Alma 49:10 Textual Variants

Here 𝓞 is extant for the last three letters of the past participial form attackted, which shows that the base form for the verb attack ended in a t (thus attackt +ed ). In 𝓟, on the other hand, Oliver Cowdery wrote the word as the standard attacked. When we consider all occurrences of the verb attack in the manuscripts, we discover that 𝓞 is sufficiently extant for 11 out of 15 cases, and in every one of those extant cases the word ends in a t, either as attackt (10 times) or as attact (once). When Oliver copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟, he wrote the word as attackt in 11 out of the 15 cases in 𝓟; in one of those cases, in Helaman 1:18, he initially wrote the word without the t but then inserted the final t inline (probably as an immediate correction since the inserted t is written without any change in the level of ink flow). But in four cases in 𝓟 (each marked below with an asterisk), Oliver wrote the verb without the t. Here is the complete list:

The evidence in 𝓞 argues that Joseph Smith consistently pronounced the verb as /ßtækt/ rather than /ßtæk/. Oliver Cowdery seems to have always written it down that way in 𝓞, as attackt, except for one instance of attact (in Helaman 1:18). In 𝓟, on the other hand, Oliver occasionally changed attackt to attack (four times), which suggests that both were current in his speech. The critical text will assume that for Joseph the verb was attackt and will therefore interpret each instance as attackt, even in the two cases where 𝓞 is not extant and 𝓟 reads attack (namely, in the first and last occurrences in the text). Of course, the original text may have consistently read with the standard attack, in which case Joseph’s attackt would have been due to dialectal overlay.

The dialectal use of attackt for standard attack was very common during the 1800s, with the following examples (from Literature Online ) that are contemporary with the 1830 publication of the Book of Mormon:

• Henry Finn (1825) let’s be attackted
• John Pendleton Kennedy (1832) our militia was attackted
• Charles Fenno Hoffman (1840) if the tree were attackted from the outside

But there is also evidence from Literature Online for the use of attackt in Early Modern English (accidentals here regularized except for the original spelling of attackt):

• Gervase Markham (1595)
  • hoist up thy sails / delay attackts thy sin flee from ill-boding stars with all thy might
• George Hicks (1684)
  • a principal ship which for many years had been sovereign of the seas was at last attacted by a tempestuous wind which the devil raised
• James II of England (1685)
  • what convulsions have attacted the body of this nation and how vile a ferment has raged in it