Alma 45:11 Textual Variants

The original manuscript reads “famine and bloodshed”, that is, as two conjoined singular nouns. The e at the end of famine is, however, defective and looks like an undotted i or a partially formed s. While copying to the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery interpreted this defective e in 𝓞 as an s; that is, he read famine as famins, which he then copied into 𝓟 as famines.

Oliver Cowdery also initially wrote the singular bloodshed as bloodsheds in 𝓟. But since 𝓞 has the singular reading bloodshed (spelled as two words, blood shed ), Oliver erased the plural s in 𝓟, thus restoring the original singular bloodshed. For more on the variation in grammatical number for bloodshed(s), see under 2 Nephi 10:6.

One might ask if the ill-formed famine in the original manuscript could actually be read as famins, a plural misspelling for famines. If it is, this spelling would be unique for all of Oliver Cowdery’s spellings of famine(s) elsewhere in the two manuscripts. Scribe 3 of 𝓞 spelled famine as fammin in 1 Nephi 5:14 (that is, without a final e ). Elsewhere in the extant portions of 𝓞, there are two other occurrences of famine, both written by Oliver Cowdery and spelled with the final e (in Alma 53:7 and Alma 62:39). In the printer’s manuscript, we have 32 occurrences of famine(s), all but three in Oliver Cowdery’s hand, and each is spelled correctly. So there is simply no independent evidence in the two manuscripts for Oliver ever misspelling famine(s) as famin(s)—in fact, he never misspells the word at all.

There is evidence elsewhere in the text for both singular famine and plural famines. Excluding the case here in Alma 45:11, there are 29 instances of singular famine in the text. There are only two instances of plural famines in the text, and in each case famines occurs only as a conjunct with other plural nouns:

• 2 Nephi 10:6 destructions famines pestilences and bloodsheds shall come upon them
• Ether 11:7 there began to be wars and contentions in all the land and also many famines and pestilences

Thus internal evidence also supports the reading “famine and bloodshed” as the original reading here in Alma 45:11.