Alma 48:21 Textual Variants

Here in the original manuscript, Oliver Cowdery wrote “in the latter end of the nineteenth year / notwithstanding their peace amongst themselves”. When he copied the text into the printer’s manuscript, he miswrote the word year as yea. The 1830 compositor interpreted the yea in 𝓟 as an actual yea, so he set the text by placing a semicolon after nineteenth. Such a reading interprets “in the latter end of nineteenth” as having an ellipted year. In the original text, there is only one passage where the word year is ellipted; and in that passage, year is ellipted three times within the same sentence (each is marked below with an arrow):

• 4 Nephi 1:6
  •   and thus did the thirty and eighth year pass away
    → and also the thirty and ninth
    → and the forty and first
    → and the forty and second yea even until forty and nine years had passed away

On the other hand, when only a single year is referred to within a sentence, the word year is always present in the original text.

The editor for the 1849 LDS edition, Orson Pratt, noticed that the word year was missing here in Alma 48:21, so he added it to the text. But he did not realize that the following yea was actually the error for year. He adjusted the punctuation by removing the semicolon after nineteenth and placing a comma after the extra year. On the other hand, the yea is really not appropriate here (irrespective of whether year is present or not); in the original text of the Book of Mormon, yea is consistently used to amplify or comment on the immediately preceding text in a passage. But here in Alma 48:21, the yea is merely gratuitous. The LDS text has maintained the extra yea, while the RLDS text continues with the reading in 𝓟 (where year is missing). The critical text will restore the reading of the original manuscript, where year is supplied and there is no yea.

Earlier in this chapter we have another example of this same error in 𝓟; in this instance, 𝓞 is not extant but probably read year:

• Alma 48:2
  • in the latter end of the nineteenth [ yea 1|year ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]
    of the reign of the judges

In this case, the 1830 compositor easily determined that the yea in 𝓟 was an error for year.

For an example where Oliver Cowdery made the same mistake of replacing year with yea but in the original manuscript, see under Helaman 3:3. In that instance, no year has ever been supplied, neither in place of the incorrect yea nor in addition to the yea. Also under that passage, I provide a list of the places where Oliver accidentally miswrote year as yea.