As modern readers, we may balk at the first phrase. Don’t we want to have our children to believe that we “know of ourselves”—of our personal conviction, knowledge, and testimony? To Alma, in contrast, “know[ing] of myself” seems equivalent to “know[ing] by thinking it out.” Alma’s knowledge is “not of the temporal but of the spiritual, not of the carnal mind but of God.” His ways of knowing are not personal, temporal, or intellectual but spiritual and “of God.” I would rephrase this statement, in moderately modernized language, as: “I would not want you to think that I know these things by study or temporal learning; rather, I know them by spiritual learning from the mind and teaching of God.”
Alma tells Shiblon the same thing, but more clearly: “Now, my son, I would not that ye should think that I know these things of myself, but it is the Spirit of God which is in me which maketh these things known unto me; for if I had not been born of God I should not have known these things” (Alma 38:6).