Alma 41:15 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
for that which ye [NULL >? doth /do 0|doth >js do 1|doth A|do BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] send out shall return unto you again and be restored

𝓞 is partially extant here. It is clear that there was some supralinear insertion after ye since one can see the insert mark. But whatever was supralinearly inserted is not extant. There are two possibilities for the corrected reading in 𝓞, doth or do. Of course, the initial text in 𝓞, without any helping verb, would work very well (“for that which ye send out”), but the insert mark shows there was some correction in 𝓞. And there is independent evidence that Oliver Cowdery sometimes omitted the auxiliary do verb; in the two following cases, Oliver initially omitted the do when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟:

In the first instance, 𝓞 is extant and reads “neither do ye”. In the second instance, both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition are firsthand copies of 𝓞, so 𝓞 very probably read “or that which ye do call so”— that is, with the helping verb do. So it is very possible that Oliver could have initially omitted the helping verb do (as either doth or do) in Alma 41:15.

There is a slight possibility here in Alma 41:15 that whatever was supralinearly inserted in 𝓞 was later crossed out. But 𝓟 reads ye doth, which supports some supralinear insertion in 𝓞, and probably doth instead of do. Of course, ye doth is ungrammatical and was therefore emended to ye do by Joseph Smith in his editing for the 1837 edition.

There is some evidence elsewhere in the manuscripts that ye doth could be the original reading here in Alma 41:15. As explained nearby under Alma 41:9, the earliest text had a few instances of ye hath rather than the standard ye have; such readings provide parallel support for ye doth rather than the standard ye do. But there is no direct evidence in the earliest text for ye doth except here in Alma 41:15. There are, however, instances of doth with third person plural subjects (see the discussion under 2 Nephi 4:18), just like there are instances of hath with third person plural subjects.

In the current text, there is an example of “ye … doeth” (here the do verb is a main verb rather than a helping verb; thus we have doeth rather than doth):

As explained under that passage, the original “ye ... do” will be restored in the critical text. But in the earliest extant text, there is actually one case of “I ... doth”:

To be sure, the occurrence of “I … doth” in Mosiah 2:19 is hardly noticeable because the doth is far away from the I and there are numerous third person nouns intervening between the I and the doth—namely, king, days, services, service, and God. Since I doth is possible, ye doth is also possible; here in Alma 41:15 the earliest extant text baldly reads ye doth (that is, there are no intervening words between the ye and the doth).

There is some evidence in Earlier Modern English for ye doth, as in the following two examples (accidentals regularized) found on Literature Online :

Since ye doth is possible, the critical text will here in Alma 41:15 follow the earliest extant reading, the reading in 𝓟 (namely, ye doth). For a complete discussion of the -(e)th ending for other than third person singular verbs, see under infl al endings in volume 3.

Summary: Restore in Alma 41:15 the instance of ye doth, the reading in 𝓟 and apparently the corrected reading in 𝓞 (although that correction could have been ye do, the grammatically emended reading for this passage).

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

References