Alma 31:22 Textual Variants

The original manuscript has the past perfect “he had not led them away”. Later, as Oliver Cowdery was copying the text into the printer’s manuscript, he switched to a new page of 𝓟. Here his short-term memory failed to retain the original reading, and he accidentally replaced the past perfect with the past tense, thus “he did not lead them away ”. His error may have been influenced by the past-tense were in the immediately preceding “they were chosen of him”.

This change makes a difference in the time aspect for this passage. If the passage were revised as a direct quotation, we would get something like the following for the original reading:

• Alma 31:22 (original text revised as a direct quote)
  • now from this stand they did offer up every man the selfsame prayer unto God / thanking their God : “we are chosen of him and he has not led us away after the tradition of our brethren”

If we followed the reading in 𝓟 (“did not lead them away”), the direct quotation would read something like “we are chosen of him and he does not lead us away”. These Zoramites have already rejected the tradition of their brethren, so there is no longer any chance that they would be led away (or so they claim). Thus the perfect is expected. Note, in addition, that when the Zoramites’ prayer is directly quoted earlier in this chapter, there are many instances of the perfect auxiliary have but in the present tense since the quotation is direct:

• Alma 31:16–17
  • we believe that thou hast separated us from our brethren … but we believe that thou hast elected us to be thy holy children and also thou hast made it known unto us that there shall be no Christ … and thou hast elected us that we shall be saved … and we also thank thee that thou hast elected us

Thus the use of the past-tense perfect in “and that he had not led us away” is perfectly acceptable in the indirect quotation in verse 22. The critical text will restore the original reading.