Alma 51:25–26 Textual Variants

Here verse 25 contradicts verse 26: verse 25 states that Amalickiah avoided attacking the city of Nephihah, but verse 26 lists the city of Nephihah as one of the cities on the seashore that Amalickiah seized (marked above with an arrow). Both occurrences of the name Nephihah are extant in 𝓞. Later on, in Alma 59, the text refers once more to these cities on the seashore (at least the three most southern of those cities, marked below with an arrow), but there the text reads Moroni rather than Nephihah:

• Alma 59:5
  •   and it came to pass that while Moroni was thus making preparations
      to go against the Lamanites to battle
      behold the people of Nephihah which were gathered together
    → from the city of Moroni and the city of Lehi and the city of Morionton
      were attackted by the Lamanites

Also in Alma 59 (verses 5–8) the city of Nephihah is attacked for the first time (if we exclude the dubious reading here in Alma 51:26). As discussed below, the city of Nephihah is not on the seashore, but the city of Moroni is.

What seems to have happened here in Alma 51:26 is that the name Moroni was accidentally replaced by Nephihah. Such an error could have entered the text during the early transmission of the English-language text, either by Joseph Smith as he dictated the text or by Oliver Cowdery as he took down Joseph’s dictation. Another possibility, of course, is that Mormon himself made the error in the original Book of Mormon text. For either possibility, the preceding occurrence of Nephihah in verse 25 could have prompted the error in verse 26. Also note that the names Nephi and Lehi collocate elsewhere in the text (especially in reference to the two original patriarchs, Nephi and his father Lehi). This means that the occurrence of the following “the city of Lehi”, along with the preceding Nephihah in verse 25, could have led to inadvertently replacing “the city of Moroni” with “the city of Nephihah” in verse 26.

There is one example, a nearby one, where Oliver Cowdery momentarily replaced Moroni with Nephi; this error occurred the first time the city of Moroni was mentioned in the text:

• Alma 50:13
  • and it came to pass that the Nephites began the foundation of a city
    and they called the name of the city
    [Nephi >% Moroni 0|Moroni 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST]
    and it was by the east sea and it was on the south by the line of the possessions of the Lamanites

This error may have been prompted by the earlier occurrence of Nephites in the passage, thus providing support for the proposed explanation here in Alma 51:26 of why an original “the city of Moroni” could have been replaced by “the city of Nephihah”.

Other passages support emending Nephihah to Moroni in Alma 51:26. For instance, in Alma 50, after referring to the founding of the city of Moroni (verse 13), the text refers to the city of Nephihah and the city of Lehi; the latter city was on the seashore (like the city of Moroni) but further north, while Nephihah was located inland between Moroni and Aaron:

• Alma 50:14–15
  • and they also began a foundation for a city
    between the city of Moroni and the city of Aaron
    joining the borders of Aaron and Moroni
    and they called the name of the city or the land Nephihah
    and they also began in that same year to build many cities on the north
    one in a particular manner which they called Lehi
    which was in the north by the borders of the seashore

Going from south to north, along the east coast, we have the following cities: Moroni, Lehi, Morionton, Omner, Gid, and Mulek. Nephihah, on the other hand, is inward from the east coast (between Moroni and Aaron). Furthermore, in Alma 59:5 it says that the Nephites who fled from Moroni, Lehi, and Morionton went to Nephihah to help defend it. It had not yet fallen, but eventually the Lamanites take the city (in Alma 59:5–8).

Finally, note that Alma 51:25 states that Amalickiah kept the Lamanites “down by the seashore, leaving men in every city to maintain and defend it”. Obviously, Mormon was getting ahead of himself, since at that point in the narrative only the city of Moroni had been taken (in verse 23). It appears that the thus at the beginning of verse 26 represents a summarizing statement and that Mormon intended to include the city of Moroni (which was definitely on the east seacoast) but accidentally wrote Nephihah. This would give the following emendation for verse 26:

• Alma 51:26 (proposed emendation)
  • and thus he went on taking possession of many cities :
    the city of Moroni and the city of Lehi and the city of Morionton and the city of Omner and the city of Gid and the city of Mulek all of which were on the east borders by the seashore

John L. Sorenson discusses this problem regarding Alma 51:26 in footnote 25 on page 132 of his book Mormon’s Map (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 2000):

Comparison of Alma 51:26 and 59:5 exposes what appears to be a scribal error. The former says that the Lamanites captured Nephihah in their first strike, but 59:5 has the place still in Nephite hands some five years later. I suppose that the historian listed Nephihah too hastily in the former passage, a natural enough response to the dismay felt at the smashing success of Amalickiah’s initial campaign.

On page 245 of his An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1996), Sorenson makes the same basic argument:

The record reports Nephihah’s capture at this time (Alma 51:24–26), but that statement is incorrect if we credit Alma 59:9–11. (We need not be shocked to find that the scribes made errors. Moroni on the title page of the Book of Mormon suggests as much, saying, “If there are faults they are the mistakes of men.”)

Sorenson’s analysis suggests that the text could be revised by deleting “the city of Nephihah and” from Alma 51:26. However, as an explanation for the problematic reading in Alma 51:26, accidentally inserting such a long phrase seems considerably less likely than accidentally replacing Moroni with Nephihah.

Over the years, other sources have noted the problem with “the city of Nephihah” in Alma 51:26. For instance, the index to the 1981 LDS edition reads: “nephihah, city of—possibly two cities by this name ”. George Reynolds, on page 322 of The Story of the Book of Mormon (Independence, Missouri: Zion’s Printing and Publishing Company, 1888), discusses the evidence for two cities with the name Nephihah. He also refers to Orson Pratt’s footnote to Alma 56:25 in the 1879 LDS edition, which states Pratt’s belief that there were two cities with the name Nephihah: “This is not the city referred to by letter l, Alma 50”. For additional discussion of the theory that there is some kind of error regarding the name of the city Nephihah in Alma 51:26, see page 32 of John Clark, “A Key for Evaluating Nephite Geographies”, Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, volume 1 (1989): 20–70. Also see page 236 in Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 1976).

Here I wish to thank Dan McKinlay for his help in finding sources that refer to this textual problem regarding the city of Nephihah.