Alma 11:2 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and he judgeth the man according to the law and the [evidences 0ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|𝓢① witnesses > 𝓢② evidences 1] which are brought against him

Here only the first part of the word evidences is extant in 𝓞 (evi plus part of the following d ). The ev at the beginning of the word, in Oliver Cowdery’s hand, looks somewhat like a w, which led scribe 2 of 𝓟 to misread evidences as witnesses when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟. Oliver restored the original evidences to 𝓟 when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞. Instances of plural evidences can be found elsewhere in the text:

In standard English, we expect the singular evidence (acting as a mass noun rather than a count noun). The critical text will accept the plural evidences here in Alma 11:2 and elsewhere in the text whenever it is supported by the earliest textual sources.

Summary: Maintain evidences in Alma 11:2, the apparent reading of the original manuscript and the corrected reading in 𝓟.

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

References