Alma 43:6 Textual Variants

The original text here had a conjunctive noun phrase where the definite article the was repeated: “the Amlicites and the Zoramites”. The repeated the was omitted, probably unintentionally, in the 1849 LDS edition and in the 1858 Wright edition, giving “the Amlicites and Zoramites”. Other conjuncts of Amlicites and Zoramites repeat the determiner, providing there is one:

• Alma 43:20 yea all were naked save it were the Zoramites and the Amlicites
• Alma 43:44 and they were inspired by the Zoramites and the Amlicites

The 1908 RLDS edition restored the repeated the in Alma 43:6 to the RLDS text. There is one case in the original text, also in this chapter, for which there is no determiner at all: “and all those which had dissented from the Nephites which were Amlicites and Zoramites” (Alma 43:13).

The more serious issue here in Alma 43:6 is whether the last clause is semantically appropriate. In the earliest text, this clause reads “they were all the Amlicites and the Zoramites”, which implies that every Amlicite and Zoramite was appointed to be a chief captain. The obvious meaning is that every chief captain was an Amlicite or a Zoramite. In order to alleviate this semantic difficulty, the editors for the 1920 LDS edition removed the remaining (first) the from this conjunctive phrase, giving “they were all Amlicites and Zoramites” (the 1849 LDS edition had already removed the repeated the). The 1920 change was intentional since it was marked in the 1920 committee copy.

This emendation seems to be correct from a semantic point of view. But textually, if “they were all Amlicites and Zoramites” was the original text in Alma 43:6, one wonders how two the ’s could have been accidentally inserted into the text during its early transmission. Since both the’s are extant in 𝓞, the double insertion must have occurred during the dictation of the text. But that possibility seems rather remote; there are no other examples in the history of the Book of Mormon text of this kind of double insertion of the in conjunctive constructions.

An alternative emendation would be to insert an of between all and “the Amlicites and the Zoramites”. In other words, the original text may have read “they were all of the Amlicites and the Zoramites”. The of here is used in a partitive sense and could be thought of as equivalent to ‘from’ (thus “they were all from the Amlicites and the Zoramites”). Admittedly, this is an unusual reading (which may have contributed, of course, to the loss of the of during the transmission of the text).

In support of this emendation, I note first of all that the expression “to be of ” is quite frequent in the Book of Mormon text. We have the following representative examples of this partitive phraseology:

• 1 Nephi 5:18 and people which were of his seed
• 1 Nephi 12:9 for ye are of the house of Israel
• 1 Nephi 21:1 all ye ... which are of my people
• Alma 5:39 and ye are of his fold
• Alma 14:15 because they were of thy faith
• Alma 14:18 and teachers which were of the profession of Nehor
• Alma 27:27 the people which were of the church of God
• 3 Nephi 21:11 my people which are of the covenant
• Moroni 7:3 you that are of the church

The only difference is that in none of these other examples does the word all appear before the of-phrase, but that is probably what made “they were all of the Amlicites and the Zoramites” a difficult reading and thus prone to the loss of the of.

There is indirect support in 𝓞 for an original of here in Alma 43:6: namely, in the preceding clause, Oliver Cowdery started to write “Zerahemnah appointed chief captains of …”, as if he were intending to write “Zerahemnah appointed chief captains of the Amlicites and the Zoramites”. Oliver immediately caught this error and erased the intrusive of, then continued inline with the prepositional phrase “over the Lamanites”. This extra of could very well have been the result of anticipating the occurrence of the proposed of in the following clause, “they were all of the Amlicites and the Zoramites”.

We can also find considerable evidence in the manuscripts for Oliver Cowdery omitting the preposition of (usually only momentarily), as in these examples involving of-initial prepositional phrases:

Here in Alma 43:6, the reading “they were all the Amlicites and the Zoramites” does seem impossible. The most plausible emendation is that the original text read “they were all of the Amlicites and the Zoramites”.

Paul Huntzinger suggests (personal communication, 22 April 2004) another way to interpret this difficult clause. He proposes that there is an intentional ellipsis at the end of the last clause, namely, “of a more wicked and a murderous disposition” (the phrase found near the beginning of the passage). In other words, the text actually intends to say that “and they were—all the Amlicites and the Zoramites—of a more wicked and a murderous disposition”. Such an interpretation would mean that “all the Amlicites and the Zoramites” acts parenthetically as a displaced appositive noun phrase explicating they.

There are a couple problems with this proposal. First, we find no evidence of this kind of ellipsis elsewhere in the textual history (either intentional or by accident). Second, the sense of the passage is that Mormon is trying to explain why all the chief captains were Amlicites and Zoramites. He is not trying to explain a second time the disposition of the Amlicites—and for the first time, the disposition of the Zoramites. Note that earlier in the passage the reference is only to the Amlicites as being “of a more wicked and a murderous disposition”, not to both the Amlicites and the Zoramites.