In both manuscripts, Oliver Cowdery consistently spelled Judea with an h at the end. Besides the example here in Alma 56:9, we have four more examples in Alma 56–57:
Unlike the first case (here in Alma 56:9), the other cases are all extant in 𝓞 and have the final h. Note that in Alma 57:11, the 1830 compositor originally set the name as Judeah, the reading in 𝓟; perhaps he didn’t recognize the place as the city Judea since in this case only there is no explicit reference to “the city of Judea”. During the printing of the 1830 sheets, Judeah in Alma 57:11 was corrected to Judea as an in-press change. Subsequent printed editions have continued with the spelling Judea in all five cases.
The manuscript spelling, Judeah, is probably incorrect. Evidence elsewhere in the manuscripts shows that Joseph Smith did not spell out known biblical names to the scribe; he may have simply expected the scribe to know the spelling of names like Isaiah, Manasseh, Melchizedek, Nazareth, and pharaoh. Or if the scribe didn’t know the correct spelling, the assumption was that the typesetter would since he could consult a Bible. Thus scribe 2 of 𝓞 could misspell Isaiah as Isauh (in 1 Nephi 15:20) and pharaoh as Pharro (in 1 Nephi 4:2), all without correction in 𝓞. For a general discussion of this point, see under 1 Nephi 11:13 for the spelling of the name Nazareth; included there is a list of Oliver’s Cowdery’s misspellings of biblical names in the Isaiah passages.
The Book of Mormon name Judea is the name of a Nephite city, but it appears to derive from the biblical name. One clear example of a Book of Mormon geographical name deriving from biblical sources is Jerusalem:
Other Book of Mormon place-names that may be of biblical origin include the land of Joshua (Mormon 2:6) and the city of Boaz (Mormon 4:20).
The spelling with the final h for Judeah in the manuscripts is quite probably due to the spelling of the related name Judah, which does end in an h and occurs 22 times in the Book of Mormon. In 𝓟, Oliver Cowdery consistently spelled Judah with its final h (21 times); the remaining instance in 𝓟 is also spelled correctly by scribe 2 of 𝓟 (in 3 Nephi 24:4). Only two instances of Judah are extant in 𝓞: one is spelled juda by scribe 3 of 𝓞 (in 1 Nephi 5:12); the other was spelled correctly by Oliver as Judah (in 1 Nephi 20:1). The 1830 typesetter’s decision to emend Judeah to Judea was undoubtedly based on his recognition of the name as a biblical one.
Yet even under the assumption that the name of the city is biblical, it is difficult to actually determine what the biblical spelling for Judea should actually be. In the King James Bible, the name is consistently spelled in the New Testament as the archaic Judaea (43 times), not Judea. The spelling Judaea is based on the Latin Iudaea, transliterated from the Greek Iotdaia. The name occurs only once in the King James Old Testament, namely, as Judea, in Ezra 5:8: “we went into the province of Judea” (not Judaea). Yet the Hebrew original here in Ezra actually reads Judah, not Judea, while the corresponding name in the Septuagint is the accusative of the Greek Iotdaia. So one could argue that if the King James Bible had been translated systematically according to the Greek, the Ezra example should have read “we went into the province of Judaea”. Of course, on the basis of the Hebrew it should read “we went into the province of Judah”.
In any event, the typesetter for the 1830 Book of Mormon chose the Old Testament spelling Judea over the New Testament Judaea. Generally speaking, the Book of Mormon uses the Old Testament spellings for biblical names rather than the New Testament spellings, as shown in the following list (each Book of Mormon place-name that appears to derive from a biblical name is marked with an asterisk):
| book of mormon | old testament | new testament |
| Noah | Noah | Noe, Noah |
| Melchizedek | Melchizedek | Melchisedec |
| * Judea | Judea | Judaea |
| * Joshua | Joshua | Jesus |
| * Boaz | Boaz | Booz |
| Elijah | Elijah | Elias |
| Isaiah | Isaiah | Esaias |
| Jeremiah | Jeremiah | Jeremy, Jeremias |
It should also be noted that the Book of Mormon does follow the New Testament spellings for names of individuals found only in the New Testament, such as the personal name Jesus for the Savior and John for Jesus’s disciple.
It is, of course, possible that the manuscript name Judeah, ending in an h, is actually correct. Ultimately, we have to decide whether Joseph Smith would have thought that Judeah, if that’s what he read, was crucially different from Judea. Since Joseph would have been familiar with the name Judea (whether spelled as Judea, Judaea, or even Judeah), I suspect he would have interpreted it as a biblical name and would not have spelled it out to Oliver Cowdery. Since the name of the land could very well be the biblical name, the critical text will accept the spelling Judea, the Old Testament spelling (despite its single occurrence in the Old Testament). This is, by the way, how David Norton spells the name in both the New and Old Testaments in his recent The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha: King James Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Summary: Accept the Old Testament biblical spelling Judea for all five occurrences of the name in Alma 56–57; Oliver Cowdery’s consistent manuscript spelling, Judeah, seems to be a mistake influenced by the spelling Judah.