Alma 46:22 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
yea he may cast us at the feet of our enemies even as we have cast our garments at thy feet to be trodden under foot if we [should 01|shall ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] fall into transgression

The 1830 edition replaced the modal should with shall, probably under the influence of the nearly parallel phraseology earlier in this verse:

However, earlier in this passage (in the immediately preceding verse), we find should used with the phrase “fall into transgression”:

Note here that the occurrence of should (the first should in verse 21) extends to the following conjoined predicate (“if they should … fall into transgression”). In other words, we have more than one example in the original text of “ should fall into transgression” within the larger passage.

It is worth noting here that this 1830 error was not caught when the 1830 sheet (the 22nd signature) was proofed against 𝓞 (as discussed under Alma 42:31). For another instance where the 1830 typesetter replaced should with shall, see under 2 Nephi 25:19; for other cases where shall and should have been mixed up in the history of the text, see under modals in volume 3.

Summary: Restore in Alma 46:22 the original should at the end of the verse (“if we should fall into transgression”) while maintaining the shall earlier on in the verse (“if we shall fall into transgression”); in general, either reading is possible, so in each case we follow the earliest textual sources.

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

References