Alma 24:20 Textual Variants

When copying the printer’s manuscript from the original manuscript, Oliver Cowdery accidentally replaced dethroning with destroying, perhaps because of the occurrence of destroying within the same line of 𝓞. In addition, there is the visual similarity between dethroning and destroying (as well as the semantic compatibility in this instance) that would have facilitated the copying error.

To be sure, dethrone and destroy are not synonymous, yet in many passages either word would work. For example, we have six other occurrences in the text where a ruler (a king or a judge) is “dethroned”; and except for the example in Alma 51:5, the verb destroy would also work in place of dethrone:

• Mosiah 29:21 ye cannot dethrone an iniquitous king
• Alma 47:4 he laid the plan in his heart to dethrone the king of the Lamanites
• Alma 47:8 that he might place himself at their head and dethrone the king
• Alma 47:16 that he might accomplish his designs in dethroning the king
• Alma 51:5 that Parhoron should be dethroned from the judgment seat
• Ether 9:27 he did dethrone his father

On the other hand, there are at least two clear cases where a ruler (a governor or a king) is “destroyed”; in these two cases, destroy could be replaced by dethrone:

• 3 Nephi 6:30 they did covenant one with another to destroy the governor and to establish a king over the land
• Ether 9:26 and Heth began to embrace the secret plans again of old to destroy his father

With respect to the last example, note that we have a single passage where both destroy and dethrone are used to refer to the same act:

• Ether 9:26–27
  • and Heth began to embrace the secret plans again of old to destroy his father and it came to pass that he did dethrone his father for he slew him with his own sword

Since either dethrone or destroy is possible in Alma 24:20, we let the earliest textual sources determine the reading.