Alma 37:26 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and thus far the word [NULL > of God 0|of God 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] hath been fulfilled

Here in the original manuscript, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote “the word hath been fulfilled”. Virtually immediately, Oliver supralinearly inserted of God (there is no change in the level of ink flow for the correction). Here of God is expected, especially since Alma is referring to what he just said earlier in verses 24–25 in reference to the Jaredites; the conceptual parallelism between the two passages is clearly intended:

The critical text will therefore maintain in Alma 37:26 the corrected reading in 𝓞, “the word of God”.

Summary: Accept in Alma 37:26 the corrected reading in 𝓞, “and thus far the word of God hath been fulfilled”; the language in this verse parallels the language in the preceding verses (Alma 37:24–25).

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

References