Alma 42:3 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
now we see that the man had became as God / knowing good and evil and lest he should put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever [that 01A| BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] the Lord God placed cherubims and the flaming sword that he should not partake of the fruit

The original text here has three occurrences of the subordinate conjunction that. The last one (“that he should not partake of the fruit”) heads a resultive clause. But the first two that-clauses are conjoined complements and act together as the direct object for the verb see; skipping the intervening subordinate lest-clause in this passage, the text reads as follows:

now we see that the man had became as God / knowing good and evil and … that the Lord God placed cherubims and the flaming sword …

The deletion of the second that was probably intended since its inclusion leads to a difficult reading when preceded by the lest-clause. Nonetheless, in his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith did not cross out this that in 𝓟. The critical text will restore the second that in Alma 42:3.

Summary: Restore the original second that in Alma 42:3; the that-clause here serves conjunctively as part of the direct object for the main verb see at the beginning of the sentence.

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

References