Here the earliest reading for the verb arraigned is written as reigned by scribe 2 of 𝓟. Only part of the d at the end of the word is extant in 𝓞 (for this part of the text, 𝓞 is in Oliver Cowdery’s hand), but spacing between extant fragments of 𝓞 suggests that 𝓞 too had the shorter form reigned (or some variant spelling of it). Given the spelling in 𝓟, one way to interpret reigned is that it represents a misunderstanding on either Joseph Smith’s or the scribes’ part—that is, arraign was an unfamiliar word and was therefore replaced by the familiar verb reign, meaning ‘to rule as monarch’. Another possibility, suggested by Don Brugger, is that the scribe simply did not hear the unstressed initial vowel in arraigned and wrote reigned without considering the context. Of course, given the meaning of the verb reign, “to be reigned before the bar of Christ” is quite unacceptable. The 1830 compositor, John Gilbert, corrected reigned to arraigned in 𝓟 (his correction is in pencil), and that is what he set in the 1830 edition. (The compositor for the 1858 Wright edition set the word as arranged, but that was a simple typo resulting from him misreading his copytext, the 1840 edition.)
But there is another possibility here: the original text may have actually read raigned, which Joseph Smith read off correctly and which was then spelled as reigned by the scribes (perhaps in 𝓞, definitely in 𝓟). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, raign is a shortened form of the verb arraign that occurred in Early Modern English. The OED lists the following spellings for this form in the 15th and 16th centuries: reyne, reygne, rayne, raygne, reign, and rain (listed under the verbs arraign and raign). Citations of this usage range from 1444 to 1581, with the following examples that deal with religious subjects (original spellings retained):
The last example is striking in that it specifically refers to the day of judgment, just like Alma 11:44. One could argue that in Early Modern English arraign developed the shorten form raign under the influence of the independent verb reign, especially since both verbs deal with governing.
Thus scribe 2’s use of reigned in 𝓟 may represent this older, shortened form of the verb arraign rather than an error in the transmission of the text. As discussed under Mosiah 19:24 for the word ceremony (also see the general discussion on archaic vocabulary in volume 3), there is considerable evidence that the original vocabulary of the Book of Mormon dates from the 1500s and 1600s, a finding that supports the possibility that raigned could be the reading of the original text here in Alma 11:44. There are no other instances of the verb arraign (or raign) in the text, so we have no other specific evidence in the Book of Mormon to help us decide on how to treat this verb. Nor are there any verbs or nouns in the text for which an initial unstressed schwa vowel has been omitted or added in the manuscripts. There are, however, a few other words (adverbs and prepositions) that show the tendency to lose or add an initial unstressed a; in the following list, I give the passage here in volume 4 under which I discuss the variation:
again > gain 2 Nephi 5:11
against > gainst 2 Nephi 5:11
round > around 1 Nephi 8:13
Ultimately it is difficult to tell whether reigned in Alma 11:44 is a mistake for arraigned or whether it represents the older historical form raigned. The solution depends in large part on the degree to which we accept the argument that the vocabulary of the Book of Mormon text derives from Early Modern English. Since the evidence is convincing to me, I will follow the earliest textual sources here (namely, the printer’s manuscript) and assume that the original text used the shortened form raigned in Alma 11:44 rather than the expected arraigned. The possibility remains, of course, that reigned represents an error in the early transmission of the Book of Mormon text.
Summary: Accept in Alma 11:44 the historical form raigned for arraigned, thus restoring to the Book of Mormon one more instance of the archaic vocabulary of Early Modern English; another possibility is that reigned, the reading of the printer’s manuscript (the earliest extant textual source here), is simply an error for arraigned that entered the text during its early transmission, perhaps under the influence of the verb reign.