Alma 17:6 Textual Variants

In the printer’s manuscript, Joseph Smith deleted the plural s in minds in his editing for the 1837 edition, but this change was not implemented in that edition. The 1908 RLDS edition, however, adopted the change to the singular mind since it had been marked in 𝓟. With regard to the 1837 edition itself, perhaps Joseph changed his mind and decided to leave the plural minds. Elsewhere the text consistently refers to “the minds of the people”, never to “the mind of the people”:

• Jarom 1:3
  • behold it is expedient that much should be done among this people because of the hardness of their hearts and the deafness of their ears and the blindness of their minds and the stiffness of their necks
• Alma 11:4
  • but they altered their reckoning and their measure according to the minds and the circumstances of the people in every generation
• Alma 14:6
  • and he also knew concerning the blindness of the minds which he had caused among the people by his lying words
• Alma 31:5
  • yea it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people
• Alma 35:5–6 (two times)
  • therefore they found out privily the minds of all the people and it came to pass that after they had found out the minds of all the people ...
• Alma 39:16
  • this was the ministry unto which ye were called to declare these glad tidings unto this people to prepare their minds ...
• Alma 48:7
  • Moroni on the other hand had been a preparing the minds of the people to be faithful unto the Lord their God
• 3 Nephi 2:1
  • and the people began to forget those signs and wonders … insomuch that they began to be hard in their hearts and blind in their minds
• Ether 15:19
  • and Satan had full power over the hearts of the people for they were given up unto the hardness of their hearts and the blindness of their minds that they might be destroyed

In none of these other examples did Joseph ever emend minds to mind. One possible motivation for the singular mind in Alma 17:6 could have been the preceding singular subject and verb forms, this and was (“and also this was the minds of the people”). In other words, perhaps Joseph initially emended minds to mind in Alma 17:6 in order to avoid the clash in number between this was and minds. In any event, the critical text will maintain in Alma 17:6 the use of the plural minds, the earliest reading; such plural usage is found consistently elsewhere in the Book of Mormon.