Alma 11:6 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and an [𝓢① onhi > 𝓢② onti 1|onti ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] of silver

Scribe 2 of 𝓟 had difficulties with the monetary unit onti. Here in verse 6, he miswrote it as onhi. Oliver Cowdery corrected onhi to onti when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞. Later on in this chapter, scribe 2 miswrote an onti as anti:

Again Oliver corrected this error, replacing anti with an onti (by crossing out the ti of anti and then supralinearly inserting onti). Undoubtedly, the original text read an onti in verses 6 and 13. Throughout the description of the monetary system here in Alma 11, the indefinite article is consistently used when listing each monetary unit and specifying its value:

Later on in the chapter, when Zeezrom tries to tempt Amulek, scribe 2 of 𝓟 twice wrote the plural onties as anties:

In the first instance, Oliver Cowdery made the correction in 𝓟 to onties; in the second instance, scribe 2 himself made the correction, virtually immediately. The instance in verse 22 is particularly important since 𝓞 is extant there and clearly reads onties. Thus the manuscript evidence argues that onti is the correct name for this monetary unit. We notice here that scribe 2 once more misread an o as an a, just as he did with the word seon (see the discussion under Alma 11:5).

Summary: Maintain the name onti for the monetary unit; the misspellings onhi and anti are errors that scribe 2 introduced into 𝓟 but which were all corrected, either by himself or by Oliver Cowdery when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞.

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

References