do ye suppose that ye can convince the Lamanites of the incorrectness of the traditions of their fathers as stiff-necked a people as they are whose hearts delighteth in the shedding of blood whose
days have been spent in the grossest iniquity [& >% whose 0|whose 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] ways have been the ways of a transgressor from the beginning
Here in the original text we apparently have a sequence of three relative clauses without any connectives. Before the last relative clause, Oliver Cowdery initially wrote an and in 𝓞 (as
an ampersand), then immediately erased it and wrote whose inline, with the w overwriting the original &. Elsewhere in the text, we can find other asyndetic conjuncts
of relative clauses, as in the following examples from the original text where two relative clauses are joined:
- 2 Nephi 9:9 (who refers to that being)
- yea to that being who beguiled our first parents who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light
- Alma 7:14 (which refers to the Lamb of God )
- that ye may have faith on the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world which is mighty to save and to cleanse from all unrighteousness
- Alma 10:3 (who refers to Lehi )
- and Aminadi was a descendant of Nephi who was the son of Lehi who came out of the land of Jerusalem who was a descendant of Manasseh …
To get asyndetic cases involving more than two relative clauses, we turn to examples from the King James Bible that are quoted or paraphrased in the Book of Mormon:
- Mosiah 12:21 (quoting Isaiah 52:7), similarly 3 Nephi 20:40
- how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings that publisheth peace that bringeth good tidings of good
that publisheth salvation that saith unto Zion : thy God reigneth
- Mosiah 15:14 (closely paraphrasing Isaiah 52:7)
- and these are they which hath published peace that hath brought good tidings of good that hath published salvation that
saith unto Zion : thy God reigneth
Thus the correcting and is not necessary in Alma 26:24. The critical text will follow the immediately corrected reading in 𝓞, which removed the and.
