Alma 12:10 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
and therefore he that will harden his heart the same receiveth the lesser portion of the word and he that will not harden his heart to him is given the greater portion of the word until it is given unto him to know the mysteries of God until they [knew 1|know ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] them in full

Here in the printer’s manuscript, scribe 2 wrote “until they knew them in full”, yet the rest of the larger passage is in the present tense, in particular in the parallel construction in the following verse:

Thus the 1830 typesetter replaced knew with the present-tense know in the preceding verse.

There are other examples of difficulties between know and knew in the transmission of the text, including this instance in 𝓟 where Oliver Cowdery himself miswrote know as knew but caught his error and corrected it:

For other examples of textually significant mix-ups between know and knew, see under Alma 38:4 and Helaman 9:36. The critical text will accept the 1830 emendation of knew to know in Alma 12:10; the original text here most probably read “until they know them in full”.

Summary: Accept in Alma 12:10 the 1830 emendation of knew to know (“until they know them in full”); the context argues for the present-tense form of the verb.

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

References