Alma 11:42 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
now there is a death which is called [ 1|a ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] temporal death

Here in Alma 11:42, the printer’s manuscript did not have the indefinite article a before “temporal death”. The 1830 typesetter added the a. Elsewhere in the text there are examples of “a temporal death” and “a spiritual death”. In fact, all other references to either temporal or spiritual death have a determiner of some kind:

In one of these cases (in Alma 12:16), the 1837 edition changed the determiner from the to a; see the discussion under that passage.

Thus the original occurrence in Alma 11:42 of “temporal death” without any determiner is quite unique. Yet it turns out that when the text uses the passive verb form called to identify something, the determiner is often unexpressed:

Thus the original language in Alma 11:42, “now there is a death which is called temporal death”, is quite possible and will therefore be restored in the critical text.

Summary: Remove in Alma 11:42 the intrusive a that the 1830 typesetter added before “temporal death”, thus restoring the reading in 𝓟: “now there is a death which is called temporal death”; the original text often omits the determiner before noun phrases when referring to what something or someone is called.

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

References