Alma 40:6 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
[& 0| 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] now there must needs be a space betwixt the time of death and the time of the resurrection

Here the original manuscript has an ampersand at the end of the line, but when copying into the printer’s manuscript Oliver Cowdery accidentally missed this final word in a line of 𝓞. Oliver sometimes omitted small words at the ends of lines in his copywork; for some other examples, see the list under Alma 11:21.

As noted under Alma 40:3, there are 22 instances of and now in the original text for Alma’s discourse with Corianton (Alma 39–42). There is nothing wrong with the and here in Alma 40:6; the critical text will restore it.

Summary: Restore the and at the beginning of Alma 40:6; as he copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟, Oliver Cowdery accidentally skipped the ampersand that occurred here at the end of a line in 𝓞.

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

References