Alma 10:4 Textual Variants

The 1830 typesetter changed the singular kindred of the printer’s manuscript to the plural kindreds. In current English, kindred is singular in form but takes plural verbs (such as “my kindred are …”), although in actual speech kindred would be considered archaic or dialectal. The preferred term today is the regular count noun relative (as in “I have many relatives and friends”).

Elsewhere in the Book of Mormon text, we have instances of the form kindred with either the singular meaning ‘relative’ or the plural meaning ‘relatives’:

singular kindred ‘relative’

• Alma 10:7 as I was a journeying to see a very near kindred

singular kindred ‘relatives’

• Mosiah 4:4 my friends and my brethren / my kindred and my people
• Alma 10:11 yea even all my kindred hath he blessed
• Alma 15:16 he being rejected by those which were once his friends and also by his father and his kindred
• Alma 28:5 a mourning for their kindred which had been slain
• Alma 28:11 and many thousands are mourning for the loss of their kindred
• Alma 28:12 while many thousands of others truly mourn for the loss of their kindred
• 3 Nephi 7:2 every man according to his family and his kindred and friends
• 3 Nephi 7:14 every man according to his family kindred and friends

There are also instances of the plural kindreds with the meaning ‘relatives’:

plural kindreds ‘relatives’

• 3 Nephi 6:27 those judges had many friends and kindreds
• 3 Nephi 6:27 and unite with the kindreds of those judges
• 3 Nephi 7:4 save he had much family and many kindreds and friends
• 3 Nephi 7:6 because of the secret combination of the friends and kindreds of them which murdered the prophets
• Ether 8:17 wherefore Akish administered it unto his kindreds and friends

Finally, there are two cases in 3 Nephi where the scribe in 𝓟, Oliver Cowdery, wrote the plural kindreds, but the 1830 edition has the singular kindred:

• 3 Nephi 10:2
  • they did cease lamenting and howling for the loss of their [kindred > kindreds 1|kindred ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] which had been slain
• 3 Nephi 10:8
  • behold they began to weep and howl again because of the loss of their [kindreds 1|kindred ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] and friends

For both of these cases, 𝓟 and the 1830 edition are firsthand copies of 𝓞. See under each of these passages for discussion of which reading, the singular kindred or the plural kindreds, represents the original text.

The 1830 change from many kindred to many kindreds in Alma 10:4 is probably the result of the preceding plural many; otherwise, the text has the plural kindreds when preceded by many (in 3 Nephi 6:27 and 3 Nephi 7:4, listed above). Even so, there are eight occurrences of the singular kindred with the plural meaning ‘relatives’ that have never been changed to kindreds. These examples show that the singular kindred in 𝓟 for Alma 10:4 is perfectly acceptable. The critical text will therefore restore the singular kindred, as did the 1908 RLDS edition (based on the reading in 𝓟).

Historically and dialectally in English, the singular kindred has been used as a plural count noun, much like the word people (as in “many people are coming”). Here is an example of many kindred (the original language in Alma 10:4) listed in the Oxford English Dictionary under flowerist:

• William Westmacott (1694)
  • Saffron … hath many kindred ...
    which are propagated in the Gardens of curious Flowerists

In this case, kindred refers to related plants rather than related people.