Alma 43:30 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and he also knowing that it was the only desire of the Nephites to preserve their lands [& 0| 1PS|and ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOQRT] their liberty and their church therefore he thought it no sin that he should defend them by stratagem

The original manuscript is extant here, and there is an and (written as an ampersand) between their lands and their liberty (thus we have a series of and ’s: “their lands and their liberty and their church”). The printer’s manuscript, on the other hand, is lacking the first of these and ’s, but the 1830 edition has it. Since either reading is theoretically possible, it is likely that the and was restored to the text when the 1830 signature (the 22nd) was proofed against 𝓞 (see the discussion under Alma 42:31). The 1908 RLDS edition removed the and here because it is not found in 𝓟, the source for making most of the substantive corrections in the 1908 RLDS edition.

Summary: Maintain in Alma 43:30 the original and that conjoined their lands and their liberty.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 4

References