Alma 46:9 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
yea and we also see the great wickedness one [NULL > verry 1|very ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] wicked man can cause to take place among the children of men

There is room in 𝓞, between extant fragments, for the adverb very (spelled presumably as verry, Oliver Cowdery’s typical spelling for very). When he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟, Oliver initially omitted the very in this passage; but then virtually immediately he supralinearly inserted it (spelled as verry) with no change in the level of ink flow. Either reading, with or without the very, is possible for the phrase “wicked man”:

The critical text will accept the corrected reading in 𝓟 for Alma 46:9: “one very wicked man”.

Summary: Maintain in Alma 46:9 the corrected reading in 𝓟, “one very wicked man”.

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

References