Alma 45:21 Textual Variants

Here in the original manuscript, Oliver Cowdery wrote a very strange clause, “they had become exceeding dissenting” (although the last word, seemingly spelled as desenting, is written quite unclearly and unevenly). Oliver immediately crossed this whole clause out and then continued inline with the correct text, “and the many little dissensions and disturbances which had been among the people”. His mistake was influenced, in part, by the following noun dissensions; perhaps the later use of became expedient (“it became expedient that …”) led him to write the similarsounding become exceeding in 𝓞. Ultimately, what we appear to have here is a case of Oliver starting to fall asleep as he took down Joseph’s dictation (perhaps nodding off as he wrote, with very little control, the last word, desenting). His mind seems to have created an impossible clause, one that he crossed out as soon as he realized his scribal lapse.

Support for this interpretation can be found in the very next verse, where Joseph Smith had to take over for Oliver Cowdery. There Joseph ended up writing down 28 words in his own hand (given here in bold):

• Alma 45:22 (original accidentals in 𝓞 retained)
  • therfore Helaman & his Brethren went forth to establish the church again in all the land yea in every citty throughout all the land which was possessed by the people of Nephi and it came to pass that they did appoint priests and teachers throughout all the land over all the churches

The reason Joseph wrote down this small portion of text may be because he had to finish writing down what he was viewing before he too could take a break (apparently the text he was viewing could cut off at the end of a phrase in the middle of a sentence). For this argument about the translation process (as well as another possible interpretation for why Joseph took over as scribe here), see pages 71–75 of Royal Skousen, “Translating the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript”, in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins, edited by Noel B. Reynolds (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1997), 61–93.