Alma 13:10 Textual Variants

Here it appears that Oliver Cowdery, when copying from the original manuscript to the printer’s manuscript, accidentally replaced their with the. In the original manuscript, the line ends with the, but there is clearly room at the beginning of the next line for the rest of the word (namely, -ir). Oliver frequently made errors trying to copy words at the end of the line (see the list of examples under Alma 11:21).

Here in Alma 13:10, the the was corrected to their in the 1837 edition, but this change was undoubtedly based on the obvious difficulty of the reading “on account of the exceeding faith and repentance” (there is no specific evidence that the original manuscript was ever consulted in the editing for the 1837 edition). Elsewhere in the text, whenever the text reads “the exceeding ” or “the exceeding ”, the noun is always postmodified by a relative clause or by a prepositional phrase headed by of:

• Mosiah 4:3 the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ
• Alma 7:4 the exceeding great joy of knowing that …
• Alma 7:26 the exceeding diligence and heed which ye have given unto my word
• Alma 36:24 the exceeding joy of which I did taste
• Alma 53:11 the exceeding love which Ammon and his brethren had had for them Alma 59:1 the exceeding success which Helaman had had in obtaining those lands
• Alma 60:11 the exceeding goodness of God
• Alma 62:41 the exceeding great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites
• Alma 62:41 the exceeding great length of the war
• Helaman 3:36 the exceeding great pride which had got into the hearts of the people Helaman 7:14 the exceeding sorrow of my heart
• Helaman 11:31 the exceeding greatness of the numbers of those robbers
• 3 Nephi 8:12 the exceeding great quaking of the whole earth

Thus it is highly likely that in Alma 13:10 the original text (and probably 𝓞 itself ) read “on account of their exceeding faith and repentance”.

Spacing between fragments of 𝓞 also supports the existence of an additional their before repentance; in other words, 𝓞 may have read “on account of their exceeding faith and their repentance and their righteousness before God” (that is, with a repeated their before both the second and third nouns). But nearby in Alma 12:30, we have “according to their faith and repentance and their holy works”, which shows that “faith and repentance” can co-occur without repeating the their before repentance. Other conjuncts of “faith and repentance” show a lack of conjunctive repetition—specifically, they lack the repeated preposition:

• Alma 22:14 through faith and repentance
• Helaman 6:4 to faith and repentance

Thus in Alma 13:10, it is probably best to follow the 1837 emended reading (with their before “exceeding faith and repentance”, but without any repeated their before repentance). It is also worth noting that Oliver Cowdery could have initially written their repentance in 𝓞 but ended up correcting the text by crossing out the their.