Alma 51:16 Textual Variants

As discussed under 1 Nephi 15:5, the plural destructions is occasionally found in the original text of the Book of Mormon, but always with the meaning ‘destructive events’ (as here in Alma 51:16). In this passage, the text is not referring to the final destruction of the Nephite people. We see this difference in the following passages that involve the word all:

• 2 Nephi 26:6
  • and they shall be visited with thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes and all manner of destructions
• The Words of Mormon 1:1–2
  • behold I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my people the Nephites and it is many hundred years after the coming of Christ that I deliver these records into the hands of my son and it supposeth me that he will witness the entire destruction of my people
• 3 Nephi 10:14
  • he that hath the scriptures let him search them and see and behold if all these deaths and destructions ... and all these things is not unto the fulfilling of the prophecies of many of the holy prophets

The second passage refers to the complete destruction of the Nephites. In the two other passages, the text refers to individual events of destruction. Thus the plural is appropriate for Alma 51:16 as well as for 2 Nephi 26:6 and 3 Nephi 10:14. For Alma 51:16, both manuscripts correctly read in the plural, but the 1830 compositor set the singular destruction. The critical text will restore the correct plural, destructions.

Here in Alma 51:16, the 1888 LDS large-print edition accidentally omitted the all from this prepositional phrase that refers to destruction. But since no subsequent LDS edition used the 1888 edition as a copytext, the all has been retained in the LDS text.