Alma 28:8 Textual Variants

Joanne Case suggests (personal communication, 14 September 2004) that “the brethren” here might be an error for “their brethren”. In support of this emendation, there are a considerable number of cases where their and the were mixed up during the transmission of the text in the manuscripts. See, for instance, the nearby discussion under Alma 27:23 where many examples are listed of Oliver Cowdery’s tendency in the manuscripts to write the instead of their. 𝓞 is not extant here in Alma 28:8, but the lacuna is large enough here that either their or the will fit.

The reference to “the brethren” here in Alma 28:8 is, of course, to the people of Ammon, earlier known as the Anti-Nephi-Lehies (see Alma 27:26). In previous passages, the text uses the word brethren to refer to these Lamanite converts, but always with a possessive pronoun modifying brethren:

• Alma 26:3 for our brethren the Lamanites were in darkness
• Alma 26:9 these our dearly beloved brethren ... would still have been racked with hatred against us
• Alma 26:13 how many thousands of our brethren hath he loosed from the pains of hell
• Alma 26:14 for he … has loosed these our brethren from the chains of hell
• Alma 26:22 to bring these our brethren to repentance
• Alma 27:21 concerning the admitting their brethren which were the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi

Thus the emendation of “the brethren” to “their brethren” has considerable merit.

The text also refers to these people as “the people of Ammon” (19 times, beginning at Alma 27:26), but never as “the brethren of Ammon”, so we should probably not assume that “the brethren” in Alma 28:8 is an error for “the brethren of Ammon”. (Under this hypothesis, “of Ammon” would have been accidentally omitted or supralinearly inserted in 𝓞.)

There are two other instances of the unmodified phrase “the brethren” elsewhere in the text:

• Mosiah 26:5 because of the dissensions among the brethren
• Alma 35:2 the rest of the brethren … also came over into the land of Jershon

The first case of “the brethren” refers to the brethren of the church; the second refers to missionaries. But “the brethren” here in Alma 28:8 does not have to be analyzed as an unmodified noun phrase. Instead, “the brethren” can be interpreted as a noun phrase postmodified by “in the land of Jershon”; that is, the text is not referring to these people’s “reception and safety … in the land of Jershon”, but to the “reception and safety of the brethren [who now live] in the land of Jershon”. Since this interpretation is possible, the critical text will maintain the use of “the brethren” in Alma 28:8. Even so, there may be a primitive error in the text, with an original “their brethren” being replaced by “the brethren”.