Mormon 2:4 Textual Variants

There are two textual issues regarding the name of this city. The first question deals with whether the second vowel is an e or an o. The second question deals with whether the name of this city ends in an h. The printer’s manuscript has an o as the second vowel, but the 1830 edition has an e. Since each of these sources is a firsthand copy of the original manuscript, the problem is to determine which vowel was the spelling in the original manuscript. As far as the final h is concerned, it must have been in 𝓞 since both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition have the h. Later the h was dropped in the 1837 edition; also in that edition the o spelling in 𝓟 was adopted. The omission of the h in the 1837 edition may have been intended, but it did not result from consulting either of the two manuscripts.

There are numerous Book of Mormon names (plus some nouns) that end in h, including the following that end in ah preceded by a consonant:

Ahah, Ammah, Amnigaddah, Antionah, Antiparah, Cumorah, Gadiomnah, Gidanah, Giddonah, Gidgiddonah, Gilgah, Lamah, Limhah, limnah, Onidah, Oneidah, rabbanah, Riplah, Sherrizah, Zerahemnah

To this list we can add Book of Mormon names ending in the morpheme hah /ihah:

Ammonihah, Cumenihah, Mathonihah, Moronihah, Nephihah,Onihah, Orihah, Zemnarihah

So there is nothing wrong with either Angolah or Angelah ending in h. There is one case in the text where h was apparently added to the end of a name: in both manuscripts the biblical name Judea was written Judeah, probably because of Judah (see under Alma 56:9 for discussion of this case). But it seems unlikely that an h would have been accidentally added to an original Angola or Angela since there is no similar name or word that could have prompted such an error. Thus the critical text will maintain the final h for the name of this city.

Returning to the second vowel in the name, we note that the variant angola of the word angora (noted in the Oxford English Dictionary) or the spelling of the African country Angola (or even the prefix Anglo, as in Anglo-Saxon) could have hypothetically (but not realistically) had some influence on the 1837 reading as well as the reading in 𝓟 (Angolah). More reasonably, one could argue for the influence of the word angel (or the name Angela) in producing the e in the 1830 reading (Angelah). When we look at other Book of Mormon names, we find little phonotactic evidence for determining the vowel since no other name has the ng sequence. After g alone between vowels, we do have two cases with o, Agosh and Hagoth, which would support the reading Angolah. There are also three cases with a after g: Jacob-ugath, Ogath, and Pagag. (Perhaps Amnigaddah is a fourth case, providing that name is not a compound, Amni +gaddah.) But there are no other examples with e after intervocalic g. Thus the name Angolah looks somewhat more characteristic of Book of Mormon names than Angelah.

Oliver Cowdery sometimes mixed up e ’s and o ’s. In fact, there is considerable evidence, especially in 𝓞, that Oliver sometimes miswrote names with an e instead of the correct o (or the o he wrote looked more like an e); in some cases (each marked below with an asterisk), he corrected his initially written e:

• Ammen instead of Ammon Alma 24:5 (in 𝓞)
• Ammen > Ammon Alma 31:32 (in 𝓞)
• Siren > Siron Alma 39:3 (in 𝓟)
• Sidon looks like Siden Alma 43:40 (in 𝓞)
• Siden > Sidon Alma 43:51 (in 𝓞)
• Cohor looks like Coher Ether 7:21 (in 𝓞)

In all other places in 𝓞 and 𝓟, he wrote the o vowel correctly for these names, Ammon, Siron, Sidon, and Cohor.

Similarly, we also have a few names where scribe 2 of 𝓟 wrote an e instead of the correct o;

and in some cases (each marked below with an asterisk), he corrected his initially written e:

• *Minen > Minon Alma 2:24
• Meses instead of Moses 3 Nephi 27:8
• *Beaz > Boaz Mormon 4:20
• *Jeneum > Joneum Mormon 6:14

Since scribe 2 of 𝓟 was copying from 𝓞, these errors may have been influenced by what Oliver Cowdery had written (or miswritten) in 𝓞. The three names that were corrected by scribe 2 of 𝓟 do not occur elsewhere in the text, nor are they extant in 𝓞. This is also the situation here in Mormon 2:4 for the name Angolah /Angelah.

In contrast to this tendency to miswrite o’s as e’s in names, neither Oliver Cowdery nor scribe 2 of 𝓟 tended to miswrite e’s as o’s in names (at least, there are no examples). This difference in scribal practice argues that a questionable e /o spelling in a name more likely represents an original o for which Oliver wrote an e-like letter. In other words, the original spelling in 𝓞 for Mormon 2:4 was probably Angolah and Oliver’s o looked somewhat like an e, which led the 1830 compositor to set Angelah. The critical text will therefore adopt the reading Angolah in Mormon 2:4 (the reading in 𝓟). But we should remember that there is some guesswork in this conclusion and that Angelah, the 1830 reading, remains a possibility.