Alma 26:19–20 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
O then why did he not consign us to an awful destruction yea why did he not let the sword of his justice fall upon us and doom us to eternal despair O my soul almost as it were fleeth [at 01ABCDEFIJLMNOPQRST|from GHK] the thought

In this passage, the 1858 Wright edition replaced the preposition at with from; the RLDS text followed this reading until the 1908 RLDS edition restored the original at, probably by reference to 𝓟. Here Ammon is saying that the thought that God could have condemned them to eternal destruction almost makes his soul flee. This reference to his soul fleeing seems to mean that this thought made him feel almost like dying or fainting. Ammon is definitely not saying that his soul was trying to flee away from the thought. A similar expression of this idea is found in Alma 29:16: “my soul is carried away even to the separation of it from the body as it were”.

Summary: Maintain in Alma 26:20 the original preposition at in “O my soul almost as it were fleeth at the thought”.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 4

References