Alma 10:31 Textual Variants

The issue here is the spelling of the name Zeezrom. We do not have the original manuscript reading for the first occurrence of this name (here in Alma 10:31). But this first occurrence is spelled Zeezrom in the printer’s manuscript, which suggests that the name was spelled that way in 𝓞:

		𝓞	𝓟
1	Alma 10:31	——	Zeezrom

Between the first and the second occurrence in the text of the name Zeezrom, there is a lengthy explanation of the monetary system of the Nephites (covering Alma 11:3–19), after which we get 16 occurrences of the name in Alma 11–12. In six of those cases, the name is sufficiently extant (and legible) in 𝓞 that we can tell that the name reads Zeezrum, not Zeezrom, for this part of the text; in the following list, parentheses surround letters that are only partially extant in 𝓞:

		𝓞	𝓟
2	Alma 11:21	——	Zeezrom
3	Alma 11:21	Zeezrum	Zeezrom
4	Alma 11:22	Zeezru( )	Zeezrom
5	Alma 11:26	——	Zeezrom
6	Alma 11:28	Zeezrum	Zeezrom
7	Alma 11:30	Zee(z um)	Zeezrom
8	Alma 11:32	Zeezrum	Zeezrom
9	Alma 11:34	——	Zeezrom
10	Alma 11:35	(Z)e(ez)rum	Zeezrom
11	Alma 11:38	——	Zeezrom
12	Alma 11:46	(Z )	Zeezrom
13	Alma 12:1	——	Zeezrom
14	Alma 12:2	——	Zeezrom
15	Alma 12:3	——	Zeezrom
16	Alma 12:7	——	Zeezrom
17	Alma 12:8	——	Zeezrom

The name appears six more times in Alma 14–15, but 𝓞 is not extant for any of these occurrences:

		𝓞	𝓟
18	Alma 14:2	——	Zeezrom
19	Alma 14:6	——	Zeezrom
20	Alma 15:3	——	Zeezrom
21	Alma 15:5	——	Zeezrom
22	Alma 15:11	——	Zeezrom
23	Alma 15:12	——	Zeezrom

But in the printer’s manuscript for Alma 10–15, all 23 of these occurrences of the name are systematically spelled Zeezrom. This consistency suggests that the very first spelling of Zeezrom in Alma 10:31 was indeed Zeezrom, not Zeezrum.

An important question arises here: Why would Oliver Cowdery have misspelled Zeezrom as Zeezrum in 𝓞 for Alma 11 when at the end of Alma 10 he had apparently spelled it correctly as Zeezrom? There is some hiatus in the occurrence of the name, and one obvious possibility is that Oliver simply forgot the correct spelling and that the resulting spelling Zeezrum was just a phonetic misspelling. But another possibility is that the misspelling Zeezrum was triggered by the spelling of the monetary unit ezrum. In Alma 10:31 we have the first occurrence of Zeezrom, but before the second occurrence of this name (in Alma 11:21), we have two occurrences of the monetary unit ezrum (in Alma 11:6 and Alma 11:12). Although this word is consistently spelled ezrom in the printed editions, the printer’s manuscript spelled it as ezrum (the original manuscript is no longer extant for the two occurrences of ezrum). Thus it is quite possible that Oliver’s Zeezrum was prompted by the intervening ezrum. For the spelling of that name, see the discussion under Alma 11:6.

There is independent evidence that intervening names can interfere with the spelling of a name. As discussed under Mosiah 25:2, the original name for the only surviving son of Zedekiah was Muloch, but this name was later misspelled in Helaman 6–8 as Mulek because the city Mulek is referred to 12 times in Alma 52–53 and then once more in Helaman 5:15, just before the three occurrences of what should have been Muloch in Helaman 6–8. As 𝓞 was being dictated, apparently Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery did not check on the spelling for Muloch in Helaman 6–8;

Oliver must have assumed that it was Mulek, what he was used to writing, and did not ask for the name to be spelled. Similarly, here in Alma 10–11, it is very possible that neither Joseph nor Oliver thought to have the spelling of Zeezrom checked when it reappeared in Alma 11:21; it had recently occurred at the end of Alma 10. Thus ezrum probably led to confusion in the spelling of Zeezrom.

Additional support for the spelling Zeezrom can be found in later instances of the name in the original manuscript. In Alma 31, Zeezrom returns to the narrative as a missionary, along with Alma, to the city of the Zoramites in the land of Antionum. And here in 𝓞 the name is spelled Zeezrom—that is, with the o:

		𝓞	𝓟
24	Alma 31:6	Zeezrom	Zeezrom
25	Alma 31:32	Zeezrom	Zeezrom

Other spellings of names imply that after a long hiatus, a difficult name that has been previously misspelled is suddenly spelled correctly, probably because the scribe requested Joseph Smith to spell the name once more. See, for instance, the discussion regarding the name Ammonihah under Alma 8:6. There in the original manuscript, Oliver Cowdery apparently wrote Ammonihah correctly 8 times in Alma 8; yet from Alma 9 through Alma 16, he seems to have systematically misspelled the name 12 times in 𝓞 as Amonihah. But then the correct spelling, Ammonihah, seems to have returned to 𝓞 in Alma 25:2, which is some distance from the last time Oliver had spelled the word (in Alma 16:11).

After Alma 31, the next reference to the name Zeezrom is found much later in the text; here we appear to have a phonetic spelling for the name:

		𝓞	𝓟
26	Alma 56:14	Zeezrum	Zeezrum

In this instance, the reference is to a city called Zeezrom, but which is spelled Zeezrum in the original manuscript—and in the printer’s manuscript. This is the only time Oliver Cowdery spelled the name as Zeezrum in 𝓟 itself. Perhaps he did not realize that this city was probably named after Zeezrom and should therefore have been spelled Zeezrom. But the 1830 compositor assumed so, it would appear, since he set the spelling of this city as Zeezrom. There are many cities in the Book of Mormon named after prominent Nephites. In the following list, the name of the Nephite namesake is well established before the name of the city first appears in the text:

	as a person	as a city
Lehi-Nephi / Nephi	1 Nephi preface	Mosiah 7:1 / Mosiah 9:15
Helam	Mosiah 18:12	Mosiah 23:20
Gideon	Mosiah 19:4	Alma 6:7
Nephihah	Alma 4:17	Alma 51:14
Zeezrom	Alma 10:31	Alma 56:14
Moroni	Alma 43:16	Alma 50:13
Lehi	Alma 43:35	Alma 51:24
Morionton	Alma 50:28	Alma 51:26
Moronihah	Alma 62:43	3 Nephi 8:10
Kishcumen	Helaman 1:9	3 Nephi 9:10

This naming practice is explained for the city of Ammonihah, although that Nephite is never specifically referred to elsewhere in the text:

• Alma 8:6–7
  • and he came to a city which was called Ammonihah now it was the custom of the people of Nephi to call their lands and their cities and their villages yea even all their small villages after the name of him who first possessed them and thus it was with the land of Ammonihah

The odds are quite high that the city of Zeezrom was named after Zeezrom, the lawyer from Ammonihah. The critical text will presume so.

The last two occurrences of Zeezrom in the Book of Mormon are found in Helaman 5 and refer to the person Zeezrom, not the city:

		𝓞	𝓟
27	Helaman 5:10	——	Zeezrom
28	Helaman 5:41	——	Zeezrom

These two occurrences are no longer extant in the original manuscript; the printer’s manuscript has the correct spelling, Zeezrom.

The critical text will therefore accept the spelling Zeezrom as the correct one, not only for the name of the individual but also for the name of the city that was apparently named after him.