Alma 11:16–17 Textual Variants

For both occurrences of the monetary unit shilum, the original manuscript is extant. For the first occurrence of shilum, Oliver Cowdery (the scribe here in 𝓞) initially wrote shiblum, which he first corrected to shillum and then finally to shilum. Here Joseph Smith probably spelled out the word since Oliver could not have known whether shilum had one or two l ’s. (For this first occurrence of the word, Oliver first overwrote his initial b with an l; then he crossed out that correcting l, leaving only one l in shilum.) When Oliver wrote the name the second time in 𝓞, he wrote shilum without any error. And when scribe 2 of 𝓟 copied shilum into 𝓟, he too correctly wrote it down as shilum. But when the 1830 compositor set this word, he mistakenly set shilum as shiblum, the same error that Oliver himself initially wrote for the first occurrence of that word in 𝓞.

This error of shiblum for shilum was caused by the phonetically similar monetary unit shiblon, which is mentioned twice in the immediately preceding verse as well as once between the two occurrences of shilum in verses 16 and 17:

• Alma 11:15–17 (original text)
  • a shiblon is half of a senum therefore a shiblon for a half a measure of barley and a shilum is a half of a shiblon and a leah is the half of a shilum