Alma 49:22 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
but behold in these attempts they were swept off by the stones and [the 1ABCDGHKPS| EFIJLMNOQRT] arrows which were thrown at them

Here the 1849 LDS edition accidentally omitted the repeated determiner the in the conjunctive noun phrase “the stones and the arrows”. Elsewhere the text consistently repeats the determiner, when it exists, for conjuncts of stones and arrows (for a list, see the discussion under Alma 49:4). Here in Alma 49:22, the LDS text has continued with the shorter “the stones and arrows”.

The original manuscript is not extant for the second half of this phrase, but spacing between extant portions of the text has no room for the repeated the except by supralinear insertion. The printer’s manuscript, the earliest extant source, has the full phrase, “the stones and the arrows”. Here the critical text will follow 𝓟, the earliest textual source. Most likely, the repeated the was initially omitted in 𝓞 but then later supplied, especially since the overwhelming tendency in the history of the text has been to omit the repeated determiner rather than to add one. See the general discussion under conjunctive repetition in volume 3.

Summary: Restore in Alma 49:22 the repeated the in the conjunctive phrase “the stones and the arrows”, the reading of the earliest extant source, the printer’s manuscript.

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

References