Alma 17:15 Textual Variants

Here the 1920 LDS edition removed the comma after notwithstanding, thus creating a sentence fragment. It actually turns out that the semicolon preceding notwithstanding should be replaced by a comma. In the original text, the word notwithstanding consistently acts as a narrative connector rather than as an adverb. In other words, notwithstanding and its complement are always attached to a main clause; notwithstanding never acts alone without a complement (even though the original punctuation in Alma 17:15 with the comma after notwithstanding implies it could). In the original text, we have the following statistics for each type of complement after notwithstanding:

complement type  number of occurrences  (and an example)

finite clause 12 “notwithstanding they believed in a Great Spirit” (Alma 18:5)

that + finite clause 2 “notwithstanding that they have been carried away” (2 Nephi 25:11)

nonfinite clause 7 “notwithstanding there being many churches” (Mosiah 25:22)

noun phrase 46 “notwithstanding all their persecutions” (Alma 1:28)

For the two cases of “that <finite clause>”, the subordinate conjunction that was removed in the editing for the 1837 edition; see the discussion under 2 Nephi 25:11 and 3 Nephi 16:8. Included in the list of noun-phrase complements is one original case of nevertheless notwithstanding for which the notwithstanding was deleted, again in the editing for the 1837 edition (see under 2 Nephi 4:17).

In all these cases but three, the punctuation for notwithstanding has been assigned in the printed editions so that the associated main clause is correctly identified. Besides the need here in Alma 17:15 to replace the semicolon before notwithstanding with a comma, there are two additional cases that should be considered; in both cases, there has been some ambiguity as to which main clause, the preceding or the following, should be associated with the notwithstanding clause:

• Helaman 12:6
  • behold they do not desire that the Lord their God who hath created them should rule and reign over them [ 1|, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ|; RST] notwithstanding his great goodness and his mercy towards them [ 1|; ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|, RT] they do set at naught his counsels and they will not that he should be their guide
• 3 Nephi 7:11
  • nevertheless they were enemies [ 1|, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|; RT] notwithstanding they were not a righteous people [ 1|; ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|, RT] yet they were united in the hatred of those who had entered into a covenant to destroy the government

In both cases, the 1920 LDS edition changed the punctuation so that the associated main clause would follow rather than precede the notwithstanding clause (see under each of these passages for discussion as to which interpretation is correct). For the first example (Helaman 12:6), unlike the result of the LDS editing, the 1953 RLDS edition ended up isolating the notwithstanding clause by surrounding it with semicolons. As already noted, notwithstanding clauses are never stranded in the Book of Mormon text.