Alma 47:23 Textual Variants

In the original text, the phrase “and a token of peace” acts as a parenthetical intrusion. The 1837 edition changed the conjunction from and to as, probably because of the awkwardness of the original parenthetical statement. The critical text will restore the original text here but will mark the parenthetical nature of “and a token of peace” more explicitly (such as replacing the 1830 commas with dashes):

• Alma 47:23 (with revised punctuation)
  • the king put forth his hand to raise them as was the custom with the Lamanites
    —and a token of peace— which custom they had taken from the Nephites

One could interpret this passage as saying that the Lamanite custom of putting forth the hand to raise the person was taken from the Nephites but that the Lamanite identification of that custom as a token of peace was their own. More likely, the passage simply means that the Lamanite custom was originally a Nephite one—not only the custom of extending the hand but also the interpretation of that custom as a token of peace.

A second possible emendation for Alma 47:23 would be to keep the and but still add the as: “as was the custom with the Lamanites and as a token of peace”. Such an emendation implies that as could have been lost early in the transmission of the text (𝓞 is extant for “& a token of ”). There is evidence elsewhere for the occasional loss of as in the manuscripts, sometimes only momentarily; for a list of examples, see under 2 Nephi 9:16.

There is one other example in the text where an and has been replaced by as, again as the result of editing (in this case, in the 1920 LDS edition):

• 3 Nephi 3:19
  • therefore this Gidgiddoni was a great prophet among them [& 1|and ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|as RT] also was the chief judge

Here we have an example of a delayed conjoined subject; the text intends to say that both Gidgiddoni and the chief judge (Lachoneus) were great prophets. (See the discussion of this Hebrewlike structure under 1 Nephi 3:28 as well as more generally under hebraisms in volume 3.) The awkwardness of the added phrase “and also was the chief judge” in 3 Nephi 3:19 is similar to how Alma 47:23 originally read—namely, as an extra thought added on unexpectedly. Despite the diffi- culty of such extra expressions, the critical text will maintain them, including here in Alma 47:23.