Alma 4:11–12 Textual Variants

Here the original text starts out with a series of three present participial clauses: “Alma seeing … and seeing … yea seeing”. When copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟, scribe 2 of 𝓟 seems to have accidentally omitted the second seeing (thus giving “Alma seeing the wickedness of the church and also that the example of the church …”). This reading is not impossible. When proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞, Oliver Cowdery inserted seeing before also that. Since the initial reading in 𝓟 is possible, it appears that Oliver’s correction was probably the reading in 𝓞 and not the result of conscious editing on his part.

In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith changed all three of these nonfinite clauses to finite clauses by replacing seeing with saw; in the second and third cases, the pronoun he was also added, thus giving in the 1837 edition “Alma saw … and he saw ... yea he saw”. (Initially, Joseph replaced the first seeing with said, but this is clearly an error, one that seems to have resulted from the frequency with which he had been editing the historical present-tense saith to said in 𝓟, specifically 98 times prior to Alma 4.) Joseph’s multiple editing of seeing to saw removed a diffi- cult reading from the text. In the original text, the long sequence of present participial clauses is followed by three more present participial clauses and then a sequence of three conjoined noun phrases with relative clauses:

• Alma 4:12 (continuing)
  • some lifting themselves up with their pride despising others turning their backs upon the needy and the naked and those which were hungry and those which were athirst and those which were sick and afflicted

The original construction never achieves closure; so at the transition from verse 12 to 13, the text abruptly ends and a new main clause begins:

• Alma 4:13 (starting over)
  • now this was a great cause for lamentations among the people

Another notable example of such a long incomplete construction is found at the beginning of the book of Enos; in that instance, the incomplete text suddenly ends and then the text starts anew with a main clause (“and I will tell you”):

• Enos 1:1–2
  • Behold it came to pass that I Enos knowing my father that he was a just man for he taught me in his language and also in the nurture and admonition of the Lord
    —and blessed be the name of my God for it—
    and I will tell you of the wrestle which I had before God before that I received a remission of my sins

For further discussion of this passage, see under Enos 1:3. The critical text will maintain all these instances where the original syntax ran on without achieving normal closure.