Alma 5:55 Textual Variants

The original text apparently had a case of prepositional repetition in this verse (“in turning your backs upon the poor and the needy and in withholding your substance from them”), but scribe 2 of 𝓟 accidentally omitted the repeated in when he copied this passage from 𝓞 into 𝓟. Oliver Cowdery caught the error in his proofing of 𝓟 against 𝓞. Either reading is possible, as can be seen in the following similar example involving the preposition in and a sequence of conjoined gerunds:

• Alma 53:7
  • but he did employ his men in preparing for war yea in making fortifications to guard against the Lamanites yea and also delivering their women and their children from famine and affliction and providing food for their armies

In this passage, the preposition in is repeated only in the first case (“yea in making fortifications”); in the last two cases, there is no repetition (“yea and also delivering … and providing”). We therefore follow the earliest textual sources in determining whether the in should be repeated. Oliver’s inserted in in 𝓟 for Alma 5:55 was most probably the reading of 𝓞. The critical text will assume as much. For further discussion of the repeated preposition in, see under Mosiah 24:1 (as well as more generally under conjunctive repetition in volume 3).