I have hypothesized that Alma2 has become a believer in the alternate Mesoamerican religion, countering Nephite Messianism. In that worldview, clouds (whether incense or sky-clouds) would mark the presence of the gods. Thus, the appearance of a being in a cloud would signal communication with the divine for Alma2 in a very powerful way.
This detail creates an interesting context for this particular variation from the story of Saul. While the similarities are so obvious as to not require recounting, this particular difference is rather obscure but still possibly deeply significant in the Alma2’s Mesoamerican context.
The next difference is the description of the voice. No description accompanies the voice in Paul’s account, but in Alma2’s it is “a voice of thunder” that shakes the earth. Both Saul and Alma2 fall to the ground—Saul/Paul because he appears to recognize majesty, and with Alma2, as a result of the earth’s shaking.
Miller and Taube describe the religious connotations of lightning and thunder: “Among the most potent and dramatic natural phenomena of Mexico are lightning storms which light up the sky and shake the earth with thunder.” Note that they document thunder-shaking earth, just as Alma2 experienced it. A modern Chamulan (Chamula is a town of the Tzotzil Maya) tale ties thunder to the voice of the gods: “When Our Father still walked the earth, he talked to the earth gods. He told them that they could not make it rain without talking to him first, so that he could punish the people if they did not ‘want’ the rain enough (if they had not prayed enough). When there are thunderheads, the earth gods are talking to Our Father. Whether rain falls or not depends on him.”
Just as with the appearance in a cloud, the thunder and earth-shaking of Alma2’s experience may have Mesoamerican religious significance. As with the cloud imagery, Alma2’s apparent acceptance of the competing Mesoamerican religion would sensitize him to certain modes of divine communication. A being in a cloud accompanied by thunder and shakings would present unmistakable evidence of its divine authenticity and authority.
Text: Verses 10 and 11 are one sentence. Nineteenth-century literature was frequently characterized by lengthy sentences, as we see not only in Joseph’s writing but in such fiction as Charles Dickens’s novels. What makes this particular sentence difficult is its lengthy, embedded aside. The aside is so long that Mormon has to remind us of the original topic when he picks it up again in verse 11.
Internal Comparison: Alma2 also retells this experience to two of his sons, Helaman and Shiblon. The more extensive account is found in Alma 36:4–26 with a shorter version in Alma 38:6–8. Additionally, S. Kent Brown has examined Alma2’s sermons for indications of this experience’s impact on Alma2’s preaching and found that “virtually every one of Alma’s recorded sermons, whether they were formal discourses or spontaneous addresses, are characterized by the recollection of one or more features of his three-day conversion experience.”
The version in Alma 36 is the most extensive. (See commentary accompanying that chapter for a more complete analysis of the three versions.)