Alma 47:27 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
[whosoever 01BDEFIJLMNOS|Whosoever AHKPQRT|whomsoever CG] [loved 01ABCDEFGIJLMNOPQRST|loveth HK] the king let him go forth and pursue his servants

In this passage we have two minor changes in the text. In the 1840 edition, whosoever was replaced by whomsoever. From a prescriptive point of view, whosoever is correct here since it acts as the subject of the whosoever-clause. For two other instances where the 1840 edition switched whomsoever and whosoever (but not always consistently from a prescriptive point of view), see under Alma 3:10 and Alma 3:17. Here in Alma 47:27, the 1874 RLDS edition restored the original (and grammatically correct) whosoever to the RLDS textual tradition. But that same edition replaced the following word, the past-tense loved, with the present-tense loveth. This error in tense was corrected in the 1908 RLDS edition, probably by reference to 𝓟.

Summary: Maintain the original reading in Alma 47:27, the wh-form whosoever and the past-tense loved: “whosoever loved the king / let him go forth and pursue his servants”.

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

References