Alma 13:20 Textual Variants

Although 𝓞 is not extant here, it probably read arrest (spelled as arest) rather than wrest. This is the first word that Oliver Cowdery wrote in 𝓟 when he took over for scribe 2 in Alma 13:20. Most probably, Oliver was the scribe in 𝓞 since earlier fragments in this chapter (down to verse 16) are in his hand. Oliver wrote arrest (again spelled with one r) in place of wrest one other place in the text:

• Alma 41:1
  • for behold some have [arested 0|arested >js wrestid 1|arrested A| wrested BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] the scriptures and have gone far astray because of this thing

In this instance, 𝓞 is extant and is in Oliver’s hand.

As explained under Jacob 6:13, Oliver Cowdery was sometimes unfamiliar with certain words in the text, leading him to replace those words with more familiar ones that nonetheless made little sense. Here in the book of Alma, he twice replaced the verb wrest with arrest, even though “arresting the scriptures” makes virtually no sense at all. Oliver was apparently unfamiliar with the reference to “wresting the scriptures” in the King James Bible:

• 2 Peter 3:15–16
  • even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you as also in all his epistles speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to be understood which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest as they do also the other scriptures unto their own destruction

The archaic verb wrest is historically related to the word wrestle and means ‘to twist’ (see under the verbs wrest and wrestle in the Oxford English Dictionary).

For both instances of arrest, the 1830 compositor set arrest, thus failing to correctly interpret the word as wrest. Perhaps he too was unfamiliar with the word wrest. In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith recognized that the intended word was wrest; his correction has been followed in all printed editions since 1837. The critical text will, of course, accept this emendation in Alma 13:20 and Alma 41:1.