Alma 43:24 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
that they might commence an attackt upon the [more weak 01ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS|weaker RT] part of the people

The word attack always appears in extant portions of 𝓞 with an extra t at the end of the word, spelled as either attackt or attact. And in most cases, Oliver Cowdery copied the word as attackt into 𝓟. The 1830 typesetter consistently removed this dialectal form from the text. As explained under Alma 49:10, the critical text will systematically restore the dialectal attackt to the text, although it is possible that this form of the word is a result of dialectal overlay (that is, Joseph Smith could have consistently misread the word attack as attackt.

Originally this passage here in Alma 43:24 had the nonstandard comparative form, more weak. The 1920 LDS edition replaced more weak with weaker. Elsewhere in the text, there are no other examples of weaker or more weak, but there are three examples of the superlative weakest (yet none of most weak). Thus the 1920 change to weaker is consistent with the superlative usage in the text, weakest.

There are two other places where the original text uses the periphrastic more or most for comparison, but both instances have been edited, again in the 1920 LDS edition, to the appropriate inflectional form, ending in either -er or -est:

When we consider the rest of the text for the adjective strong, we find six instances of stronger and three of strongest in the original text but none of strong with more or most, so once more the change to the inflectional form strongest is consistent with usage elsewhere in the text. On the other hand, there are no more occurrences in the text of the comparative or superlative for the adjective short. Of course, the 1920 change from more short to shorter was based not on usage elsewhere in the text but on modern English usage.

There are other cases in the Book of Mormon of periphrastic comparison where modern readers might expect inflectional comparison, yet none of these have been edited:

All of the examples, both edited and unedited, show that the original Book of Mormon text had a stronger tendency towards the periphrastic more and most than what we might expect in modern English. In each case, the critical text will follow the earliest textual sources in determining the appropriate type of comparison, thus more weak in Alma 43:24, most strong in Alma 49:20, and more short in 3 Nephi 5:9 (as well as in other instances, listed above, that have never been edited). For further discussion, see under comparison of adjectives in volume 3.

Summary: Restore all original instances of the periphrastic comparative that have been edited to the corresponding inflectional comparative (namely, more weak in Alma 43:24, most strong in Alma 49:20, and more short in 3 Nephi 5:9).

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

References