Alma 57:25 Textual Variants

nevertheless according to the goodness of God and to our great astonishment and also the [ joy 01PST|foes ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOQR] of our whole army there was not one soul of them which did perish

The word joy was accidentally set as foes in the 1830 edition. The 1908 RLDS edition restored the original joy to the RLDS text (in accord with the reading in 𝓟); the 1981 LDS edition probably also relied on 𝓟 in restoring the original word to the LDS text (𝓞 is extant for joy but is difficult to read).

Interestingly, the word foe does not occur in the Book of Mormon text at all, but joy does.

In fact, there are some other specific references to Helaman’s joy over his army’s preservation:

Alma 56:56 to my great joy there had not one soul of them fallen to the earth
Alma 57:36 I was filled with exceeding joy because of the goodness of God in preserving us that we might not all perish

Summary: Maintain in Alma 57:25 the correct joy (“the joy of our whole army”), not the foes that accidentally entered the text in the 1830 edition.

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

References