Alma 28:1 Textual Variants

There is no evidence in the original manuscript for a supralinearly inserted “of Jershon” after the second “in the land” in this verse. Here Oliver Cowdery added the “of Jershon” in 𝓟 as he copied from 𝓞. One possibility is that “of Jershon” should have been in the original manuscript but was accidentally skipped as Oliver was taking down Joseph Smith’s dictation. The other possibility is that there was no need for Oliver to add the words in the printer’s manuscript but that he did so because the fuller phrase “the land of Jershon” occurs in both the immediately preceding and following clauses (“after the people of Ammon were established in the land of Jershon … and the armies of the Nephites were set round about the land of Jershon”).

There are a couple of other examples where the text first refers to “the land of X” and then immediately thereafter to the same land as simply “the land”:

• Alma 15:13
  • and Alma established a church in the land of Sidom and consecrated priests and teachers in the land to baptize unto the Lord whosoever were desirous to be baptized
• Alma 28:8
  • and this is the account of Ammon and his brethren their journeyings into the land of Nephi their sufferings in the land their sorrows and their afflictions

Thus the original reading in Alma 28:1, “and a church also established in the land” (that is, without any “of Jershon” after land ), is quite possible. The critical text will here restore the earliest text, the reading in 𝓞.

We also note that in the last instance of “the land of Jershon” the 1874 RLDS edition omitted the of; later the 1908 RLDS edition restored the of to the RLDS text. As discussed under Alma 27:22–24, either “land of Jershon” or “land Jershon” is possible; so in each instance we follow the earliest textual sources, thus “the armies of the Nephites were set round about the land of Jershon” here in Alma 28:1.