Alma 56:17 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
therefore you may well suppose that the little force which I brought with me—yea those sons of mine— gave them great [hope > hopes 0|hopes 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] and much joy

As discussed under Alma 52:21, the original text has a number of instances of plural hopes where modern readers expect the singular hope. Here in Alma 56:17, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote hope

but then virtually immediately corrected hope to hopes by inserting the plural s inline (there is no change in the level of ink flow). Oliver’s initial hope may have been influenced by the following conjoined singular, “and much joy”. The critical text will retain the plural hopes.

Summary: Maintain in Alma 56:17 the corrected plural reading in 𝓞, “great hopes”.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 5

References