Here scribe 2 of π wrote the first occurrence of seon as sean. As discussed under Alma 5:7, scribe 2 sometimes wrote aβs instead of oβs (in Alma 5:7, he wrote awake rather than the correct awoke). Moreover, Oliver Cowderyβs aβs and oβs are oftentimes very similar, so it could have been very easy for scribe 2 to have misinterpreted seon as sean.
The word seon appears twice more in the text, and in both instances, scribe 2 again wrote sean:
| location | π | π |
| Alma 11:8 | ββ | π’β sean |
| Alma 11:9 | ββ | π’β sean > π’β‘ seon |
Oliver Cowdery was the scribe in π for this portion of Alma 11, but unfortunately none of the three instances of seon are extant in π. For the last instance, when Oliver proofed π against π, he corrected the a to o in π, thus showing that he read this word, written in his own hand in π, as seon. For all three instances of seon, the 1830 typesetter followed the third (corrected) spelling of the name in π.
Scribe 2 of π also wrote onti as anti. One of the instances of onti is extant in π, and it defi- nitely reads with an o. For discussion, see nearby under Alma 11:6.
Summary: Maintain in Alma 11:5, 8, 9 the spelling seon rather than the original spelling in π (namely, scribe 2βs sean); the spelling seon is based on Oliver Cowderyβs correction (in verse 9) of scribe 2βs sean to seon, which probably reο¬ects the reading of π (no longer extant for any of the three occurrences of this word in the text).