Here we have two cases where the printer’s manuscript initially read believed. The first one is clearly wrong (“did not my father Alma believed in the words”), and scribe 2 of 𝓟 tried to correct the believed that he initially wrote by erasing the final d. The abrasion extends into the preceding e, and some ink smearing of the d can be observed; but overall one might think that the d was still there. To make sure, John Gilbert, the 1830 compositor, crossed out the partially erased d with pencil and correctly set the 1830 edition to read “did not my father Alma believe in the words”. This initial believed in 𝓟 may be due to the following delivered, which is visually similar to believed. Another source for this initial error, perhaps more probable, is the believed that is found two manuscript lines below; note the similarity of “did not my father Alma believe them” with “and my father Alma believed them”.
Later on in the verse, when the 1830 compositor came to “and my father Alma believed them”, he made the same change of believed to believe (once more in 𝓟 he crossed out the d of believed with pencil). But scribe 2 of 𝓟 had not tried to delete the d from this second occurrence of believed, mainly because this is how the text actually read. Thus the compositor’s emendation of the second believed to believe was a mistake. In the current text, because this second believed was changed to believe, the question mark is necessary at the end of the final clause in this passage. But by restoring the correct believed, we could reinterpret this passage as a sequence of three questions that ends with a declarative statement:
This revision in the punctuation supports the interpretation that the them at the very end of the passage (“and my father Alma believed them”) actually refers to the earlier “the words which was delivered by the mouth of Abinadi”), not the nearer “the word of God”; for discussion of this possibility, see the following analysis of the number disagreement between “the word of God” and them. Of course, the current punctuation will also work for the original reading: “Did he not speak the word of God, and my father Alma believed them?” (although I would prefer the omission of the comma).
Summary: Restore in Alma 5:11 the past-tense form believed in the latter part of verse 11 (“did he not speak the word of God and my father Alma believed them”); scribe 2’s correction in 𝓟 of believed to believe earlier in this passage, also followed by the 1830 compositor, is undoubtedly correct (“did not my father Alma believe in the words”).