Alma 22:27 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
the king sent a proclamation throughout all the land [𝓢② among >+ 𝓢① amongst 1|amongst ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] all his people

As discussed under Alma 20:13, amongst is relatively infrequent in the Book of Mormon when compared with among. Here in Alma 22:27, Oliver Cowdery copied an original amongst as among. Later, scribe 2 of 𝓟, who was proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞 for this part of the text, corrected among to amongst by adding the st inline. Scribe 2 made one other proofing correction, nearby in Alma 24:11, where he supralinearly inserted an ampersand between “our sins” and “the many murders which we have committed” (see the discussion there).

It is very doubtful that this correction in Alma 22:27 of among to amongst was due to editing on scribe 2’s part since elsewhere in Alma 22–24 there are ten occurrences of among, none of which did he edit to amongst. Moreover, Oliver Cowdery’s mistake in writing among here in verse 27 was probably due to the three preceding occurrences of among which he had just copied into 𝓟:

The critical text will accept amongst as the correct reading here in Alma 22:27; 𝓞 is not extant for the word but presumably read that way.

Summary: Accept in Alma 22:27 amongst, scribe 2’s correction in 𝓟 to the probable reading of the original manuscript, no longer extant here.

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

References