Alma 10:10 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
for behold I say unto you that as the Lord liveth even so [he hath 1A|he has BCDEGHKPS|has he FIJLMNOQRT] sent his angel to make these things manifest unto me

The 1852 LDS edition changed the word order after even so from he has to has he. (The stylistic change of hath to has occurred in the 1837 edition and is consistent with Joseph Smith’s editing for that edition.) This change in word order was probably a typo in the 1852 edition.

In the Book of Mormon text, either word order after even so is possible. Given that we have a pronominal subject and an auxiliary verb, there are nine instances of inverted word order after even so in the earliest text (that is, the auxiliary verb precedes the pronominal subject) but six of the noninverted order (including here in Alma 10:10). Here I provide one example of each type where the auxiliary verb is the perfect have:

One of the other cases has also been changed, in this case from the inverted order to the noninverted order (in the 1830 edition):

In this instance, the original noninverted order was restored in the 1840 edition (but independently rather than by reference to the manuscript reading).

Summary: In accord with the earliest reading for Alma 10:10, restore the original noninverted word order in “even so he hath sent his angel”; this change also restores the original biblically styled hath to the text.

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

References