Helaman 1:22 Textual Variants

Royal Skousen
he was in possession of the city [of 0ABCEGHIJKNOPRST|NULL > of 1| DLMQ|of of F] Zarahemla

As discussed under Alma 61:8, the original text consistently read “the city of Zarahemla”, without any examples of “the city Zarahemla” (although there are four instances of “that great city Zarahemla”). Here in Helaman 1:22, there has been a persistent tendency to omit the of: initially in 𝓟, in the 1841 British edition, in the 1902 LDS edition, and in the 1905 LDS edition. (In the last case, the of seems to have been omitted independently of the 1902 edition.) 𝓞 is extant here and has the of. In 𝓟, Oliver Cowdery supralinearly inserted the of almost immediately (there is no change in the level of ink flow). Here in Helaman 1:22, the critical text will follow the reading of the earliest textual sources, “the city of Zarahemla”. (We can ignore, of course, the dittography in the 1852 LDS edition where the of was accidentally repeated.)

Summary: Maintain in Helaman 1:22 the of in “the city of Zarahemla”, the reading in 𝓞 and the corrected reading in 𝓟.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part. 5

References