Alma 13:22 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
yea and the voice of the Lord by the mouth of angels doth declare [it 1ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRST| L] unto all nations yea doth declare it that they may have glad tidings of great joy

The 1902 LDS missionary edition deleted the object pronoun it in this passage. This omission was undoubtedly unintentional, especially since the following yea-clause specifically repeats the it (“yea doth declare it”). The 1902 edition was never used as a copytext for any subsequent LDS edition, so the error was not transmitted. Another example of the loss of it after declare occurred in the 1852 LDS edition:

The 1920 LDS edition restored the it to this passage.

We usually expect some kind of direct object for active forms of the verb declare, but there are instances in the text that generally refer to declaring without specifying any direct object, as in “and I stood with boldness to declare unto them / yea I did boldly testify unto them saying … ” (Alma 9:7).

Summary: Maintain the object pronoun it in Alma 13:22: “the voice of the Lord by the mouth of angels doth declare it unto all nations”.

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

References