Alma 17:34 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
therefore they did as Ammon [had 1| ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] commanded them

The 1830 typesetter deleted the perfective had, probably by accident. Elsewhere in the text, after “did (do) … as” and before commanded, used in the active, there are six occurrences with had and two without:

(Also see the discussion under Omni 1:13, where the had was momentarily lost when copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟.) Since either reading (with or without the had ) is possible, the critical text will accept in Alma 17:34 the reading with the had (the reading of the earliest extant source, the printer’s manuscript).

Summary: Restore the perfective had in Alma 17:34, the reading in 𝓟: “therefore they did as Ammon had commanded them”.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 3

References