Alma 10:25 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
why will ye yield yourselves unto him that he may have power over you to blind your eyes that ye will not understand [𝓢① NULL > 𝓢② the 1|the ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] words which are spoken according [𝓢① NULL > 𝓢② to 1|to ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] their truth

Scribe 2 in this passage apparently skipped a couple of minor words, which Oliver Cowdery corrected when he proofed the printer’s manuscript against the original. Clearly, the to needed to be restored. It also appears that the insertion of the the was a restoration of the correct text and not due to editing, although there does seem to be a need for some determiner or adjective to precede words. Elsewhere in the text, whenever words is postmodified by a restrictive relative clause (headed by either which or that), we always get a preceding determiner for words. The most common determiner is overwhelmingly the, although there are also a few examples each of my, these, a few, many, and so forth. The critical text will here accept the supralinearly inserted the as the reading of the original text.

Summary: Accept in Alma 10:25 Oliver Cowdery’s insertion of the since it seems necessary and is very probably the reading of the original text.

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

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