Alma 22:25 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
but the king stood forth among them and [ministered >? NULL 0| 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] administered unto them

The original manuscript is not extant here for the word administered, but spacing between extant fragments suggests that Oliver Cowdery initially wrote ministered, then immediately crossed out the whole word and wrote inline the correct administered. This interpretation is followed in the transcript of 𝓞 for this passage:

( )ng stood forth among the( )

KI M & < > ADMINISTERED UNTO THEM & IT CAME

to pass that they were pa( )

SIFIED TOWARDS AARON & THOSE WHICH WERE WITH

Of course, we can’t really be sure that this is the initial error that Oliver made here in 𝓞. But such an error is supported by one other case (in Alma 17:18) where Oliver initially wrote minister in 𝓟, then virtually immediately corrected it to administer. In that case, Oliver did not rewrite the whole word inline; instead, he supralinearly inserted the ad in front of the already written minister. Here in Alma 22:25, the critical text will maintain administered, the reading actually recorded in 𝓟, the earliest extant source for this particular instance of the verb.

Summary: Maintain in Alma 22:25 the verb form administered, the earliest extant reading (in 𝓟); Oliver Cowdery may have initially written the verb as ministered in 𝓞.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 4

References