Alma 1:29 Textual Variants

Here we have a sequence of four occurrences of the word abundance. The 1830 typesetter added the indefinite article an before the second instance of abundance, perhaps to relieve the abruptness of the listing following the initial instance of abundance (“having abundance of all things whatsoever they stood in need”). The 1849 LDS edition changed the an to an and, perhaps because the last two occurrences of abundance are conjoined with an and (“and also abundance of grain … and abundance of silk”). It’s even possible that the additional and was a typo that the 1849 typesetter introduced into the text (that is, he simply misread an as and ). The reading with and was followed in the LDS text until the 1981 edition, when the 1830 an was restored. The RLDS text has maintained the an even though the printer’s manuscript is missing it.

Elsewhere in the text, there are no occurrences of “an abundance”; there are eight other occurrences without any determiner, seven in the set phrase “in abundance” and one with an adjective (“in great abundance”, in 2 Nephi 5:15). There is a single occurrence where abundance is preceded by the definite article the, yet this instance is found in an Isaiah quote: “for the abundance of milk they shall give” (2 Nephi 17:22, citing Isaiah 7:22). Undoubtedly, the original reading in Alma 1:29 without any determiner for all four occurrences of abundance is correct.

Further, internal evidence argues that there should be no and before the second instance of abundance. In this passage, we first have a general statement (“having abundance of all things whatsoever they stood in need”), which is then followed by a list of three specific categories: (1) pastured animals, (2) means of measuring value (grain, precious metals, and other “precious things”), and (3) types of cloth. Grain and precious metals are included in the same category since there was a fixed equivalence between various grains (barley is explicitly mentioned) and gold and silver, as described later in the book of Alma:

• Alma 11:7, 15
  • a senum of silver was equal to a senine of gold and either for a measure of barley and also for a measure of every kind of grain ... a shiblon is half of a senum therefore a shiblon for a half a measure of barley

Thus the internal structure of Alma 1:29 argues that there should be no and for the first of the three specific categories that follow the initial general statement.