Here in the printer’s manuscript, Oliver Cowdery started to write the word fullness with two l ’s, as fullness, but then he immediately corrected the word by erasure and overwriting to fulness. Oliver appears to have consistently spelled fullness with two l ’s in the original manuscript (4 out of 4 times, wherever the word is extant in 𝓞). And when he copied 𝓞 into 𝓟, for the initial portion that covers the small plates of Nephi, he normally spelled the word in 𝓟 with two l ’s (9 out of 11 times). But later, in the large plates of Nephi, he spelled the word in 𝓟 with a single l (15 times). There is one other place in 𝓟 where he initially spelled the word as fullness (in Ether 2:8), but there (as here in Helaman 12:24) he immediately corrected the two l ’s to a single l by erasure and overwriting. The 1830 compositor, on the other hand, almost always set the word with one l, and the LDS text has continued with the single-l spelling. The 1840 edition introduced the double-l spelling into the printed text, which the RLDS text has maintained. It appears that Oliver, as he proofed the 1830 sheets, eventually learned to spell the word as fulness (according to the compositor’s spelling); Oliver therefore changed his original spelling with two l ’s to a single l in his later copying from 𝓞 into 𝓟.
Lyle Fletcher has suggested (personal communication, 23 August 2006) that the word fullness here in Helaman 12:24 is an error for goodness. 𝓞 is not extant here but could have read goodness, which Oliver Cowdery then accidentally copied into 𝓟 as fullness (his initial spelling). Note that the double-l spelling, fullness, matches the length of the word goodness. Another possibility is that Joseph Smith himself, when he read off the text to Oliver, accidentally read fullness rather than the correct goodness.
Usage elsewhere in the text supports the suggested emendation. There are no other examples of “great fullness” in the text. Elsewhere the text refers to the fullness of various sorts but never to the fullness of God himself:
the gospel 10 times
God’s wrath 10 times
joy 4 times
time 3 times
the Gentiles 2 times
iniquity 2 times
one’s intent 1 time
In contrast, there are five examples of “great goodness”, and all refer to the great goodness of God:
Note in particular that two of these instances of “great goodness” occur earlier in this same chapter, Helaman 12. And there are also 26 instances of goodness alone elsewhere in the text, of which 24 refer to the goodness of God.
If there is such an error here in the text for Helaman 12:24, there is no independent support elsewhere in the manuscripts for that specific error; that is, there are no examples of mix-ups elsewhere in the text between fullness and goodness, nor is there any nearby use of the word fullness that may have prompted the replacement of goodness with fullness (the nearest prior instance of fullness is in 2 Nephi 11:7 and the nearest subsequent instance is in 3 Nephi 16:4). There is an instance of the word fulfilling in Helaman 12:26, two verses later, that could be appealed to here (“to a state of endless misery / fulfilling the words which saith”). But that word would have occurred between four and five lines later in 𝓞 and thus seems rather unlikely as the source for replacing goodness with fullness. If there is an error here, the error seems to have occurred independently of the surrounding text and its meaning.
Forest Simmons has suggested (personal communication, 2 November 2007) another possible explanation for how fullness could have replaced goodness in Helaman 12:24: namely, Oliver Cowdery accidentally wrote gratefulness instead of great goodness in 𝓞, which he then changed to great fulness when he copied from 𝓞 into 𝓟. The words grateful and gratefulness do not occur in the Book of Mormon, nor would gratefulness work here in the text (we are the ones that should be grateful). Of course, Simmons is proposing that gratefulness is an error for great goodness and that great fulness was Oliver’s later attempt to deal with the impossibility of gratefulness.
Despite these arguments against “in his great fullness” here in Helaman 12:22, David Calabro points out (personal communication) that in the New Testament the King James Bible has a number of references to God’s fullness, including these:
These examples of fullness suggest God’s perfection as well as his complete love, thus his desire for all to repent and come unto him: “and may God grant in his great fullness that men might be brought unto repentance”. In other words, the use of fullness in Helaman 12:24 will work, despite its unique usage in the text of the Book of Mormon. The critical text will therefore retain the reference to God’s great fullness in this passage, even though the use of great with fullness does seem unnecessary.
Summary: Maintain in Helaman 12:24 the reading with fullness: “and may God grant in his great fullness that men might be brought unto repentance”; although this reference to God’s fullness is a unique reading in the Book of Mormon, biblical usage argues that one can refer to God’s fullness in perfection and love, which would include his desire for all to repent; although usage elsewhere in the Book of Mormon argues that “in his great fullness” could be an error for “in his great goodness”, the critical text will retain the reading of all the (extant) textual sources.