Alma 14:18 Textual Variants

Douglas Stringer (personal communication, 2 November 2003) suggests that in this passage the preposition with would work better than about. From a textual point of view, there is no variation in the manuscripts or in the editions to support the accidental replacement of an original with by about, nor is there any linguistic evidence to support interpreting about as meaning ‘with’. It is possible, however, that here in Alma 14:18 words has the Hebraistic meaning ‘things’, so that the sentence means ‘they questioned them about many things’ (see any standard dictionary of biblical Hebrew under dabar for the meaning ‘thing’). Moreover, there are a number of cases in the transmission of the Book of Mormon text where words and things have been mixed up (see the list under 1 Nephi 3:28). In addition, there is at least one other case where words appears to mean ‘things about which one speaks’:

• 1 Nephi 8:36
  • and it came to pass that after my father had spoken all the words of his dream or vision which were many he said unto us because of these things which he saw in a vision he exceedingly feared for Laman and Lemuel

See definition IV for dabar in Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952). Thus it may be more reasonable to interpret words in Alma 14:18 as meaning ‘things’ rather than considering about as an error for an original with or proposing that about means ‘with’.