Alma 15:1 Textual Variants

Paul Huntzinger (personal communication, 29 February and 2 March 2004) has suggested a number of possible emendations here in Alma 15:1. The use of even seems rather odd here, as if there should be something special or unexpected about the land of Sidom. One possibility Huntzinger suggests is that even may be a visual error for over, with even entering the text as Oliver Cowdery copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟. In other words, we have the following possible emendation for Alma 15:1:

and they departed and came out over into the land of Sidom

There is some manuscript evidence that the scribes occasionally misread even as over when they copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟 (although there are no examples of over being misread as even):

• Alma 3:13 (even miswritten as over by scribe 2 of 𝓟)
  • yea they set the mark upon themselves yea [𝓢① over > 𝓢② oven > even 1|even ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] a mark of red upon their foreheads
• Alma 46:7 (even initially miswritten as over by Oliver Cowdery in 𝓟)
  • therefore they dissented [even 0ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST|over > even 1] from the church

There are also passages which support the phraseology “to come over into the land of X”:

• Alma 21:12 they departed and came over into the land of Middoni
• Alma 30:21 he came over into the land of Gideon
• Alma 35:1 they withdrew themselves from the multitude and came over into the land of Jershon
• Alma 35:2 and the rest of the brethren … also came over into the land of Jershon
• Alma 35:6 and they came over also into the land of Jershon
• Alma 35:13 and the people of Ammon departed out of the land of Jershon and came over into the land of Melek
• Alma 43:24 that they might come over into the land of Manti
• Alma 47:29 they were frightened again and fled into the wilderness and came over into the land of Zarahemla

Two of these examples (Alma 21:12 and Alma 35:13) indicate that a group of people “departed and came over into the land of X”, which is close in phraseology to Alma 15:1. Yet all of these other examples suggest that the occurrence of out in the emended “they departed and came out over into the land of X” is not quite right since there are no examples in the text of the rather strange “to come out over into the land of X”.

One way to view even here in Alma 15:1 is that it implies that Alma and Amulek went some distance, perhaps further than what one might have normally expected. Thus we could interpret this clause with even as meaning something like ‘they went all the way to Sidom’. The word even is used with the meaning ‘all the way’ or ‘as far as’ elsewhere in the Book of Mormon text:

• Alma 54:12
  • and I will follow you even into your own land
• Alma 60:30
  • behold I come unto you even into the land of Zarahemla
• Helaman 4:5–6
  • they succeeded in obtaining possession of the land of Zarahemla yea and also all the lands even unto the land which was near the land Bountiful and the Nephites and the armies of Moronihah were driven even into the land of Bountiful
• Mormon 1:6
  • and it came to pass that I being eleven years old was carried by my father into the land southward even to the land of Zarahemla
• Mormon 2:16
  • the Nephites did begin to flee before the Lamanites and they were pursued until they came even to the land of Jashon before it were possible to stop them in their retreat
• Ether 2:7
  • and the Lord would not suffer that they should stop beyond the sea in the wilderness but he would that they should come forth even unto the land of promise which was choice above all other lands

We find similar usage in the King James Bible:

• Samuel 27:8
  • for those nations were of old the inhabitants of the land as thou goest to Shur even unto the land of Egypt
• Chronicles 9:26
  • and he reigned over all the kings from the river even unto the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt

In these biblical cases, the corresponding Hebrew word for even (namely, fiad ) means ‘as far as’. Thus the use of even in Alma 15:1 may not be all that difficult.

Another possibility suggested by Huntzinger is that even is correct in Alma 15:1 but that the phrase “(out) of the land” was accidentally omitted during the early transmission of the text; there are two places where that phrase could have originally occurred in Alma 15:1, giving two additional emendations to consider:

and they departed out of the land and came out even into the land of Sidom
and they departed and came out of the land even into the land of Sidom

Note that earlier in this passage Oliver initially wrote the following in 𝓟: “Alma and Amulek were commanded to depart out of the land”. But then virtually immediately he corrected the land to that city. (Oliver overwrote the e of the the with an a, inserted inline the final t of that, crossed out the word land, and supralinearly inserted city. The level of ink flow for the a that overwrites the e is somewhat heavier, but the ink flow for the rest of the correction appears unchanged. Perhaps Oliver redipped his quill just before correcting the e to a.) One could explain this anticipatory error of the land in 𝓟 as the result of the following “even into the land of Sidom”. But it is also possible that the error could have come from a following occurrence of “(out) of the land”, now lost from the text. The critical text, however, will maintain the earliest text for Alma 15:1, despite its unusualness. There may be some sort of early error here, but it is not readily recoverable. Nor is the original text all that problematic.