Ross Geddes has suggested (personal communication, 12 September 2004) that their sanctuaries could be an error for of sanctuaries. Note that in the larger context, every conjunct in the list has to do with what the people did (actions or states that can be considered “proceedings of this people”) but not with any of the objects of those proceedings—except for this odd case of their sanctuaries . Geddes proposes that the original text read “and their building of temples and of synagogues and of sanctuaries” (or perhaps without the last repeated of: “and their building of temples and of synagogues and sanctuaries”).
An intrusive their before sanctuaries could have occurred in anticipation of the repeated their that occurs in the following text: “and their righteousness and their wickedness and their murders and their robbings and their plunderings” (note also the many instances of their in the preceding text). There is also some evidence in the history of the text for errors resulting from anticipation of a following their; for discussion and examples, see under 1 Nephi 10:3.
Here in Helaman 3:14, 𝓞 is extant for that part of the conjunctive phrase that refers to the building of temples and synagogues, but not for “& their sanctuaries”; however, the length of the lacuna suggests that “& of sanctuaries” would be too short. The other emendation, “& sanctuaries”, would be even shorter. Of course, some other scribal mishap could account for the difference in the length of the lacuna.
One could interpret these sanctuaries as sacred places out in nature—that is, sanctuaries were not built. Given such an interpretation, the reader could exclude “and their sanctuaries” from “and their building of temples and of synagogues”. Yet all other relevant passages in the text indicate that sanctuaries were built:
A fourth possible example (depending on the antecedent for the relative pronoun which) is in Alma 16:13: “and Alma and Amulek went forth preaching repentance unto the people in their temples and in their sanctuaries and also in their synagogues which was built after the manner of the Jews”.
Although there is no support for a direct switch of their and of in the transmission of the text, there is separate evidence for adding their and for omitting of. For an example where an extra their was added to a conjunctive phrase, see under Mosiah 23:28 (where “their wives and children” was changed to “their wives and their children”). For an example where a repeated of was lost in a conjunctive phrase, see under Enos 1:23 (where “reminding them of death and of the duration of eternity” was changed to “reminding them of death and the duration of eternity”).
When we consider all other conjunctive phrases involving temples, synagogues, sanctuaries, and other places of worship, we find that determiners and prepositions are typically repeated, although not always; but most importantly for these phrases, no determiner or preposition occurs in a later conjunct unless it occurs earlier in the first conjunct. In the following list, I mark with an asterisk every instance where all three words appear, temples, synagogues, and sanctuaries:
The two examples in 3 Nephi 13 are found in the King James Bible, Matthew 6:2, 5.
Thus the occurrence of their sanctuaries in Helaman 3:14 is anomalous in its sudden use of their as well as its identification of sanctuaries as a proceeding or doing of the people. Instead, it is “and their building of temples and of synagogues and of sanctuaries” that represents what the people were doing. In the two other examples where temples, synagogues, and sanctuaries are all conjoined, repetition is consistent for all three conjuncts (with repetition of in their for Alma 16:13 and repetition of their for Helaman 3:9). The systematic repetition of the preposition after its first repetition provides some support for repeating here in Helaman 3:14 the of for sanctuaries (the last conjunction) since the first two have the of (thus “and their building of temples and of synagogues and of sanctuaries”). We can be quite sure that the their is intrusive, but less sure about whether the of was repeated before sanctuaries. Most likely, the extra their arose as Joseph Smith dictated the text to Oliver Cowdery, not when Oliver later copied the text from 𝓞 into 𝓟 (given that the spacing between extant fragments in 𝓞 agrees with the anomalous reading in 𝓟).
It should be pointed out that the 1920 LDS edition emended the 1830 punctuation to show that their sanctuaries was conjoined with the preceding of synagogues. The 1830 punctuation (determined by John Gilbert, the typesetter) was “and their building of temples, and of synagogues, and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness”. The editors for the 1920 edition removed the comma after synagogues, giving “and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness”. Thus the 1920 edition recognized the difficulty with the phraseology “and their building of temples and of synagogues and their sanctuaries”. In the emended phrase, “and their building of temples and of synagogues and of sanctuaries”, it would be best to avoid any commas, thus allowing the whole phrase to be set off from the other proceedings and doings listed in this passage.
Summary: Emend Helaman 3:14 to read “and their building of temples and of synagogues and of sanctuaries”, thus replacing their before sanctuaries with of; usage elsewhere in the text indicates that the their in the earliest extant reading is intrusive; conjunctive repetition of prepositions for other conjuncts involving temples, synagogues, and sanctuaries supports repeating the of before sanctuaries.