Mosiah 24:20 Textual Variants

The 1830 typesetter accidentally dropped the phrase “the name of ”, which seems redundant in current English but is characteristic of the Book of Mormon text. Elsewhere in the original text (when referring to the naming of geographical places), we have seven occurrences in main clauses of “call the name of X Y” but three of “call X Y”. For both lists, see the discussion of the clause “they call the name of the place Bountiful” in the 1 Nephi preface. In that example, the phrase “the name of ” was apparently lost when Oliver Cowdery copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟, but the phrase was restored in Joseph Smith’s editing of the text for the 1840 edition (when he sometimes referenced the original manuscript in his editing for that edition). The critical text will restore the earliest reading here in Mosiah 24:20 (“they called the name of the valley Alma”).

It is also worth noting that in relative clauses the phrase “the name of ” never occurs:

• Mosiah 23:20
  • and they built a city which they called the city of Helam
• Ether 3:1
  • therefore the brother of Jared went forth unto the mount which they called the mount Shelem

Obviously, the use of “the name of ” in these instances would prove extraordinarily awkward, as in “a city the name of which they called the city of Helam” or “the mount the name of which they called the mount Shelem”.