The reading of the original manuscript here in Alma 34:30 seems to be missing at least a subject. If we ignore the intervening after-clause, we have “I would that … come forth”, which is clearly ungrammatical. The committee for the 1920 LDS edition supplied the subject pronoun ye here, giving “I would that … ye come forth”, which seems possible. But the modal verb would (or should ) could have also been supplied, as if the text originally read, “I would that … ye would come forth” (or “I would that … ye should come forth”). The original text could have also read something like “I would that <<em>after-clause> that ye would come forth”. This specific reading is found in the immediately following clause: “yea I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer” (Alma 34:31). The occurrence of the repeated that is fairly common in the original text, especially when there is an intervening subordinate clause, as in the following example involving an after-clause:
In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith removed the first that from this sentence in order to avoid the repetition. For further discussion of the repeated that, see under that in volume 3.
Elsewhere in the original text there are 83 examples of “X would (not) that S”, where X is a subject and S is a finite clause. In every case, the S has an explicit subject, usually ye (61 times). In most instances, the S contains the model verb should (71 times), but there are also examples with other modals: might (4 times), would (3 times), could (2 times). There are also three examples without any modal at all, as in the following example: “I would that ye say in your hearts that I give not because I have not” (Mosiah 4:24). But none of these 83 examples have any intervening clause between the that and the finite clause S. The uniqueness of the reading here in Alma 34:30 makes it all that more difficult to interpret the text or to propose an acceptable emendation, especially one that would be preferred over all the other possibilities. Nor is there any help from the King James Bible; although there are 17 examples of “X would (not) that S” in the King James Bible, none of these have an intervening clause.
David Calabro suggests (personal communication) that here in Alma 34:30 one could accept the shortest possible emendation, namely, the 1920 LDS addition of the pronoun ye, under the assumption that if a word or phrase was accidentally omitted as Joseph Smith dictated the text to Oliver Cowdery, the most reasonable candidate would be a single short word like ye (rather than, say, a phrase like that ye would ). Here one could interpret the transcription of 𝓞 as consistent with this proposal since the last three lines on this page of 𝓞 read as follows:
The outer (left) edge of the leaf in 𝓞 is somewhat worn off; it is possible that a ye was originally written at the beginning of line 34, perhaps inserted in the left margin but missed in the copying, especially since the beginning of the next line (line 35) began with come forth. See under Alma 30:35 for another example where a small word (and written as an ampersand) was inserted at the beginning of a line in 𝓞 and then lost when 𝓞 was copied into 𝓟. Here in Alma 34:30, there does not appear to be any word at the end of line 33, the previous line, although there might be an erasure of an indecipherable single letter after the last word in the line, things.
Don Brugger (personal communication) suggests another approach here. Instead of trying to emend the text by inserting a word or phrase right before come forth, perhaps what was lost in Alma 34:30 was a subject ye immediately after the occurrence of “I would that”, that is, near the beginning of the sentence: “I would that ye after ye have received so many witnesses …”). This emendation would be equivalent to the 1920 LDS emendation, which also added ye but right before come forth. Brugger’s emendation suggests another one, supplying not only ye but also would (thus, “I would that ye would after ye have received so many witnesses …”). Obviously, a plethora of emendations suggest themselves.
One final possibility, suggested by Calabro, is that we leave the text unchanged here in Alma 34:30. Calabro notes that the occurrence of “come forth and bring fruit unto repentance” could be considered an imperative-like construction for which no subject ye or you would be required. Since we have no other examples like this example in Alma 34:30 with its intervening clauses, we cannot say that the earliest reading, the one without any subject for come forth, is textually wrong. The safest solution, without any additional information, is to accept the earliest reading despite its difficulty: “I would that after ye have received so many witnesses / seeing that the holy scriptures testifies of these things / come forth and bring fruit unto repentance”.
Summary: Restore in Alma 34:30 the earliest reading without any subject ye or you (or any additional words) for the predicate “come forth and bring fruit unto repentance”; this predicate, although diffi- cult, can be interpreted as an imperative; there are no other examples of this kind of complex construction in the Book of Mormon or in the King James Bible; the possibility remains that ye or even some longer phrase such as that ye would was lost as Joseph Smith dictated the text to Oliver Cowdery.