Alma 21:11 Textual Variants

The original manuscript is not extant for the name of this village. In the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote Anianti; then he immediately crossed out the whole name and wrote inline Ani Anti. A little later, with somewhat heavier ink flow, Oliver inserted a hyphen between Ani and Anti, giving Ani-Anti. The 1830 compositor set this as Ani-anti; the 1852 LDS edition ended up capitalizing Anti, thus unintentionally restoring Ani-Anti, Oliver’s final reading in 𝓟.

Oliver Cowdery’s initial spelling in 𝓟 was Anianti, but his subsequent immediate correction of Anianti to Ani Anti implies that 𝓞 read Ani anti. In writing the name initially in 𝓟, Oliver miswrote Ani anti as one word, Anianti. But in his subsequent correction, he split up the two words and capitalized anti. There is independent evidence that Anti represents a distinct morpheme; see the discussion of the name Anti-Nephi-Lehi under Alma 23:17. The critical text will assume as much and will accept Oliver’s corrections in 𝓟 (separating anti from Ani, capitalizing anti, and adding a hyphen) as an indication that the Anti in Ani-Anti should be explicitly treated as a distinct morpheme. The hyphen will be maintained since hyphens have been used elsewhere in the text to show the morphemes or words within a single name, such as the biblical names Shear-jashub (in 2 Nephi 17:3) and Maher-shalal-hash-baz (in 2 Nephi 18:1, 3). These two names, however, are sentences in Hebrew; thus in English translation, only the first word has been capitalized in those two cases. The critical text will treat Anti here in Alma 21:11 as an independent morpheme, thus Ani-Anti (the LDS spelling) rather than Ani-anti (the RLDS spelling).