Alma 46:12 Textual Variants

The word thereof occurred 160 times in the original text of the Book of Mormon. The word is also very prominent in the King James Bible, occurring there 908 times. The purpose of thereof after a noun is to refer to some antecedent noun. There are examples in the Book of Mormon text where thereof means ‘of it’, ‘of them’, and even ‘of him’:

• 1 Nephi 4:9 and I beheld his sword and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof
• 1 Nephi 18:15 and also mine ankles were much swollen and great was the soreness thereof
• Ether 14:16 the brother of Lib did come against Coriantumr in the stead thereof

Here at the beginning of Alma 46:12, the thereof after piece refers to the preceding “his coat”—in other words, the reading is equivalent to “he took a piece of it” or, more specifically, “he took a piece of his coat”. The problem later on in verse 12 is that the original thereof postmodifies a pole in the phrase “upon the end of a pole”, but there is no preceding noun referent for thereof. It’s as if the text were referring to “a pole of something”. The thereof would have worked here if the text had read something like “he took a pole and he fastened the rent piece of his coat to the end thereof”, where thereof would mean ‘of the pole’. In fact, this basic usage is found in the very next verse: “and he took the pole which had on the end thereof his rent coat” (Alma 46:13). But here in verse 12, “of a pole” immediately precedes the thereof, making the thereof seemingly unnecessary, so it was removed in the editing for the 1920 LDS edition.

One possible source for the extra thereof in Alma 46:12 is the thereof in the preceding sentence “and he took a piece thereof and wrote upon it”. Oliver Cowdery—or perhaps Joseph Smith in his dictation—may have gotten used to the thereof, with the result that one of them accidentally added it after pole. Yet there is considerable evidence elsewhere in the text for seemingly vacuous or redundant uses of thereof. Here are five other unattached instances of thereof that were deleted in the editing for the 1920 LDS edition:

• Helaman 14:23
  • and there shall be many places which are now called valleys which shall become mountains whose heighth [thereof 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS| RT] is great
• 3 Nephi 8:10
  • and the earth was carried up upon the city of Moronihah that in the place of the city [thereof 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS| RT] there became a great mountain
• Ether 6:2
  • and he did put forth the stones into the vessels which were prepared one in each end thereof and behold they did give light unto the vessels [thereof 01ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS| RT]
• Ether 14:2
  • and every man kept the hilt of his sword [thereof 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS| RT] in his right hand in the defense of his property and his own life and …
• Ether 14:17
  • and he did overthrow many cites and he did slay both men women and children and he did burn the cities [thereof 01ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQS| RT]

In the first example, the thereof is redundant since the relative clause already has a possessive, namely, the relative pronoun whose (“whose heighth thereof is great”). In the four other cases, there is no obvious antecedent for the thereof (although in the last case “the cities thereof ” could mean ‘the cities of those men women and children’). In the case of Ether 6:2, there is a preceding thereof that could have prompted the following thereof (just like potentially here in Alma 46:12).

There are two other instances in the text of thereof for which there is no explicit antecedent. In one case, the text itself corrects the reading by means of a yea-clause:

• 3 Nephi 4:11
  • and the battle commenced in this the sixth month and great and terrible was the battle thereof yea great and terrible was the slaughter thereof

In this example, there is no distinguishing antecedent for the first thereof. In fact, it is a mistake that Mormon himself introduced into the text. He wanted to refer to the slaughter of the battle, but he first referred to “the battle thereof ” (that is, “the battle of the battle”), thus the need for his correcting yea-clause (“yea great and terrible was the slaughter thereof”). Thus the original text itself can have misuses of thereof, even if corrected. The critical text will therefore restore all the original instances of thereof, despite their redundancy or their lack of a distinct referent.

In the other case of thereof without an explicit antecedent, there is an actual referent (unlike the first thereof in 3 Nephi 4:11):

• Alma 30:18
  • and thus he did preach unto them leading away the hearts of many causing them to lift up their heads in their wickedness yea leading away many women and also men to commit whoredoms telling them that when a man was dead that was the end thereof

In other words, “that was the end of it”, the end of existence.

The 1920 LDS edition also eliminated four other instances of thereof, in Ether 2:20. In that one verse, the original thereof ’s have the antecedent barge or barges (which is referred to somewhat earlier in the passage, in verse 18). The multiple, seemingly excessive, use of thereof in Ether 2:20 may have led to the removal of these four thereof ’s. In other words, the issue in Ether 2:20 may have been stylistic rather than grammatical. See under that passage for discussion. For another example where thereof was removed, this time by Joseph Smith in his editing for the 1837 edition, see under Jacob 5:48.