Alma 34:11 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
now there is not any man that can sacrifice his own blood which will atone for [NULL > the sins of 0|the sins of 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] another

Here Oliver Cowdery initially wrote “which will atone for another”; then virtually immediately he supralinearly inserted “the sins of ” (there is no change in the level of ink flow). Elsewhere the text consistently uses the verb phraseology “to atone for sins” (seven times), never “to atone for a person”. In fact, there are two other passages that specifically refer to blood as atoning for sins:

Here in Alma 34:11, the critical text will follow the corrected reading in 𝓞.

Summary: Maintain in Alma 34:11 the corrected reading in 𝓞, “his own blood which will atone for the sins of another”.

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

References