face of the land
• Helaman 14:11 for this intent I have come up upon the walls of this city
• 3 Nephi 3:20 let us go up upon the mountains
• 3 Nephi 8:10 the earth was carried up upon the city of Moronihah
• 3 Nephi 8:18 they were broken up upon the face of the whole earth
• 3 Nephi 20:17 thy hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries
• 3 Nephi 21:13 their hand shall be lifted up upon their adversaries
• 3 Nephi 27:14 that I might be lifted up upon the cross
• 3 Nephi 27:14 after that I had been lifted up upon the cross
• Mormon 2:15 and heaped up as dung upon the face of the land
• Ether 4:1 until after that he should be lifted up upon the cross
• Ether 13:6 a new Jerusalem should be built up upon this land

In three other cases, the up of up upon has been omitted but within differing textual sources for the most part, thus showing that there has been a tendency to accidentally omit the up:

• Alma 62:22 (loss in the 1830 edition)
  • and it came to pass that Moroni caused that his men should march forth and come [up 1| ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] upon the top of the wall
• 3 Nephi 20:2 (loss by scribe 2 of 𝓟, supplied by Oliver Cowdery; also omitted in the 1874 RLDS edition)
  • and he commanded them that they should arise and stand [𝓢① NULL > 𝓢② up 1|up ABCDEFGIJLMNOQRT| HKPS] upon their feet
• Ether 13:8 (loss in the 1830 edition)
  • wherefore the remnant of the house of Joseph shall be built [up 1PS| ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOQRT] upon this land

The critical text will therefore restore all four of these original instances of up upon to the text.

These examples of the loss of up bring up the question of whether there might be other cases of upon that are errors for an original up upon. In such cases, an up could have been lost early in the transmission of the text, perhaps as Joseph Smith dictated the text to his scribe or later when the text was copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟. It is also possible that a change of up upon to upon could result from the archaic upon being replaced by on, thus giving up on (which could then be interpreted as one word, upon). We have independent evidence for frequent mix-ups between upon and on in the textual history. For two examples, see the discussion under Mosiah 28:11; for a more extensive list of examples, see nearby under Alma 2:38.

The important point to remember here is that it will be difficult to discover such errors in the early transmission of the text since up upon and up on are semantically equivalent. And in many instances, it is also difficult to determine whether upon is a case of up on or vice versa. Consequently, the critical text will generally refrain from emending these cases unless there is specific textual or semantic support for making the change. Under 2 Nephi 4:24–25, I list three instances where upon should be emended to up on. Yet in each of these proposed cases of original up on, one could further argue on semantic grounds that the upon (the spelling in all the extant textual sources) is an error for up upon. But since up on is semantically equivalent to up upon, there would be no motivation for emending up on to up upon without specific evidence from the earliest textual sources.