Here in 2 Nephi 30:17, the 1830 typesetter added the definite article the before earth, thus replacing “upon earth” with “upon the earth”. The Book of Mormon text has two other occurrences of “upon earth”, one of which quotes the King James Bible:
The original manuscript undoubtedly read “upon earth” in these two other passages since in 3 Nephi both the 1830 edition and the printer’s manuscript are firsthand copies of the original manuscript. Thus “upon earth” is definitely possible in 2 Nephi 30:17.
Elsewhere in the earliest text, there are 13 occurrences of “upon the earth”, one of which is found nearby in 2 Nephi 30:8 (“to bring about the restoration of his people upon the earth”). This preceding occurrence of “upon the earth” may have influenced the 1830 typesetter to add the definite article the later on in verse 17.
There are also four examples of “on earth” in the earliest text, of which three deal with sealing and loosing, just like in 2 Nephi 30:17:
All these examples parallel the language of the King James Bible (except that the King James text has the verb bind rather than seal ):
Note, in particular, that none of these parallel examples have the definite article the in the phrase “on earth”, which strongly argues that the phrase “upon earth” in 2 Nephi 30:17 never had the definite article in the original text.
These two other Book of Mormon passages dealing with sealing and loosing suggest the possibility that the preposition upon in 2 Nephi 30:17 could be an error for on. In support of such a possible error, there are a couple of examples elsewhere in the manuscripts where the prepositions upon and on were initially mixed up:
In each case, the correction is virtually immediate; there is no change in the level of ink flow in either case. The first example is of particular interest since Oliver Cowdery is the scribe (as also in 2 Nephi 30:17) and his error was to replace on with the more biblical-sounding upon (as one might hypothesize happened in 2 Nephi 30:17).
Nonetheless, there are only these three examples in the Book of Mormon of “on earth” involving sealing and loosing. Furthermore, 2 Nephi 30:17 does not really refer to heavenly sealing or loosing but rather to the revealing of all the hidden works of mankind, so the parallel language does not have to precisely agree. Finally, the prepositions upon and on are clearly synonymous. Thus there is no strong motivation for emending “upon earth” (the earliest reading in 2 Nephi 30:17) to “on earth”. Nor is there any reason why the intrusive the of the 1830 typesetter should be accepted. The critical text will follow the earliest reading in 2 Nephi 30:17 (“which is sealed upon earth”).
Summary: The intrusive the should be removed from “upon the earth” in 2 Nephi 10:17, but the preposition upon should not be changed to on.