Alma 5:50 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
repent all [the >+ Ye 1|ye ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] ends of the earth

Scribe 2 initially wrote “repent all the ends of the earth”. But he soon corrected the the to ye; he overwrote the the with Ye using a heavier ink flow (the capital Y was to make sure that the correcting letter y covered the th). When speaking about “the ends of the earth”, the text consistently maintains the definite article the (14 times), but when directly addressing “the ends of the earth”, ye always precedes “ends of the earth” (9 times, including here in Alma 5:50). In fact, there are three other occurrences of the specific expression “repent all ye ends of the earth” (in 3 Nephi 27:20, Ether 4:18, and Moroni 7:34), so quite clearly “repent all ye ends of the earth” is the correct reading in Alma 5:50.

Summary: Maintain in Alma 5:50 the corrected reading in 𝓟: “repent all ye ends of the earth”.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 3

References