Alma 46:40 Textual Variants

In this passage, the earliest extant text (in the manuscripts and the 1830 edition) read “to remove the cause of diseases which was subsequent to man by the nature of the climate”. The meaning here is fairly clear: man was subject to these diseases because of the climate. Yet the Oxford English Dictionary lists no meaning for subsequent that seems to work here; the definitions listed there deal with time exclusively, never with cause or logical relationship. But there is a related adjective, consequent, that will work. The OED defines consequent as ‘following as an effect or result’ (definition 1a). Literature Online provides the following relevant example, found in notes to Alexander Pope’s 1715 translation of the Iliad of Homer (original capitalization retained):

And certainly Gods of human Shape cannot justly be esteemed or described otherwise, than as a celestial Race, superior only to mortal Men by greater Abilities, and a more extensive Degree of Wisdom and Strength, subject however to the necessary Inconveniencies consequent to corporeal Beings.

So one possibility is that the original text in Alma 46:40 actually read consequent (“to remove the cause of diseases which was consequent to man by the nature of the climate”) and that because of the unfamiliarity of this word Joseph Smith or Oliver Cowdery replaced consequent with subsequent during the dictation of the text. There is, as one might imagine, not much evidence for this kind of transmission error in the text, especially since neither word occurs elsewhere in the text. Perhaps because the meaning of the infinitive clause would have suggested the phrase “be subject to”, the initial syllable con in consequent could have been replaced with sub, the initial syllable of subject, giving subsequent.

Another possibility is that the word subsequent, despite the OED definitions, may have had a more general meaning here in Alma 46:40, one not restricted to the sequencing of events. We have already seen such a case with the verb retain as used in the Book of Mormon, with its meaning ‘to take back’ as well as ‘to keep’. There are enough examples in the original text where retain means ‘to take back’ that we are forced to accept that meaning, despite the fact that it is not found in the OED (see the discussion under Alma 44:11). Similarly, subsequent may simply have a more general meaning in the Book of Mormon, one that refers not only to time but also to causal relationships. It should also be pointed out that the OED lists a third adjective that may be relevant here, namely, the base adjective sequent, which has either meaning, at least in Early Modern English: ‘that succeeds or is subsequent in time or serial order’ (definition 1b) and ‘that follows as a result or a logical conclusion’ (definition 2). The word subsequent may have had either of these meanings, so the occurrence of subsequent in the earliest reading in the Book of Mormon may not be an error for consequent; it may simply mean ‘consequent’. It is worth noting that consequent itself had the meaning ‘subsequent’ in Early Modern English; the OED (under definition 3 for the adjective consequent) lists citations with this (now obsolete) meaning from 1475 through 1742. Thus subsequent and consequent could have been used interchangeably in Early Modern English.

Because of its unusual use of the word subsequent, the Book of Mormon text has been emended to a semantically similar construction based on the verb phrase “be subject to”. Of course, this change requires making man (or men) the subject of the clause. In his editing of 𝓟 for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith replaced subsequent with subject and crossed out to man, but he neglected to insert man along with the preposition to at the front of the clause. As a result of Joseph’s editing, 𝓟 reads “to remove the cause of diseases which was subject by the nature of the climate”, which makes no sense. In the 1837 edition, the text ends up reading “to remove the cause of diseases to which men was subject by the nature of the climate”). But the singular was was not changed, thus allowing men was, a violation (at least in standard English) of subject-verb agreement. In the 1840 edition, the grammatical difficulty was eliminated by changing the men was to men were (“to remove the cause of diseases to which men were subject by the nature of the climate”). The 1908 RLDS edition took the opposite approach and restored the singular man (“to remove the cause of diseases to which man was subject by the nature of the climate”).

The critical text will restore in Alma 46:40 the original phraseology with its use of the word subsequent: “to remove the cause of diseases which was subsequent to man by the nature of the climate”. The understanding here is that subsequent means ‘consequent’. The possibility remains that subsequent is actually an error for consequent, influenced by the common phrase “be subject to”.