Alma 48:19 Textual Variants

The original manuscript here reads “not less serviceable”. When Oliver Cowdery copied the text into the printer’s manuscript, he changed the not to no, perhaps intentionally. One can argue that the not in 𝓞 could have been a mistake for no since we have evidence elsewhere in 𝓞 that Oliver sometimes accidentally wrote not instead of no:

• Alma 51:19 was no time for their trials

In this instance, Oliver caught his error immediately and erased the t. There are also several examples in 𝓟 where Oliver started to write not but caught his error immediately and corrected the not to no:

• 3 Nephi 1:8 as if there were no night
• Moroni 7:24 & there could no{t(-)|g}ood thing come unto them no
• Moroni 8:15 because he hath ^<> baptism
• Moroni 10:21 if ye have no hope

So there is considerable manuscript evidence that not, the reading in 𝓞 for Alma 48:19, could be an error for no.

Elsewhere in the text we have no examples of not less or no less (nor any less), so there is no internal evidence here to suggest which reading is characteristic of the Book of Mormon text. But there is considerable evidence for the earliest reading “not less serviceable” in Early Modern English, with the following citations (accidentals regularized) from Literature Online :

• John Dymmok (about 1600)
  • they are the very scum and outcast of the country and not less serviceable in the camp for meating [=feeding] and dressing of horses than hurtful to the enemy with their darts
• David Lloyd (1668)
  • indeed his negotiations in France and Holland … were not less serviceable than his battles in England
• Edward Fowler (1671)
  • for the sagacity that is in beasts is not less serviceable to them than is the reason of a wicked man to him
• Nathaniel Wanley (1673)
  • he perceived a greater motion in the muscles of the tongue but his swallow
    —to which the tongue is not less serviceable than to speech— did as he acknowledged remain impedited [=impeded]
• William Salmon (1692)
  • because antimony is not less serviceable to the purification of man’s body than it is to that of gold if it be rightfully prepared and administered

And we also have this example from the 1700s:

• Edward Gibbon (1788)
  • the reputation of Belisarius was unsullied by a defeat and the vain confidence of the Goths was not less serviceable to his designs than the repentance and modesty of the Roman troops

Note also that all of these examples have a comparative than-clause, just as here in Alma 48:19 (“not less serviceable unto the people than was Moroni”). Thus the expression “not less serviceable” is clearly possible. Of course, so is “no less serviceable”. For instance, Literature Online lists about as many instances of “no less serviceable” for the 1600s. According to statistics found on , the phrase “no less serviceable” is over 40 times more frequent than “not less serviceable” in current English; this difference in frequency may have existed in the English of the early 1800s, thus explaining why Oliver Cowdery replaced the not with no when he copied this phrase into 𝓟. The critical text will accept the earliest reading, “not less serviceable”, as the original reading in Alma 48:19.