While Alma spent three days in some kind of spiritual state—shock, coma, or something not defined—he was cognizant of what was going on. He had agonized, his soul was being wracked with eternal torment. He said he felt the pains of a damned soul, but then he remembered his father had spoken “concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world” (36:17). He then felt “joy” and “marvelous light” (36:20).
Alma explained, that his “joy” was “as exceeding as [had been his] pain!” He then stated, I “thought I saw, even as our father Lehi saw, God sitting upon his throne, surrounded by numberless concourses of angels, in the attitude of singing and praising their God.” Alma is directly quoting Lehi’s words found in 1 Nephi 1:8. Why didn’t Alma put quotation marks around the quoted text? Quotations marks did not exist in Alma’s day. Punctuation marks were invented in Late Antiquity or in the Middle Ages. Greek and Hebrew texts of antiquity had no punctuation marks at all. Instead of using quotation marks, authors of ancient texts would say something like, “as Lehi said.” The reader was expected to realize that a direct quote was being used. And here, Alma quotes Lehi precisely. That’s pretty amazing, when you stop and think about it.
On a few of the several, precise, intertextual quotations within the Book of Mormon, see John W. Welch, “Textual Consistency,” in Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research, ed. John W. Welch (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 21–23.