This example of variation raises a potential problem for the whole text. In the original and printer’s manuscripts, Oliver Cowdery often spelled the verb dissent as desent. (Correspondingly, dissenter was sometimes spelled as desenter; similarly, dissension was sometimes spelled as desension.) Since Oliver Cowdery’s r ’s and n ’s were sometimes indistinguishable, the verb spelled as desent could have been mixed up with another verb, desert. The original manuscript is not extant for the word dissented in Alma 46:27, but it was presumably spelled as desented given the spelling in the printer’s manuscript. Oliver initially wrote deserted in 𝓟, but then he corrected the r to an n by overwriting. In this case, the correction in 𝓟 may have been made when Oliver proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞 since the ink flow for the overwritten n is somewhat heavier. The potential mix-up of desert and desent (that is, dissent) means that ultimately we may have to rely more on the semantics of the passage than on how the scribe wrote the r or the n or how the 1830 typesetter might have interpreted the scribal r or n. Despite this caveat, normally the scribes clearly distinguished between desert and desent.
Looking elsewhere in the text, we find that there are two semantically clear cases of the verb desert (neither of them are extant in 𝓞):
There are also a couple of semantically clear references to Nephites “dissenting away unto” either the Lamanites or the Gaddianton robbers:
There are four additional cases where the current LDS text has the verb desert, but the evidence (both scribal and semantic) suggests that in each case the verb should be dissent. The first one is very much like the last two examples:
𝓞 is not extant here, but 𝓟 clearly reads desenting (that is, with an n). The 1830 compositor probably misinterpreted desenting as deserting because he expected people to desert rather than dissent away into a land. Yet even here the text adds the phrase “among the Lamanites” (that is, these people became dissenters among the Lamanites). In addition, here the word dissent occurs with the noun contention. Elsewhere in the text, there are numerous examples where the noun contention occurs with dissent and dissension, but there are no examples of contention occurring with desert or desertion except secondarily in Helaman 4:12. Besides the example in the Words of Mormon 1:16 (cited above), we have these collocates of contention and dissension:
Thus in Helaman 4:12 we expect “raising up in great contentions and dissenting away into the land of Nephi among the Lamanites”.
There are also two earlier verses in Helaman 4 that explicitly refer to the people mentioned in verse 12 as dissenters:
Finally, there are three cases near the end of the Book of Mormon where the current LDS text has desert, yet dissent is apparently the correct reading. First, we have this example in Mormon:
This example is found in that portion of the text (from Helaman 13 through the end of Mormon) where both 𝓟 and the 1830 edition are firsthand copies of 𝓞. Here 𝓟 is in the hand of scribe 2, and it definitely reads deserted, but this is probably a misinterpretation of what Oliver Cowdery wrote in 𝓞 (namely, desented ). The 1830 compositor correctly interpreted desented as dissented, which is what he set in the 1830 edition. This reading of dissented was followed until the 1981 LDS edition, where the incorrect reading of the printer’s manuscript was restored, undoubtedly based on the assumption that here the 1830 edition was set from 𝓟. Similarly, the 1908 RLDS edition replaced dissented with deserted in the RLDS text because 𝓟 read that way.
Although “deserted over unto the Lamanites” seems quite plausible in Mormon 6:15, the choice here at the end of the Nephite nation was not simply one of choosing one army over another (which is normally what we think of when we use the words desert and desertion). Nephites switching sides had to deny the Christ—in other words, they had to become dissenters. This is made clear by Moroni later on:
The use of the word dissent in Mormon 6:15 is quite correct, even though it may sound strange to modern readers.
This same interpretation applies to the last two examples of desert in the current LDS text for which dissent should be restored:
Having decided that Mormon 6:15 should read deserted, the editors for the 1981 LDS edition extended that reading to the two instances of dissent in Moroni 9:24.
Ultimately, there are only two examples of the verb desert in the Book of Mormon text (in 3 Nephi 4:1–2), and they are the two that refer to lands being deserted. The Nephites do not desert over to the enemy; instead, they dissent over to the enemy. The critical text will therefore maintain the original instance of dissent here in Alma 46:27 and restore the original instances of dissent in Helaman 4:12, Mormon 6:15, and Moroni 9:24 (two times).
The suggestion to emend deserting in Helaman 4:12 to dissenting was earlier proposed on pages 568–569 in Stan Larson, “Conjectural Emendation and the Text of the Book of Mormon”, Brigham Young University Studies 18/4 (1978): 563–569.
Summary: Maintain the verb dissent in Alma 46:27 (“those which have dissented from us”); in four other cases, the earliest textual sources support the verb dissent over desert: Helaman 4:12, Mormon 6:15, and Moroni 9:24 (two times); in the Book of Mormon, the verb desert is used only to refer to lands being deserted.