Here scribe 2 of 𝓟 wrote “for it is because of the traditions of their fathers that causes them to remain in their state of ignorance”. The use of the third person singular present-tense causes seems odd, given the preceding plural antecedent traditions (or even the nearest noun, fathers, also a plural). Oliver Cowdery, when he proofed 𝓟 here, crossed out causes and supralinearly inserted causeth, the biblically styled alternative to causes. In the original Book of Mormon text, the inflectional ending -(e)th occurs with both singular and plural subjects, which means that here in Alma 9:16 the usage in “the traditions of their fathers that causeth … ” is fully acceptable. (See the discussion under the 1 Nephi preface, where the original text read “Nephi’s brethren rebelleth against him”; also see the general discussion under infl al endings in volume 3.)
There is clear evidence elsewhere in 𝓟 that scribe 2 sometimes accidentally wrote the modern -(e)s ending in place of the textually correct -(e)th ending. In each of the following, scribe 2 caught his error while he was copying the text (none of these changes show any difference in the level of ink flow):
For the last two examples, we get the -(e)th ending in the 1830 edition, also a firsthand copy of 𝓞 for that part of the text. All of these examples show that here in Alma 9:16 scribe 2’s causes could be a copy error that he somehow missed correcting.
There is one other instance in the text where the scribe (in this case Oliver Cowdery) initially wrote causes instead of causeth. For that case, Oliver’s error is found in the original manuscript; he himself caught his error virtually immediately and corrected it (there is no change in the level of ink flow):
In his editing of Alma 30:35 for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith changed the textually correct but archaic causeth to causes. But in all other instances where causeth is associated with a singular noun, Joseph left causeth unchanged:
There is one other instance where causeth is associated with a plural noun (like in Alma 9:16), and in that case Joseph once more removed the -th ending from causeth in his editing for the 1837 edition:
The earliest textual evidence thus shows that there were no other instances in the earliest text of the third person singular causes, only causeth (seven of them). This evidence argues that Oliver’s causeth in 𝓟 was the probable reading of the original manuscript for Alma 9:16.
But there is one more possibility to consider regarding “the traditions of their fathers that causes/causeth them to remain in their state of ignorance”: perhaps the third person singular causes is correct while the plural traditions is an error for the singular tradition. In other words, the original text here may have read “the tradition of their fathers that causes them to remain in their state of ignorance”. In general, the Book of Mormon text has examples of both “the tradition of one’s fathers” (11 times) and “the traditions of one’s fathers” (17 times). And there is independent evidence that the scribes sometimes mixed up the number for tradition(s), as in the following two examples for the phrase “the tradition(s) of one’s fathers”:
(See under Mosiah 1:5 for discussion of the first example as well as a list of other passages where the number for tradition(s) has varied.) The second example (in Alma 30:16) is particularly germane to the discussion here. Oliver Cowdery initially intended to write “because of the traditions of your fathers which leads you away”, but immediately after writing the plural traditions, he erased the s at the end of the noun traditions, thus eliminating the grammatical disagreement between traditions and leads. Similarly, one could argue that in Alma 9:16 the same error occurred, perhaps in 𝓞 itself; in other words, the original text itself read “for it is because of the tradition of their fathers that causes them to remain in their state of ignorance”, but tradition was accidentally changed to traditions (probably when Joseph Smith’s dictation was taken down). So when Oliver came to proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞, he decided to emend Alma 9:16, not by removing the s from traditions, but by changing causes to causeth.
One problem with this proposal is that if Oliver Cowdery had been consciously editing here in Alma 9:16, he more likely would have removed the s ending from causes, thus producing “because of the traditions of their fathers that cause them to remain in their state of ignorance” (which is precisely how Joseph Smith edited the text for the 1837 edition). There is one clear case where Oliver grammatically emended the text because of a plural subject, and in that instance he removed the -(e)th ending:
The original manuscript is extant for 2 Nephi 7:2 and reads they dieth; in copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟, Oliver originally wrote they dieth, but then later, with heavier ink flow, he emended it to they die. So in this case, when he was consciously editing the text, Oliver removed the -(e)th ending. In another situation, where the nonstandard grammar was less obvious, Oliver altered what he had originally copied into 𝓟 (which was grammatically correct) in favor of a theoretically ungrammatical use of the -(e)th ending:
This virtually immediate correction on Oliver’s part shows him restoring the text to the probable reading in 𝓞, even if the result is grammatically incorrect.
Thus it appears that the most likely situation in Alma 9:16 is that Oliver Cowdery’s changing of causes to causeth was the result of his proofing 𝓟 against 𝓞 rather than editing. The critical text will therefore accept his corrected reading in 𝓟: “for it is because of the traditions of their fathers that causeth them to remain in their state of ignorance”.
Unfortunately, the 1849 LDS edition further complicated this passage by replacing the edited present-tense cause with the past-tense caused, apparently a typo since the surrounding context retains its present-tense forms (including some present-tense modals that refer to the future):
The subsequent LDS text has maintained the past-tense caused in Alma 9:16, but the critical text will restore the present-tense form causeth.
Summary: Accept in Alma 9:16 Oliver Cowdery’s change in 𝓟 of scribe 2’s causes to causeth; Oliver’s causeth was probably the reading in 𝓞; the biblically styled ending -(e)th frequently occurs with plural nouns (here traditions); the past-tense form caused introduced into the LDS text in 1849 contradicts the present-tense verb forms used elsewhere in the passage.