Alma 23:14 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
but they did harden their hearts and also the hearts of the Lamanites in that part of the land whithersoever they [dweld > dwelt 0|dwel > dwelt 1|dwelt ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]

Oliver Cowdery initially wrote dwelt as dweld in 𝓞, with perhaps the initial intent to write dwelled, the alternative past-tense form for dwelt. Virtually immediately Oliver corrected the final d by overwriting it with a t. Elsewhere the Book of Mormon text has only dwelt (or did dwell ) for the past tense of the verb dwell, never dwelled (except as an initial error here in Alma 23:14); similarly, the past participle is always dwelt, never dwelled. The King James Bible overwhelmingly prefers dwelt (with 226 occurrences), but even so there are 6 occurrences of dwelled (as in Ruth 1:4: “and they dwelled there about ten years”). The critical text will, of course, maintain the expected form dwelt here in Alma 23:14.

Summary: Maintain in Alma 23:14 the corrected dwelt rather than the dwelled (spelled as dweld) that Oliver Cowdery initially wrote in 𝓞.

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

References