Alma 8:18–19 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
now it came to pass that after Alma had received his message from the angel of the Lord he returned speedily to the land of Ammonihah and [it came to pass that >js NULL 1|it came to pass that A| BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] he entered the city by another way yea by the way which was on the south of the city Ammonihah and [It came to pass that 1|it came to pass that A| BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] as he entered the city he was an hungered and he saith to a man …

As discussed under 1 Nephi 10:17, Joseph Smith removed some instances of the phrase “it came to pass” in his editing for the 1837 edition. Many of these involve a redundant use of the phrase, but here in Alma 8:18–19, the issue was not one of redundancy. Instead, we have a sequence of events for which the frequent use of that phrase in the sequence seemed excessive, so the second and third occurrences of the phrase were removed. The critical text will restore these two instances of “it came to pass” and all others that were in the earliest text. For a complete discussion, see under come to pass in volume 3.

Summary: Restore in Alma 8:18–19 the second and third instances of “it came to pass” that occur in close succession after the first instance of the phrase.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 3

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