Initially Scribe 2 omitted the reference to the people here in Alma 4:9, but almost immediately he supralinearly inserted People of the (there is no change in the level of ink flow). Elsewhere, whenever the text refers to “contention(s) among X”, the noun phrase X directly refers to people (40 times); in fact, in 22 cases the word people is explicitly used. Thus it is highly probable that the original text here in Alma 4:9 read “there began to be great contentions among the people of the church”. If the original text had lacked “the people of ”, we would more reasonably expect the preposition in rather than among. Although there are no examples of “contention(s) in the church”, there is one example of “dissensions in the church” (Helaman 4:1), in contrast to six examples of “dissensions among the people”. The critical text will maintain the corrected reading in Alma 4:9 (“among the people of the church”).
Summary: Maintain in Alma 4:9 the corrected reading “great contentions among the people of the church”, the highly probable reading of the original manuscript (no longer extant here).