Alma 13:14 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
yea humble yourselves even as the people in the days of Melchizedek who was also a high priest after this same order [ 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMOPQRST|of N] which I have spoken who also took upon him the high priesthood forever

The relative clause “which I have spoken” seems to be missing the preposition of, either at the beginning of the clause or at the end. The 1906 LDS edition added the of at the beginning of the clause (“of which I have spoken”), but since that edition never served as copytext for any subsequent edition, this reading with the of was never continued in the LDS text. The original manuscript is not extant here, nor does the spacing between extant fragments provide much help in determining whether the of was there since the lacuna is about three-fourths of a line.

Elsewhere in the text, when the relative clause is of the form “which I have spoken”, we always get the preposition of at the beginning of the clause (15 times), as in Mosiah 30:3: “after the book of which I have spoken shall come forth”. In one case, Joseph Smith considered shifting the of to the end of the clause, but then he decided to keep the of at the beginning (see the discussion under 1 Nephi 10:16). In another case, Oliver Cowdery initially omitted the of when he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟:

For another example of the tendency to omit the initial of in a relative clause, see under 1 Nephi 1:16. The tendency to omit the of in relative clauses of the form “of which I have spoken” may be due to the frequency (17 times) of relative clauses where the which acts as the direct object in the relative clause (rather than as the object of the preposition of ). Of course, when the relative pronoun is the direct object in the relative clause, there is no need for the of. In those 17 cases, the antecedent for which is either words (ten times), things (five times), or that (two times), as in the following sampling:

Thus it seems reasonable to assume that early on in the transmission of Alma 13:14 the preposition of was accidentally lost from the beginning of the relative clause “which I have spoken”. The critical text will therefore accept the 1906 emendation “of which I have spoken”.

Summary: Emend Alma 13:14 by supplying of at the beginning of the relative clause (“this same order of which I have spoken”), in accord with consistent usage elsewhere in the text (and the reading of the 1906 LDS edition).

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

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