Ether 11:6 Textual Variants

The original manuscript is extant here for “there was great”. There is definitely no room between was and great for the indefinite article a. There is considerable noise in the supralinear space above was great, and one could imagine that the indefinite article might have been supralinearly inserted, although my reading of the ultraviolet photograph here is that there is no supralinear a, only noise. If the a were inserted, it was done in very weak ink. And if so, it was nonetheless not copied into the printer’s manuscript. We have evidence elsewhere in the manuscripts that such a mistake is possible. For instance, in Alma 42:2 Oliver Cowdery initially omitted in 𝓞 the indefi- nite article a in the phrase “cherubims and a flaming sword”. Although Oliver later added the a supralinearly in 𝓞, the ink flow was so weak that he omitted it once more when he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟—and that second time he failed to catch his error.

Surrounding phraseology suggests that the a is possible here in Ether 11:6. The proposed phrase “a great calamity” is supported by subsequent references in the same verse to “a great curse” and “a great destruction”:

• Ether 11:6
  • for they had testified that a great curse should come upon the land and also upon the people and that there should be a great destruction among them

Moreover, the two other instances of calamity in the text take determiners, although not a:

• Mormon 2:27 because of this the great calamity of my people
• Mormon 5:11 such will sorrow for the calamity of the house of Israel

Yet there are a couple of expressions elsewhere in the text where great immediately precedes a noun but for which there is no indefinite article before the great, although there could have been:

“to get/have great hold” (instead of “to get/have a great hold”)

• Alma 8:9 now Satan had got great hold upon the hearts of the people
• Alma 10:25 why hath Satan got such great hold upon your hearts
• Alma 27:12 for Satan hath great hold on the hearts of the Amlicites
• Helaman 6:31 he had got great hold upon the hearts of the Nephites
• Helaman 16:23 Satan did get great hold upon the hearts of the people

“to suffer great loss” (instead of “to suffer a great loss”)

• Alma 57:23 nevertheless we had suffered great loss
• Alma 63:15 in the which they were beaten and driven back again to their own lands / suffering great loss

Interestingly, in Alma 57:23 Oliver Cowdery started to write “a great loss” in 𝓟 but immediately caught his error and corrected it (𝓞 is extant and reads “we had suffered great loss”). These examples argue that the expression “there was great calamity” is possible, and therefore we should avoid emending Ether 11:6 to read “and there was a great calamity in all the land”.