Alma 56:41 Textual Variants

This is an interesting example where Oliver Cowdery got ahead in his writing down of Joseph Smith’s dictation. What seems to have happened is that they started out together, Joseph dictating “and it came to pass that again” and Oliver writing this down. Of course, writing is slower than dictation, so by the time Oliver had finished writing “& it came to pass that again” in 𝓞, Joseph had moved along far enough that he was now dictating “we saw the Lamanites upon us” (that is, he had already dictated the when-clause, “when the light of the morning came”). Oliver started to write “we saw the Lamanites upon us”, getting down the first four words when he realized he had skipped the intervening when-clause. So he immediately crossed out “we saw the Lamanites” and wrote inline the correct sequence, with Joseph possibly repeating the correct text for him. If this explanation is correct, it shows that Joseph had in his purview 20 words (the number of words from the initial and to the final us). In other words, he was able to see at least that many words at a time, which allowed him (if he wasn’t careful) to dictate too many words at a time. It is also possible that this error was produced by Joseph himself, who may have accidentally skipped the when-clause, which he then corrected. In either case, the implication remains that Joseph could see at least 20 words. (Also see under Alma 45:21 for the case in Alma 45:22 where Joseph took over for Oliver and wrote down 28 words in 𝓞. Apparently Joseph needed to finish what he was viewing before taking a break. In that particular instance, Joseph must have originally been seeing 28 words and undoubtedly a few more.)

Stan Larson has suggested that the change here in Alma 56:41 is an example where Joseph Smith had “translated a phrase out of usual English order, possibly because he was following the word order in the original” (here the word original seems to refer to the unknown original Nephite language on the plates). Larson claims that what Oliver crossed out was the entire main clause, namely, “we saw the Lamanites upon us”; yet the transcript of 𝓞 shows that there would have been no room in the lacuna for the prepositional phrase upon us except by supralinear insertion:

• Alma 56:40–42 (lines 12–14, page 346ªof 𝓞)
  • ( & i)t came to pass that againEVEN UNTIL IT WAS DARK
    ( ) of the morning came we saw the Lamanites upon
    < > WHEN THE LIGHT
    ( t)hem
    ( r)e but it came to pass that they did not persue us far be US & WE DID FLEE BEFO

At the beginning of line 41 in 𝓞, there would have been space for only the final part of Lamanites (that is, ites preceded by a hyphen) and the words “when the light”. In other words, Oliver had initially written down only part of the main clause when he caught the error and corrected what he had written down. This correction does not appear to be due to editing on Joseph’s part (or Oliver’s, for that matter). For Larson’s proposal, see page 10 of “Textual Variants in Book of Mormon Manuscripts”, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 10/4 (1977): 8–30.