Alma 36:25 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
yea and now behold O my son the Lord doth give me exceeding great joy in the [ fruits 0|fruit 1ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST] of my labors

๐“ž is extant here and reads โ€œin the fruits of my laborsโ€. Oliver Cowdery, when he copied from ๐“ž into ๐“Ÿ, replaced the plural fruits with the singular fruit. As explained under Alma 29:17, the original text seems to have number agreement in collocations of fruit(s) and labor(s); thus โ€œin the fruits of my laborsโ€ is quite appropriate. For a more extensive discussion regarding the number for fruits, see under Jacob 5:74. Generally, we follow the earliest textual sources, thus fruits (the reading here in ๐“ž) for Alma 36:25.

Summary: Restore the plural fruits in Alma 36:25, the reading of the original manuscript.

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

References