Alma 8:23 Textual Variants

Sometimes the earliest reading in the text has the nonstandard form eat rather than the standard form eaten for the past participle of the verb eat, as here in Alma 8:23 and in three other places in the text:

• 3 Nephi 18:4
  • and when they had [eat 1ABCDEFGIJLNP|eaten HKOQRST|eat > eaten M] and were filled
• 3 Nephi 20:4
  • and when they had [eat >js eaten 1|eat A|eaten BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]
• 3 Nephi 20:9
  • now when the multitude had all [eat 1A|eaten BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] and [drank 1A|drunk BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]

These four instances of had eat have been grammatically edited to had eaten in the standard text, beginning with the 1837 edition for the last two instances and in later editions for the other two. Elsewhere in the earliest text we get the standard eaten (the first three are from Isaiah quotations):

• 2 Nephi 13:14 for ye have eaten up the vineyard
• 2 Nephi 15:5 and it shall be eaten up
• 2 Nephi 16:13 and they shall return and shall be eaten as a teil tree
• 3 Nephi 6:2 they had not eaten up all their provisions
• 3 Nephi 18:5 and when the multitude had eaten and were filled

The original text has numerous examples where the past participle takes on the same form as the simple past tense, such as came for come, smote for smitten, and went for gone. (For a complete list of such examples in the original text, see under past participle in volume 3.) The last example of “had eat” (in 3 Nephi 20:9) suggests that the past participial eat, like the past participial drank, is derived from the simple past-tense form of the verb. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the simple past-tense form ate was historically and dialectally often pronounced as /it/ or /et/ (in addition to the standard /eit/). The OED’s list of spellings for the past participle of the verb eat show that both ate and eat served as alternative past participial forms from Early Modern English up into the 1800s. It appears that Joseph Smith dictated instances of had eat with either the /it/ or /et/ pronunciation. If Joseph had dictated had ate (that is, with the pronunciation /eit/), then the scribe probably would have written down had ate rather than had eat. The simple past-tense ate appears twice in the Book of Mormon text and is spelled both times as ate rather than as eat or et, which suggests the pronunciation /eit/ for those two cases:

• Alma 8:22 Alma ate bread and he was filled
• Ether 15:26 and it came to pass that they ate and slept

Irrespective of the pronunciation of eat in had eat, the critical text will restore the four original instances of had eat (but leave the five other instances of had eaten).