Alma 54:9 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
yea and except [ you 01ABCDEFIJLMNOQRT|ye GHKPS] withdraw your purposes behold [ ye 0ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|you > ye 1] will pull down the wrath of that God whom [ ye > you 0|you > ye > you 1|you ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] have rejected upon [NULL >– you 0|you > ye > you 1|you ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] [ yea 0| 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] even to your utter destruction

In this passage there are four places where the textual history has varied between you and ye. As noted under Mosiah 4:14, the second person plural subject pronoun can be either ye or you in the Book of Mormon text (also see the complete discussion under ye in volume 3). For each instance of ye /you, the critical text will follow the reading of the earliest textual sources. Thus here in Alma 54:9, we follow the reading, sometimes corrected, in 𝓞:

In the original manuscript for this passage, the phrase “upon you” is followed by a yea-clause: “yea even to your utter destruction”. When Oliver Cowdery initially took down Joseph Smith’s dictation here, he wrote “upon yea”. In other words, he accidentally omitted the you. Later he supplied the you supralinearly (the correcting you was written with weaker ink flow). The first two letters of you are difficult to read in 𝓞, but the final u is clear. When Oliver copied this part of the text into 𝓟, he accidentally omitted the yea. Another example in Oliver’s copywork where he omitted in 𝓟 the yea after you can be found in Alma 42:31; in that case, like here in Alma 54:9, Oliver initially omitted the you in 𝓞 and then supplied it supralinearly (see the discussion under Alma 42:31). The critical text will restore the original yea here in Alma 54:9.

The yea in Alma 54:9 is supported by other instances in the text of yea followed by even to

(where to is a preposition):

For one instance where the to was removed from “yea even to”, see under 1 Nephi 18:9.

Summary: In accord with the reading of the original manuscript, restore yea in Alma 54:9 (“yea even to your utter destruction”); also maintain in this passage the appropriate you versus ye forms, based on the reading of the earliest textual sources.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 4

References