Alma 17:6 Textual Variants

Here the 1849 LDS edition accidentally omitted “of the reign”, thus showing that there might be some textual difficulty with retaining the long expression “in the Xth year of the reign of the judges”. In this case, the missing phrase “of the reign” has never been restored to the LDS text. Elsewhere the text definitely prefers the whole phrase “in the Xth year of the reign of the judges”, but there are two instances where the earliest extant text lacks the phrase “of the reign”. One is nearby in Alma 16:9: “and thus ended the eleventh year of the judges” (the reading in 𝓟 rather than 𝓞, which is not extant here). The other is in Alma 54:1; based on the extant portions of the manuscript there, 𝓞 must have at least read “in the commencement of the twenty and ninth year of the judges”. If 𝓞 originally had the phrase “of the reign” in Alma 54:1, it must have been supralinearly inserted at the end of a line. Unfortunately, that particular part of 𝓞 is not extant. Here in Alma 17:6, we have clear evidence of the tendency to omit the phrase “of the reign”. For another example of this problem with “of the reign”, see the discussion under Alma 4:20. For a complete discussion, see under Alma 54:1. The critical text will restore here in Alma 17:6 this instance of the phrase “of the reign”.