Alma 32:30 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
but behold as the seed swelleth and sprouteth and beginneth to grow [so > & 0|& >js NULL 1|and A| BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] then ye must needs say that the seed is good

Initially, Oliver Cowdery wrote so as the connector between the as-clause and its following main clause (thus “so then ye must needs say”). Actually, there are no instances of so then as a connector in the entire Book of Mormon text. Here Oliver replaced the so with and (written as an ampersand), thus ending up with one more example of the Hebrew-like (and non-English) use of and after a sentence-initial subordinate clause. In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith removed this and. For other examples of original and following an as-clause, see under 1 Nephi 8:13 and 1 Nephi 16:10. For a complete list of this Hebrew-like construction, now generally removed from the text, see under hebraisms in volume 3. Also see under verses 38 and 41 in this chapter for other examples of this non-English use of and but with different subordinate conjunctions (when and if ).

Summary: Restore the Hebraistic use of and after the as-clause in Alma 32:30.

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

References