Alma 9:32 Textual Variants

Here scribe 2 of 𝓟 seems to have accidentally omitted the pronoun for the preposition upon: namely, the me which Oliver Cowdery supplied when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞. The expression “to lay one’s hands upon” without an object for the preposition upon does not seem totally impossible but is definitely unusual, which could have motivated Oliver here to simply supply the me on his own. Another case where the earliest reading is missing the pronominal object for a preposition is found earlier in the text:

• 1 Nephi 7:20
  • that I would forgive them of the thing that they had done against [𝓢③ NULL >– 𝓢② me 0|me 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]

Here scribe 3 of 𝓞 seems to have omitted the pronoun me after against; in this instance, Oliver supplied on his own the me. (Once the dictation was over, there was no proofing of 𝓞 against some other text.) As argued under 1 Nephi 7:20, evidence elsewhere in the text supports the occurrence of me after against for that passage.

There is considerable evidence in the textual history for the occasional loss of a pronominal object after a preposition. In all cases but one, each particular error has been restricted to a single textual source (the exception is marked below with an arrow):

In the manuscripts, these missing pronouns were all initial errors (marked as either 𝓞* or 𝓟*) and were soon supplied by the scribe. In the Book of Mormon, all prepositions require an object; thus expressions like “to do something against null” or “to lay one’s hands (up)on null” are never found. There is not one example in the text where the object of a preposition appears to be intentionally lacking.