Alma 60:14 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and now behold I say unto you I fear exceedingly that the judgments of God will come upon [ you > this 1|this ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] people because of their exceeding slothfulness

Initially in the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery wrote “I fear exceedingly that the judgments of God will come upon you”. Oliver immediately corrected the you here by crossing it out, supralinearly inserting this, and then writing people inline. As one might suspect, there was no change in the level of ink flow for this correction. Here we cannot consider spacing between extant fragments since 𝓞 is missing for seven complete lines. Oliver’s momentary error here in 𝓟 for verse 14 was probably the result of the you in the preceding “and now behold I say unto you”. Of course, the following “because of their exceeding slothfulness” supports the reading this people.

Summary: Accept the corrected reading in 𝓟 for Alma 60:14: “I fear exceedingly that the judgments of God will come upon this people”.

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

References