The original manuscript is not extant from the end of the word resurrection through the word soul. In this long lacuna, there is definitely space for the preposition of, but of course it could also be missing since the word of is so short. The printer’s manuscript lacks the of, but the 1830 typesetter supplied it; all subsequent printed editions have maintained the of, as one would expect.
Theoretically, either reading is possible in the Book of Mormon text, as can be seen in the following pairs of contrasting examples (the first of each pair without the of, the second with it):
As discussed under 1 Nephi 17:32, the original text has a number of occurrences of the mixed gerundive noun phrase, “the ”, where normally we expect the preposition of between the gerund and its complement. Nearly all of the examples without the of are found in prepositional phrases (often beginning with unto). However, there is one example where the construction occurs as an independent noun phrase:
Thus “the raising the spirit or the soul” in Alma 40:15 is possible as an independent noun phrase, acting as an appositive to the preceding noun phrase, a resurrection.
In the history of the text, we have evidence for both the addition of the of as well as the loss of the of in this gerundive construction; I include in the following list the example from Alma 40:15 since in that instance the 1830 typesetter added the of:
addition:
loss:
In Alma 40:14 the of was omitted because for of is a difficult reading (see the discussion under that passage). The example in Alma 62:45 shows that Oliver Cowdery sometimes omitted the of, if only momentarily; there in the printer’s manuscript, he initially wrote “unto the convincing many of the people of their wickedness”. In this instance, Oliver not only omitted the of before many, he also added of the before people. It is possible that the competition between many people and many of the people led Oliver to momentarily omit the of before many. Obviously, the stronger tendency in the history of the text has been to add the of, given that modern English speakers expect the of when the gerund is preceded by the definite article the.
Here in Alma 40:15, there is some evidence in 𝓟 that 𝓞 may have read “the raising of the spirit or the soul”. As Oliver Cowdery copied this passage from 𝓞 into 𝓟, he twice started to write the preposition of, not after the gerund raising, but after spirit and after consignation. The transcript of 𝓟 reads as follows:
Here Oliver started to write of instead of or; then he caught himself and immediately overwrote the partially written f with an r (thus correcting of to or). This error may have prevented him from noticing that he had just omitted in 𝓟 the of after raising (assuming, of course, that the of was there in 𝓞). The of reasserted itself when Oliver came to copying “their consignation to happiness or misery”. There in 𝓟 he initially wrote consignation of, but then he immediately crossed out the of and wrote to inline. This perseverance of of in 𝓟 suggests that 𝓞 may very well have read “the raising of the spirit or the soul”.
In opposition to this analysis of the intrusive of ’s, one could argue that Oliver Cowdery did not expect “the spirit or the soul”, but rather “the spirit of the soul” since elsewhere the text has 45 instances of “the spirit of the X”, but none of “the spirit or the Y” (where spirit and Y are in the same conjunctive noun phrase). And having written of once (after spirit), Oliver wrote it a second time (after consignation). So the persistence of of when Oliver copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟 can be otherwise explained and may not provide evidence that 𝓞 read “the raising of the spirit or the soul”.
There is no easy solution here. But since “the raising the spirit or the soul” is possible and it is the reading of the earliest extant source (the printer’s manuscript), the critical text will restore this difficult reading. Nonetheless, the possibility remains that the original manuscript (and the original text) read “the raising of the spirit or the soul”.
It should be noted here that if the of is accepted, there is a possible ambiguity for the gerund raising in “the raising of the spirit or the soul”: namely, one could interpret this instance of raise as intransitive (the spirit or the soul rises to the spirit world), although clearly the spirit or the soul can be raised to the spirit world. From a textual point of view, it makes no difference in the English for Alma 40:15 whether raising in “the raising of the spirit or the soul” is assigned an intransitive or a transitive meaning, although in my opinion the transitive seems more natural. In the reading without the of, the transitive interpretation would be required. For further discussion of raise as an intransitive verb, see under 2 Nephi 3:24.
Summary: Restore in Alma 40:15 the earliest extant reading, the reading in 𝓟: “the raising the spirit or the soul”; despite its difficulty, this kind of gerundive construction is found elsewhere in the text; yet the possibility remains that 𝓞 (and the original text itself ) read with the of in this passage (as “the raising of the spirit or the soul”); in that case, raising can take either a transitive or an intransitive meaning.