Brent Kerby suggests (personal communication, 17 September 2008) two possible emendations for this sentence:
the original text was an imperative, thus “know thou that …”
there was an original not in the question, thus “knowest thou not that …”
Arguing in favor of the first suggestion, Kerby notes that the initial error knoweth thou could have resulted if the original text had read know thou. Replacing know thou with knoweth thou could have occurred because the -eth ending was similar to the beginning th of the following thou, and thus there could have been some difficulty in hearing the difference between know thou and knoweth thou. Presumably, such an error could have occurred as Oliver Cowdery took down Joseph Smith’s dictation. In support of this emendation, there are similar instances of the imperative know thou in the King James Bible, as in these two examples:
There are no actual instances of imperative know thou in the Book of Mormon text, but there are several instances of the corresponding plural imperative, know ye:
Despite these occurrences of imperative know in the Book of Mormon text, it seems unlikely that Oliver Cowdery’s correction in 𝓟 of knoweth to knowest (here in Alma 11:23) would have been the result of editing on his part. He tended to leave such “errors” as knoweth thou in the text (for a couple examples of this kind of error being left uncorrected in the manuscripts by Oliver, see the discussion under 1 Nephi 11:2). Here in Alma 11:23, Oliver’s correction in 𝓟 was more likely the result of his proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞.
The question that Kerby’s other emendation brings up is whether there needs to be a not in the yes-no question “knowest thou (not) that the righteousness yieldeth to no such temptations”. There are quite a few examples that support the use of not in yes-no questions involving the verb know:
The example in Mosiah 12:30 argues for emending Alma 11:23 to read “knowest thou not that the righteous yieldeth to no such temptations”. Even so, there are examples of knowest thou in yes-no questions that lack the not:
Of course, in all these cases the expected response to the question depends on whether the not is stated. But ultimately, there is nothing wrong with the corrected reading in Alma 11:23 (“knowest thou that …”), even if the not is lacking; both types of yes-no questions, with or without the not, occur in the text.
Summary: Maintain in Alma 11:23 the corrected reading in 𝓟, “knowest thou that the righteous yieldeth to no such temptations”; similar yes-no questions, either with or without not, occur in the Book of Mormon text (and generally in English); the initial reading in 𝓟 for Alma 11:23, knoweth thou, is probably an error for knowest thou rather than know thou.
Alma 11:36, page 1827, line 2
The earliest text for Alma 11:36 reads said rather than saith. In the original manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote saith, but then he immediately corrected (by erasure) this present-tense form to the simple past-tense form, said. Thus the first line for Alma 11:36 should read as “now Amulek said again unto him”.