Here we have an instance in the earliest text (the original manuscript) where both numbers in a compound ordinal number are themselves ordinals: “in the twentieth and seventh year”. What we expect, of course, is for only the last number to be an ordinal; the first number should be a cardinal, thus “in the twenty and seventh year”, which is how Oliver Cowdery copied this compound number into 𝓟. The same kind of reading with the extra ordinal is found in 𝓞 near the end of the book of Alma:
Once more Oliver corrected the first ordinal to its cardinal form when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟, replacing “in the thirtieth and seventh year” with “in the thirty and seventh year”. In addition, there is independent evidence in 𝓞 that Oliver tended to replace the cardinal number with the ordinal in anticipation of the final ordinal in the compound:
Thus one could interpret the two earlier instances of the extra ordinal in 𝓞 (in Alma 52:15 and Alma 63:4) as cases of scribal error.
There are also some instances in the history of the text where the last number in a compound ordinal is not an ordinal but a cardinal. There are two types that occur: (1) six instead of the expected sixth and (2) eight instead of eighth. It should be noted that the first of these involves an obstruent cluster at the end of the word, /ksh/ in sixth /sIksh/, which may explain the tendency to omit the final obstruent, the interdental /h/ (especially during dictation when it would have been hard to hear the acoustically weak /h/ when followed by the consonant-initial word year). There are three places in 𝓞 where sixth was replaced by six; in fact, all three are found in the same chapter of Alma:
On the other hand, there are eight places in the text where eighth was replaced by eight—rather randomly and not always in compound ordinal numbers (as in the first example listed below). Moreover, this type of error (replacing eighth with eight) is found in the printed editions as well as in the manuscripts, which suggests that the error here is orthographic rather than phonetic:
The critical text will consider all of these occurrences of the cardinal number instead of the expected ordinal number as errors, whether in the manuscripts or in the printed editions. For discussion of the case of six, see under Alma 56:7, 9; for the case of eight, see under Helaman 3:19.
Except for seven manuscript exceptions, the earliest text of the Book of Mormon is consistent in its representation of compound ordinal numbers: the last number in the compound—and only the last—is ordinal; all the preceding numbers in the compound are cardinal. Listing separately the seven manuscript exceptions, all made by Oliver Cowdery but not corrected until later, we get the following statistics for the various types of compound ordinal numbers in the earliest textual source (Z stands for the hundreds, Y for the tens, and X for the ones):
example regular exceptional
Y and Xth 50 and 1st 133 7
Z and Y and Xth 200 and 30 and 1st 12 0
Z and Yth 300 and 20th 3 0
Z and Xth 200 and 1st 1 0
Except for the last example, the seven exceptions in the earliest extant text are all restricted to 𝓞:
Alma 52:15
form
20th and 7th source
𝓞
Alma 56:7 20 and 6 𝓞
Alma 56:9 20 and 6 𝓞
Alma 56:20 20 and 6 𝓞
Alma 63:4 30th and 7th 𝓞
Helaman 3:19 40 and 8 𝓞
Helaman 4:8 50 and 8 𝓟c
The King James Bible basically follows the expected pattern for compound ordinal numbers:
example regular exceptional
X and Yth 7 and 20th 37 0
Y and Xth 30 and 1st 11 0
Z and Yth 400 and 80th 1 0
Z and Xth 600 and 1st 0 1
Unlike the Book of Mormon, the King James text has 37 cases where the digit representing the ones precedes the tens; even so, only the last number takes the ordinal form, as in Genesis 8:14: “on the seven and twentieth day of the month”. The only exception to the general pattern is found in Genesis 8:13, where both numbers are ordinals: “and it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year”. The only other comparable example, in 1 Kings 6:1, follows the standard pattern: “and it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year”. The example in Genesis 8:13 of “in the six hundredth and first year” shows that the extra ordinal form can occur in the King James text. Of course, modern translations, such as the Revised Standard Version, translate the compound ordinal in Genesis 8:13 as “in the six hundred and first year”.
David Calabro points out (personal communication) that in earlier English there is evidence for compound ordinals where every conjoined number in the compound is an ordinal. (To be sure, there are many more examples of the standard construction, where only the last number in the compound is an ordinal.) Literature Online provides many examples of the fully ordinal construction, especially in Early Modern English (here the accidentals are regularized):
The frequency of this construction in literary sources drops off considerably in the following centuries; for instance, Literature Online lists only a couple of later examples with this construction:
Dates in wills, public records, oaths, parish records, and legal petitions in the 1700s continue to show this construction, as in the following examples from (once more the accidentals are regularized):
We also have these two interesting examples from The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick (1880), edited by James O’Leary:
on the seventeenth day of March
in the one hundredth and twentieth and third year of his age
departed he forth of this world
now Saint Patrick died
in the four hundredth and ninetieth and third year of Christ’s incarnation
For both of these citations, there are three ordinal numbers in each compound number.
Thus the evidence from earlier English overwhelmingly demonstrates that ordinals can occur for each conjoined number in an ordinal compound. Consequently, the critical text will restore the two original occurrences of this construction, in Alma 52:15 (“in the twentieth and seventh year”) and in Alma 63:4 (“in the thirtieth and seventh year”). The possibility remains, of course, that these two instances are scribal errors, as suggested by the initial error in 𝓞 for Helaman 3:2.
Summary: Restore the ordinal number twentieth in Alma 52:15 (“in the twentieth and seventh year”) as well as the ordinal number thirtieth in Alma 63:4 (“in the thirtieth and seventh year”); in each case, the use of ordinals throughout the compound ordinal number is based on the reading of the earliest source, the original manuscript; there is abundant evidence for this usage in Early Modern English, including one example in the King James Bible (“in the six hundredth and first year”).