Alma 60:16 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
yea had it not been for the war which broke out among ourselves

Here in the original manuscript, only the first two letters of the verb broke are extant, so there is a distinct possibility that 𝓞 here actually read brake, which is what I conjectured when I produced the transcript for 𝓞 (see volume 1 of the critical text). The printer’s manuscript itself reads broke. There is one clear example where Oliver Cowdery, as he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟, changed an original brake to broke (namely, nearby in Alma 57:33), so one could argue that Oliver made the same mistake here in Alma 60:16. But as explained under Alma 14:26, for each case of brake versus broke the critical text will follow the earliest extant reading, thus broke here in Alma 60:16.

Summary: Maintain the verb form broke in Alma 60:16, the reading of 𝓟 (the earliest extant source).

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

References